Perpetual Motion Toy - 12/14/97

The following file was posted on the KeelyNet BBS as MPTOY.ASC on 10/15/94, courtesy of Bruce Welsh.
The following is from a personal experience that Bruce had which he wished to share with others who study such matters. I made up a crude GIF image at the time so you can get an idea of how it works, as far as I can tell from reading the file and talking with Bruce.

It is a fascinating story and if you choose to experiment with it, please share your experiences with all of us here at KeelyNet. - Thanks!
Personal experience with overunity toy.

I grew up on a farm, and I had a great uncle that was a tinkerer. He lived on another farm about 10 miles away. He was the kind of person that would spend 4 days building something to save 15 minutes once a year.

Like I said he was a tinkerer. He also was quite an inventor, although he didn't think I knew it. He never tried to sell anything that he invented, his thing was doing it, not to make money, he just enjoyed building things.

When I was about 7 or 8 years old, we went over to visit with them. He was showing my grandfather the new toy that he had built for his boys, he had two sons that were about 10 and 12 and twin girls about 15 and twin boys about 18.

As best I can remember the toy was about two feet high and about one foot square. It consisted of a spiral ramp that I think made about 3 1/2 turns from the top to the bottom, at the bottom of the ramp was a paddle wheel.

This was connected through some gears to an elevator that went to the top. At the top was a hopper. In this hopper was placed about 10 marbles. There was a trip door on the hopper that would only let out one marble at a time. I think that it would release so that only one marble was going down the ramp at a time.

Anyway, he tripped the gate and one marble rolled down the ramp, it took maybe 3 to 5 seconds to get to the bottom. It hit the paddlewheel and spun it causing the elevator to move up a little, this released another marble which repeated the process, this time the first marble was on the elevator and was moved up toward the hopper.

I think there was about 5 marbles on the elevator at a time. Anyway once he started the toy running, it continued to run. He said that you had to have all the marbles in the hopper to start, once the first few marbles had hit the paddle wheel, it spun continuously. We were at their house for about three or four hours, and I spent most of my time watching the toy run. One time I touched the paddle wheel and it stopped. My uncle came over and scolded me for touching it, he then moved all the marbles to the hopper and started it again. It was still running when we left.

It was years later before I realized what I had seen, and by then my uncle had died. I talked to his sons and they remembered the toy working the same as I did, but they didn't know what had happened to it, but said that my uncle had probably taken it apart and used the parts on other of his tinkering. They said that this was usually what he did, once the boys had tired of one of the toys he'd built for them, he would take it apart and build something else from it.

I don't know if my uncle knew that he had violated the "laws" of physics with his toy. I doubt it, he probably just wanted to make something that would run without help and so he built it.

I asked the boys if he had built other toys or machines that ran by themselves, and they didn't know of any. I questioned them about if there was a motor or anything on the toy, being I was young, and may not have been aware of it.

They assured me that there was nothing on it and the marbles made it run. They said that it had run for weeks at one time and then stopped, and my uncle had cleaned it and it again worked.

Sitting in an old farm house, I imagine that it got covered with dust and that increased the friction enough to drop below unity.

Anyway this experience convinced me that overunity machines can be built.
A little background on me, I am a graduate Electronic Engineer, but I have an open mind, I have been into alternative energy for 20 years now and I look at things in this way,

So if something doesn't obey a law, I don't get bent out of shape, I just think, well so it doesn't fit into the conventional theory.....Bruce Welsh