The name of Ivan Petrovich Kulibin has long become a household name. Kulibins are called talented inventors, craftsmen and craftsmen.
Much has been written about the inventions of Ivan Kulibin himself. But biographers always tried to ignore his work on a perpetual motion machine, which, it seemed, did not paint the brilliant mechanic.
Trapped in delusion
The idea to start inventing a miracle engine originated in Kulibin in the early 70s of the 18th century, when he served as a mechanic at the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. Experiments on a perpetual motion machine took away from him not only time and effort, but also considerable personal funds, forcing him to get into debt.
In those days, the law of conservation of energy was not yet precisely substantiated. Kulibin did not have a solid education, and it was difficult for him, a self-taught mechanic, to understand this difficult issue. The people around him could not help either. Some did not know how to clearly explain his error. Others themselves were not convinced that energy does not come from nothing and does not disappear anywhere. Finally, others themselves believed that a perpetual motion machine is possible, and encouraged Kulibin to continue searching.
The latter included, for example, the famous writer and journalist Pavel Svinyin. In his book about Kulibin, published in 1819, a year after the death of Ivan Petrovich, he, referring to the Kulibin perpetual motion machine, wrote: “It's a pity that he did not manage to finish this important invention. Perhaps he would have been happier than his predecessors, who stopped at this stumbling block; maybe he would have proved that perpetual motion is not a chimera of mechanics …"
Promotional video:
Harmful research
Surprisingly, even the great Leonard Euler supported Kulibin's work on the invention of a perpetual motion machine. ' “It is curious to note,” wrote Svinin, “that Kulibin was encouraged to this discovery by the famous mathematician Euler, who, when asked what he thought about perpetual motion, replied that he considered it to exist in nature and thought that it would be found in some happy way like revelations previously considered impossible. And Kulibin always turned to the authority of Euler when he had to defend the idea of a perpetual motion machine from critics.
As you know, the Paris Academy of Sciences from 1775 ceased to accept projects of perpetual motion machines for consideration. Following her, a similar decision was made by the Royal Society of London. Finally, in 1780, the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences made its statement on this score.
The Izvestia Academy published an article entitled "Council to those who dream of inventing eternal or endless motion." It said: “It is completely impossible to invent continuous movement … These useless studies are extremely harmful because most of all (especially) because they ruined many families and many skilled mechanics who could provide great services to society with their knowledge, lost, reaching the solution of this problem, all their possessions, time and labors."
Engine for everything
Nobody knows whether Kulibin has read this article. It is only known that, despite the opinion of the Academy of Sciences, he continued to work on a perpetual motion machine with his characteristic stubbornness with the confidence that even this problem would sooner or later be solved.
Leonardo da Vinci also thought about a perpetual motion machine
Fantasy drew him the broadest prospects for using an unprecedented machine. In his address to Senator I. Ya. Arshenevsky, he wrote that perpetual motion machines can be used to transport various weights and on "light, like droshky, carts" for transporting guns during the war, "climbing mountains", for the movement of naval warships.
"And especially," Kulibin continued to dream, "they will be useful for navigation on large navigable rivers: like on the Volga and the like." Perpetual motion machines, he argued, can also serve as stationary ones, "to the action of various mills and other machines."
For the sake of such wonderful prospects, Kulibin believed, it is worth working. And he worked, trying not to advertise his experiences, not showing models. There were reasons for this. Kulibin feared criticism and ridicule from pundits. In a letter to Arshenevsky, he complained that many scientists "laugh and scold those who practice this research."
For review to Kulibin
Kulibin developed a number of models of his car. He took as a basis an old idea, known since the time of Leonardo da Vinci, namely: a wheel with weights moving inside it. The latter had to constantly occupy a position that disturbs balance and cause a seemingly non-stop rotation of the wheel.
They also worked abroad to create a perpetual motion machine. Kulibin closely followed these works according to the messages that reached him. And once, in 1796, according to the order of Catherine II, he even had a chance to consider and evaluate one of such foreign projects. It was the perpetual motion machine of the German mechanic Johann Friedrich Heinle.
Ivan Petrovich not only “with the utmost care and diligence” studied the drawing and description of the foreign perpetuum mobile, but also made its model. It consisted of two crossing tubes with bellows filled with liquid. With the rotation of such a cross, the liquid would flow through the tubes from one bellows to others. Equilibrium, according to the inventor, should have been lost, and the whole system should have been in perpetual motion.
The Heinle engine model, of course, turned out to be inoperative. Conducting experiments with her, Kulibin, as he wrote, "did not find what he wanted in that success." But this did not in the least shake his faith in the very principle of perpetual motion.
Disturbing news
In the fall of 1801, Ivan Petrovich returned from St. Petersburg to his homeland, to Nizhny Novgorod. He did not abandon his unsuccessful search for perpetual motion even here. Much time has passed, the year 1817 has come. And then one day in the capital's newspaper "Russian Invalid" for September 22, Kulibin read an article that sounded like thunder to him. The note said that a certain mechanic named Peters from Mainz "finally invented the so-called perpetuum mobile, which has been in vain for many centuries."
Further, the engine itself was described, which had the form of a wheel with a diameter of 8 feet and a thickness of 2 feet: “It moves by its own force and without any help from springs, mercury, fire, electric or galvanic force. Its speed exceeds the likelihood. If you attach it to a road carriage or sidecar, you can drive 100 French miles in 12 hours, climbing the steepest mountains."
This news (of course, false) made the old inventor incredible excitement. It seemed to him that Peter had appropriated his ideas, stolen his favorite brainchild, to which he, Kulibin, had given many decades of hard work. With feverish haste, he began to appeal to all who had power and influence, including Tsar Alexander I.
Dream tyrant
Then caution was put aside, secrecy was forgotten. Now Kulibin frankly wrote that he had been working on the creation of a "machine of perpetual motion" for a long time, that he was not far from solving this problem, but he needed funds to continue the final experiments. In the "petition notes" he recalled his previous merits and expressed his desire to return to the service in the capital to build an iron bridge across the Neva, and most importantly, to continue the creation of a perpetual motion machine.
Kulibin's request for permission to return to St. Petersburg was delicately rejected. The construction of the iron bridge was considered too expensive. They kept silent about the perpetual motion machine.
Until his last days, Ivan Petrovich was not abandoned by his dear dream of a "machine of perpetual motion," a tyrant dream, as one of Kulibin's biographers called it. Diseases overwhelmed him more and more. I was tormented by shortness of breath and “other unhealthy ™”. He rarely went outside now. But even in bed, in pillows, he asked to put drawings of the "machine of perpetual motion" next to him. Even at night, in sleeplessness, the inventor again and again returned to this fatal machine, made some corrections in old drawings, drew new ones.
Ivan Petrovich Kulibin died on July 30 (old style), 1818 at the age of 83, died quietly, as if asleep. His family remained in extreme poverty. To bury her husband, the widow had to sell a wall clock, and her old friend Alexey Pyaterikov added a small amount. This money was used to bury the great inventor.
Gennady CHERNENKO
