Perpetual Motion Machines

(see further down this page for all the devices)

The idea of perpetual motion machines has been around for hundreds of years. The idea of creating a machine that can work on it's own without any outside power source is very appealing.

People in our history have tried making perpetual motion machines with Magnets, with water wheels, by using the force of gravity, using wind, using solar energy, and the list goes on.

Backyard hobbyists have tried a lot of things when it comes to perpetual motion.

The question on people's minds is why hasn't a working perpetual motion machine ever been put on the market available for people to buy. Well, that is a good question and one that deserves a valid answer.

If someone has created a perpetual motion machine that actually works and can do work, it hasn't been put on the market yet. It could be that someone has created a working perpetual motion machine and has kept it secret.

There have been some successful inventions when it comes to perpetual motion, however they are more like perpetual motion mobiles. In other words, perpetual motion is at work, however the machine cannot do work, or produce torque, or produce energy to make a second machine function.

There have been several successful perpetual motion mobiles, such as birds that bob their heads up and down continuously. There have been perpetual motion machines that involve a steel ball to travel around on a platform continuously. We will look at these perpetual machines in depth in a little bit.

People shouldn't get perpetual motion machines mixed up with free energy machines. There is a difference between the two. A free energy device will output more energy then it takes in. That is amazing, and we need more of these devices. However it is not the same as a perpetual motion device. With perpetual motion there is no outside power source whatsoever. The machine works on it's own, and it creates it's own power.

Whether that power it creates can be harnessed is a seperate thing. That seems to be one of the challenges with perpetual motion. Creating a device that has enough torque for energy to be extracted from it is not as easy as it may seem.

Remember that we are working without any outside power source.

Here are some of the world's most impressive perpetual motion machines. Some of them work as perpetual motion machines, while others are mobiles. Some of these devices are very old and it is now very hard to reproduce them, or the technology was simply lost.