Leonardo da Vinci’s Elegant Design for a Perpetual Motion Machine

Is per­pet­u­al motion pos­si­ble? In the­o­ry… I have no idea…. In prac­tice, so far at least, the answer has been a per­pet­u­al no. As Nicholas Bar­ri­al writes at Mak­ery, “in order to suc­ceed,” a per­pet­u­al motion machine “should be free of fric­tion, run in a vac­u­um cham­ber and be total­ly silent” since “sound equates to ener­gy loss.” Try­ing to sat­is­fy these con­di­tions in a noisy, entrop­ic phys­i­cal world may seem like a fool’s errand, akin to turn­ing base met­als to gold. Yet the hun­dreds of sci­en­tists and engi­neers who have tried have been any­thing but fools.

The long list of con­tenders includes famed 12th-cen­tu­ry Indi­an math­e­mati­cian Bhāskara II, also-famed 17th-cen­tu­ry Irish sci­en­tist Robert Boyle, and a cer­tain Ital­ian artist and inven­tor who needs no intro­duc­tion. It will come as no sur­prise to learn that Leonar­do da Vin­ci turned his hand to solv­ing the puz­zle of per­pet­u­al motion. But it seems, in doing so, he “may have been a dirty, rot­ten hyp­ocrite,” Ross Pomery jokes at Real Clear Sci­ence. Sur­vey­ing the many failed attempts to make a machine that ran for­ev­er, he pub­licly exclaimed, “Oh, ye seek­ers after per­pet­u­al motion, how many vain chimeras have you pur­sued? Go and take your place with the alchemists.”

In pri­vate, how­ev­er, as Michio Kaku writes in Physics of the Impos­si­ble, Leonar­do “made inge­nious sketch­es in his note­books of self-pro­pelling per­pet­u­al motion machines, includ­ing a cen­trifu­gal pump and a chim­ney jack used to turn a roast­ing skew­er over a fire.”  He also drew up plans for a wheel that would the­o­ret­i­cal­ly run for­ev­er. (Leonar­do claimed he tried only to prove it couldn’t be done.) Inspired by a device invent­ed by a con­tem­po­rary Ital­ian poly­math named Mar­i­ano di Jacopo, known as Tac­co­la (“the jack­daw”), the artist-engi­neer refined this pre­vi­ous attempt in his own ele­gant design.

Leonar­do drew sev­er­al vari­ants of the wheel in his note­books. Despite the fact that the wheel didn’t work—and that he appar­ent­ly nev­er thought it would—the design has become, Bar­ri­al notes, “THE most pop­u­lar per­pet­u­al motion machine on DIY and 3D print­ing sites.” (One mak­er charm­ing­ly com­ments, in frus­tra­tion, “Per­pet­u­al motion doesn’t seem to work, what am I doing wrong?”) The gif at the top, from the British Library, ani­mates one of Leonardo’s many ver­sions of unbal­anced wheels. This detailed study can be found in folio 44v of the Codex Arun­del, one of sev­er­al col­lec­tions of Leonardo’s note­books that have been dig­i­tized and made pub­licly avail­able online.

In his book The Inno­va­tors Behind Leonar­do, Plinio Inno­cen­zi describes these devices, con­sist­ing of “12 half-moon-shaped adja­cent chan­nels which allow the free move­ment of 12 small balls as a func­tion of the wheel’s rota­tion…. At one point dur­ing the rota­tion, an imbal­ance will be cre­at­ed where­by more balls will find them­selves on one side than the oth­er,” cre­at­ing a force that con­tin­ues to pro­pel the wheel for­ward indef­i­nite­ly. “Leonar­do rep­ri­mand­ed that despite the fact that every­thing might seem to work, ‘you will find the impos­si­bil­i­ty of motion above believed.’”

Leonar­do also sketched and described a per­pet­u­al motion device using flu­id mechan­ics, invent­ing the “self-fill­ing flask” over two-hun­dred years before Robert Boyle tried to make per­pet­u­al motion with this method. This design also didn’t work. In real­i­ty, there are too many phys­i­cal forces work­ing against the dream of per­pet­u­al motion. Few of the attempts, how­ev­er, have appeared in as ele­gant a form as Leonardo’s. See the ful­ly scanned Codex Arun­del at the British Library.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Com­plete Dig­i­ti­za­tion of Leonar­do Da Vinci’s Codex Atlanti­cus, the Largest Exist­ing Col­lec­tion of His Draw­ings & Writ­ings

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Vision­ary Note­books Now Online: Browse 570 Dig­i­tized Pages

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Ear­li­est Note­books Now Dig­i­tized and Made Free Online: Explore His Inge­nious Draw­ings, Dia­grams, Mir­ror Writ­ing & More

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness


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Comments (17)
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  • Dave Penrose says:

    “Is per­pet­u­al motion pos­si­ble? In the­o­ry… I have no idea…. In prac­tice, so far at least, the answer has been a per­pet­u­al no…”

    Per­pet­u­al motion is most def­i­nite­ly NOT pos­si­ble. Loss­es to fric­tion will always pre­vent a per­pet­u­al motion device from work­ing as claimed: Con­tin­u­ing in motion with­out addi­tion­al input of ener­gy (beyond an ini­tial start­ing impe­tus)

  • Dave Gerwin says:

    The “pin wheel” in the ani­ma­tion, even not con­sid­er­ing fric­tion, has more balls being lift­ed on the right side than are falling on the left.

  • JoeSixpack says:

    “In the­o­ry… I have no idea…. ”

    How does one not know this?

    No, the answer is a resound­ing “NO”.

  • Josh Jones says:

    Well, lets see…

    1. I’m per­fect­ly aware that per­pet­u­al motion has nev­er worked in prac­tice, and I have a stan­dard layper­son­’s under­stand­ing of the rea­sons.

    and

    2. I am not a physi­cist and I do not claim to know what is pos­si­ble in the­o­ry. Real­i­ty con­sis­tent­ly turns out to be far stranger than my stan­dard layper­son­’s under­stand­ing of physics leads me to believe.

    I have no idea what’s the­o­ret­i­cal­ly pos­si­ble and it does­n’t trou­ble me to say so. Do you have a prob­lem admit­ting you don’t know things?

  • JoeSixpack says:

    To say that one does­n’t “know” things is sort of a cop out. When we get right down to it, we can’t know much except for our own exis­tence, and even that is bound­ed.

    But ONLY such a loose def­i­n­i­tion of “know­ing” would allow you to pre­tend that there is a pos­si­bil­i­ty of a per­pet­u­al motion machine. A few min­utes on Google is real­ly all it takes to see that every physi­cist who is qual­i­fied will tell you that the bal­ance sheet is not going to ever add up to a prof­it, even if one dis­counts fric­tion loss­es. And if you take the time, they will cheer­ful­ly explain to you WHY such a thing is impos­si­ble.

    For a per­pet­u­al motion machine to be pos­si­ble, you will quick­ly dis­cov­er, physics does­n’t have to be wrong about one or two minor points, it would have to be com­plete­ly wrong at every lev­el.

    Sci­ence does­n’t have the answer to every ques­tion (that’s why there are still sci­en­tists work­ing), but that does­n’t mean they don’t have pret­ty sol­id answers to some ques­tions. And this is one of them.

  • Dave Gerwin says:

    A cou­ple of things maybe relat­ed to this, maybe not. A pen­du­lum will con­tin­ue to swing for­ev­er as long as it gets a lit­tle kick from some­thing every cycle. The uni­verse has been expand­ing since it’s for­ma­tion from some mas­sive ener­gy release (?). Unless there is per­pet­u­al motion involved (?), it will even­tu­al­ly stop. Final thought just hit me. What are the sources of the kick equiv­a­lent force that keeps moons and plan­ets rotat­ing on their axes and revolv­ing in their orbits. Should­n’t there be loss­es in these motions also that they would col­lapse also? Been “out of school” to long. Will have to read up on this sub­ject.

  • Za says:

    “Is per­pet­u­al motion pos­si­ble? In the­o­ry… I have no idea…”

    - when I saw this, I unsub­scribed for the whole mag­a­zine

  • Steven Pisaro says:

    I have a great idea on chang­ing grav­i­ty into motion per­pet­u­al­ly can not find any­body to help me build it.

  • toni says:

    It is pos­si­ble of course, if you want to know how, send a pri­vate mes­sage

  • mohan kumar says:

    Yes it is poss­si­ble and i am build­ing it.

  • bob says:

    THE TREASURE IS BURIED OUT THERE SOMEWHERE

    JUST BECAUSE NO ONE HAS FOUND IT

    CESIUM PARTICLES STREAMING IS THE SOURCE FOR ONLY 10000 YEARS

    SO NO „, SUNLIGHT IS ONLY GOOD FOR 5 BILLION YEARS

    PERPETUAL MOTION „, ONCE BEGUN „„ WILL ONE DAY STOP„,

    DID YOU GET A KICK OUT OF THIS ?

  • Bob Z says:

    It is pos­si­ble purpet­u­al motion

  • Joseph says:

    If per­pet­u­al motion is impos­si­ble, which it is, then how in the world do you think that it is pos­si­ble for us to live on a spin­ning ball? It is impos­si­ble to live on a ball spin­ning through so-called space and mil­lions miles an hour while we’re being sucked down by some imag­i­nary force that we call grav­i­ty. You can’t say one thing and then believe in the oth­er you con­tra­dict your­self and you just sounds ridicu­lous­ly stu­pid. Please peo­ple use your brains before you reply to this.

  • Rahul says:

    Hei. Wan­na Share Your Idea? I Have One Too. Maybe We Could Impro­vise?

  • Ken Behrendt says:

    Strange that there is no men­tion here of Johann Bessler (1680 to 1745) who con­struct­ed sev­er­al “self-mov­ing” wheels that were pub­licly demon­strat­ed and offi­cial­ly test­ed and PROVEN to work. Here is a com­put­er sim­u­la­tion of the design he used that was recent­ly redis­cov­ered:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nP7KY6_EAM

  • John pruett says:

    You know at one point in his­to­ry the “idea” of sus­tain­able flight was ” not pos­si­ble” wright broth­ers proved that wrong. Div­ing down to actu­al­ly see the wreck of the Titan­ic… Impos­si­ble till around 1984 , 80 years after the cat­a­stro­phe. So I say you , “who are you to say some­thing is impos­si­ble?” With under­stand­ing comes great knowl­edge. Who knows when we change our math (5×1=6) the physics total­ly change.

  • John pruett says:

    Ener­gy don’t die.

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