Several years ago a speculative American set the industrial world of
Europe in excitement by this proposition. The Magneto-Electric Machines
often made use of in the case of rheumatic disorders are well known. By
imparting a swift rotation to the magnet of such a machine, we obtain
powerful currents of electricity. If these be conducted through water,
the latter will be reduced to its two components, oxygen and hydrogen.
By the combustion of hydrogen water is again generated. If this
combustion takes place, not in atmospheric air, in which oxygen only
constitutes a fifth part, but in pure oxygen, and if a bit of chalk be
placed in the flame, the chalk will be raised to a white heat, and give
us the sun-like Drummond light: at the same time the flame develops a
considerable quantity of heat. Now the American inventor proposed to
utilise in this way the gases obtained from electrolytic decomposition;
and asserted that by the combustion a sufficient amount of heat was
generated to keep a small steam-engine in action, which again drove his
magneto-electric machine, decomposed the water, and thus continually
prepared its own fuel. This would certainly have been the most splendid
of all discoveries,--a perpetual motion which, besides the force that
kept it going, generated light like the sun, and warmed all around it.
The affair, however, failed, as was predicted by those acquainted with
the physical investigations which bear upon the subject.--_Professor
Helmholtz._