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Leonardo
Leonardo da Vinci and Perpetual Motion
Author(s): Allan A. Mills
Source: Leonardo, Vol. 41, No. 1 (2008), pp. 39-42
Published by: The MIT Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20206515
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Leonardo da Vinci
and
Perpetual
Motion
Allan A. Mills
3
ABSTRACT
Leonardo da Vinci illustrated
several traditional forms of
"perpetual-motion
machine" in
small
pocket
books now known
as the Codex Forster. He was
well aware that these
designs,
based on
waterwheel/pump
combinations, mechanical
overbalancing
hammers or
rolling balls, would not?and
could not?work.
JL. JLumankind has
always sought
to reduce the
need for its own manual labor.
Draught
animals were one
solution,
but much more
beguiling
was the
concept
of ma
chines that would work
"by
themselves,"
with no obvious
prime
mover
[1].
Even in ancient
times,
it
appears
that at least two
categories
had been
proposed:
the
self-pumping
water wheel
and the mechanical
overbalancing
wheel. None of course
worked,
and as science and
technology progressed
it became
apparent
that
any
such device was
theoretically impossible.
However,
before this
understanding
was
fully
achieved and
became well
known, many technologists
and
hopeful
inven
tors
[2]
felt
obliged
to devote time to this
hoary problem.
Among
the former was Leonardo da Vinci. Well aware of the
futility
of all
suggestions
for
achieving "perpetual
motion,"
he
simply
recorded?and refuted?ideas that were
prevalent
in
his time.
the same
wheel,
then the machine
might
turn "forever."
A number of
empirical attempts
to achieve such a
hydraulic
chimera
perhaps
were made but went un
recorded because
they
never worked.
Drawings
and
plans
of
self-pumping
wheels
persisted
into the 18th cen
tury
and even into modern times
as
amusing
artifacts of linear
per
spective
[3].
Progress
in the under
standing
of
efficiency,
friction and
the conservation of
energy gradu
ally
vindicated the
practical
knowl
edge
that,
no matter how
ingenious,
such devices
simply
could not work.
The Self-Pumping Waterwheel
Wheels turned
by flowing
water were well known in the an
cient and medieval world and were sometimes used to drive
bucket wheels to raise water for
irrigation.
The Archimedean
screw was another form of
pump.
It must therefore have oc
curred to
many speculators
that,
if
only
the two could be com
bined,
with the waterwheel
driving
a
pump
to
supply
water to
Leonardo's Contribution
The
papers
of Leonardo da Vinci bear witness to the semi
quantitative understanding
of machines that was
emerging
in
the late 15th
century. Perhaps
the least known of his extant
works are three
tiny
notebooks
collectively
referred to as the
Codex
Forster,
now in the Victoria and Albert Museum in Lon
don.
They
are believed to have been
compiled
between 1495
and 1497. A facsimile edition has been
published, accompa
nied
by
a
transcription
of Leonardo's
mirror-image
text in its
archaic Italian
[4]. (The
facsimile
drawings
are in their
origi
Fig.
1. Leonardo's
pump/waterwheel
combination in Codex Forster
I,
folio 42v.
(Giunti facsimile)
i-i?-.-.-. ,.. r
f.4i
???Hbi*?*??*,
i
Fig.
2. The
"overbalancing
wheel" of Villard de
Honnecourt
(13th century).
Allan A. Mills
(retired university physics lecturer),
31 Thatch Meadow Drive, Market
Harborough,
Leicestershire LE16 7XH, U.K. E-mail: <aa.mills@hotmail.co.uk>.
?2008ISAST LEONARDO, Vol. 41, No. 1, pp. 39-42,2008 39
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3
T
Fig.
3.
Overbalancing
hammer wheel shown in Codex Forster
n,
folio 90v.
(Giunti facsimile)
nal
mirror-image form.) Unfortunately,
no
complete English
translation of this
difficult material is
available,
although
ex
cerpts
and discussions have
appeared
in
various works on Leonardo.
Codex Forster
/,
folio
42v,
contains the
drawing reproduced
here as
Fig.
1. The
accompanying
text
says
that "Screw A lifts
water to screw
B,
and screw B with the
same water moves screw A." Leonardo
emphasizes
that this is
impossible
in still
("dead")
water and
heaps
scorn on the
designers
of such machines. The best that
can be said in defense of the latter is that
the
arrangement
would
demonstrably
work for a while if a
holding
tank were in
corporated
at the
top
of the
pump [5].
All that it would
require
would be to elim
inate friction and
improve
the
efficiency
of the machine to
100%!
The Overbalancing Wheel
The first recorded
representation
of
the
popular "overbalancing
wheel"
ap
pears
in the sketchbook of Villard de
Honnecourt,
an
enigmatic figure
who
traveled
extensively
in
Europe
in the
13th
century [6].
In
Fig.
2,
it can be seen
that he is
struggling
to
depict
a wheel
mounted
upon
an axle
turning
within a
stoutly
braced frame. Around the cir
cumference of the wheel are
pivoted
an
odd number
(here seven)
of mallets
hang
ing
from their
rigid
wooden handles. The
lowermost mallets
hang vertically,
but the
upper
ones rest
against
the rim of the
wheel. The
implication
is that the four
mallets on the left of a vertical
through
the center of the wheel will
always
over
balance the three on the
right, causing
the wheel to
perpetually
turn in a coun
terclockwise direction. It must have been
thought
that the blows of the
descending
mallets would assist this motion.
The
simplest
model soon
proves
that,
as
depicted,
the
uppermost
mallet falls
over too soon: a
manually
started wheel
rapidly
comes to rest in
equilibrium.
To
day,
we understand that the
turning
ef
fect
("moment")
of
any
mallet is
given by
the
product
of its mass times the distance
of its center from a vertical
through
the
center of the wheel. The wheel comes to
rest with the sum of the moments on the
left
equal
to those on the
right,
and no
external work can be done. It makes no
difference if there are an odd or an even
number of mallets.
Da Vinci's Hammer Wheels
Codex Forster
IL
measuring only
9.5 x 7.0
cm,
depicts
on folio 90v the overbalanc
ing
hammer wheel shown in
Fig.
3. The
circumference of the wheel bears ratchet
Fig.
4. A more
complex
hammer wheel shown in Codex Madrid
I,
folio 145.
Leonardo's
drawing
has been
digitally
contrast-enhanced and rectified.
t *
^??jVisi
iift>A
>^?Ua^?
W***
&T*v?v*
y^HW^W^y^^ii^
l^MU
-??Aft
.Ci(?M^'OP%'
^?P^pHhA^ft?v**j(l?A?
SI?
r^i^m^j %tr*nr?M^
******
f^*f*
T
f^^ffV
^cuW-
*?>
v?^r>?^*t*<U
{V
*||n
ci*?;
*U?Aw<ft
^|US?<s
d
T*f* *K*
*?*KN*^H* ^Jfntfk
cWft*c^-
^uwjVtfVUA.?
{
40 Mills, Leonardo and
Perpetual
Motion
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Vs
s
Fig.
5. A model of the
"overbalancing
hammer wheel."
(?
Allan A
Mills)
teeth,
and a
pawl permits
counterclock
wise rotation
only.
The
pivoted
hammers
have therefore been
positioned
around
an inner
disc,
where coarser teeth sur
rounding
the
pivots prevent
the
rigid
handles from
hanging vertically except
toward the bottom
right-hand
side. Ca
sual
inspection
of the
drawing might
im
ply
that the wheel will
continuously
rotate
counterclockwise,
but Leonardo is well
aware that it
will,
in
fact,
soon assume a
stable,
stationary equilibrium just
like de
Honnecourt's mallet wheel.
Another
drawing
in Codex Forster II
(fo
lio
90r)
is of a hammer wheel with addi
tional arcs
upon
its face. This
particular
drawing
is
cramped
and unclear but is re
peated
in Codex Madrid
/,
folios 144 and
145.
(Dated
to
1490-1496,
this work is
now available in facsimile with an ac
companying commentary by
Ladislao
Re ti
[7].)
The second
drawing
has been
rectified and is
copied
here as
Fig.
4. The
arcs
upon
the face
may represent
initial
attempts
to construct the loci of the cen
ters of
gravity
of
hanging weights
as the
wheel turns, but
they
neither are
sym
metrical nor serve to
position
the ham
mers around the rim of the wheel rather
than
hanging vertically?as
shown once
they
leave the lowest
point. Simple peg
like
stops
are the
simplest way
of ensur
ing
this,
as shown in the model illustrated
in
Fig.
5. The most
significant part
of
Fig.
4 is the
way
in which Leonardo has com
pounded
the moments in mobile-like
[8]
chains to
prove that,
as
drawn,
the wheel
is
resting
in
equilibrium
about an
imagi
nary
vertical line
through
its axis.
Many
examples
of this
diagrammatic
construc
tion are to be found in this
codex,
which
has an
emphasis
on mechanics.
A Model Hammer-Wheel
For this model
(Fig.
5),
I fastened 12 brass
weights
to
phenolic-fiber
arms. The as
semblies
pivoted
at
equal
intervals around
a 20-cm-diameter disk.
Protruding pegs
were
positioned
near each arm so as to
limit its
swing.
The
resulting
wheel was
supported by
a low-friction axle
through
its center and could be rotated
manually
in both clockwise and counterclockwise
directions. Either
way,
it soon came to
rest in
equilibrium.
As the
weights
were
equal,
it was
expected?and
confirmed?
that the sum of the distances of the cen
ters of the five
weights
on the left from a
central vertical was
equal
to the sum of
the
corresponding
distances of the seven
weights
on the
right.
3
Fig.
6.
Leonardo,
rolling
ball wheel of Codex Forster
II,
folio 91r.
(Giunti facsimile)
7 *,
f
Fig.
7.
Leonardo,
rolling
ball wheel of Codex Forster
II,
folio 91 v.
(Giunti facsimile)
?
Mills,
Leonardo and
Perpetual
Motion 41
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All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
3
Fig.
8. A model based on
Fig.
7.
(?
Allan A.
Mills)
Rolling-Ball Wheels
Leonardo also illustrates in the Codex
Forster II
(91
r and 91
v)
two wheels based
on balls
rolling
around
guides posi
tioned within the disc
(Figs
6 and
7).
The second is
perhaps
the most aes
thetically pleasing:
12
compartments
based on arcs of diameter
equal
to the ra
dius of the main wheel
give
a
pinwheel
appearance.
Balls confined within the
closed
compartments
will tend to roll
to the lowest
points,
which
(as shown)
fall
upon
the locus of a circle.
Again
it
may appear
to casual visual examination
that a
greater
number of balls on the
right
will cause the wheel to overbal
ance and turn
clockwise,
but a model
(Fig.
8)
confirms that moments rather
than mere numbers
of
balls on either side are
the
operative
factors. It soon takes
up
a
stationary equilibrium position
where
the moments about the axis on the
right
are balanced
by
the
greater
distances
involved on the left. The
J-shaped
chan
nels sketched in
Fig.
6 are
equally
un
successful.
It would be
possible
to
replace
the balls
with
globules
of
mercury,
as used in the
14th-century mercury
clock of the Libros
del Saber
[9].
Such a
construction,
how
ever, would be no better as a
perpetual
motion machine!
Oh
speculators
on
perpetual
motion,
how
many
vain
projects you
have created in
this search. Go and be the
companions of
the seekers
for gold!
?Leonardo da Vinci
[10]
Acknowledgments
I am
grateful
to Pauline Mills for translations of rel
evant
passages
in the Codex Forster.
References and Notes
1. Hele
Shaw,
"Perpetual
Motion,"
Nature 37
(1888)
p. 254;
Henry
Dircks,
Perpetuum
Mobile
(London,
1861); Stanley
W.
Angrist, "Perpetual
Motion Ma
chines,"
Scientific
American 218
(January 1968) pp.
114-122;
Arthur
WJ.G.
Ord-Hume,
Perpetual
Motion
(London:
Allen and Unwin, 1977).
2. Charles F.
Partington,
The
Century of
Inventions
of
the
Marquis of
Worcester
(London, 1825);
G.K. Tall
madge, "Perpetual
Motion Machine of Mark An
thony
Zimara,"
Isis S3
(1941) pp.
8-14.
3. Maurits Escher's
Perpetual Waterfall (
1961
)
is a well
known
example.
4. Leonardo da
Vinci,
// Codice
Forster,
Augusto
Mari
noni, ed. and
transcription (Florence, Italy:
Giunti
Barbera, 1992).
Available for consultation at the Vic
toria and Albert
Museum,
London.
5. Ladislao
Reti,
"Leonardo da Vinci the Technolo
gist:
The Problem of the Prime
Mover,"
International
Leonardo
Symposium, University
of California,
1966.
6. See the web site of Carl F. Barnes at <www.villard
man.net>. He dates the work to 1220-1230 A.D.
7. Leonardo da
Vinci,
The Madrid Codices, Ladislao
Reti,
ed.
(McGraw-Hill, 1974) ; Ladislao Reti, ed., The
Unknown Leonardo
(London: Hutchinson, 1974).
8.
James J. Sweeney,
"Alexander Calder
(1898-1976),"
in Five American
Sculptors (New
York: Museum of Mod
ern
Art, 1969).
9. Allan A. Mills, "The
Mercury
Clock of the Libros
del
Saber,"
Annals
of
Science 45
(1988) pp.
329-344.
10. Leonardo da
Vinci,
Codex Forster
II,
folio 92v.
Manuscript
received March 2006.
42 Mills,
Leonardo and
Perpetual
Motion
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