The Man Who Moved a Mountain - Part 5: Bonus - What Was Ed's Perpetual Motion Holder?

To really understand from where the premise of this article comes, the reader should have already read the article series that preceded this one: "The Man Who Moved a Mountain - The Incredible True Story of Florida's Coral Castle - Parts 1 through 4. These articles will produce an excellent portrait of the man whom this article pertains, Edward Leedskalnin... Coral Castle had no electricity except for what Ed supplied with an invention he tried to patent, which he called a "perpetual motion holder". The perpetual motion holder is widely misunderstood by everyone who studies it. To the author though, it appears to be a very basic concept. The perpetual motion holder was a contraption that Ed built on a chassis of an old truck and mounted on the floor of his little shop. It contained a series of magnets that rotated. Ed explained that when the handle of the perpetual motion holder was cranked, the magnets in the device would chase each other for eternity. I believe this is the point where people get lost. They assume that Ed means that the physical magnets themselves are spinning around chasing themselves. If one reads Ed's material on magnetism, you will find that Ed believed that what science called electrons and protons could (in his opinion) actually be subatomic North and South pole magnetic particles. Or that the electrons and protons themselves were negatively and positively charged. He believed that science had several things wrong about electricity and magnetism. I think what Ed created was a simple generator / capacitor, which would build up and hold an electrical charge. When the physical magnets were spun in his perpetual motion holder, a flow of "subatomic North and South pole magnets" was created (ie electricity) and held. Since Ed believed that electricity was actually subatomic North and South pole magnetic particles chasing each other, I believe this is what Ed meant. Someone once stated that they had seen Ed's bicycle mounted to the perpetual motion holder in such a manner that Ed could spin the physical magnets by pedaling the bicycle. If the physical magnets were supposed to chase each other forever with a simple spin, why would Ed need to strap a bicycle to the machine? Wouldn't a simple spin of the magnets by hand cause them to start into motion just the same? Unless Ed was actually using the bicycle to charge the perpetual motion holder. I remember seeing a project where a college student recreated the perpetual motion holder as Ed described it in his writings. It worked exactly as Ed stated it would. The student could build up an "electrical" charge using a battery charger and the perpetual motion holder would hold the charge for an infinite amount of time. The college student stated in his experiment that his perpetual motion holder was charged to a certain level then left alone for six months. At the end of six months, the current in the perpetual motion holder was metered and was exactly the same as it was when it was first charged. When the bar across the end of the perpetual motion holder was released, the current was also released. This bar was wired up to a light bulb and when the bar was released the light bulb flashed, signifying an electrical discharge. Ed stated that he couldn't stop the "magnets" in his perpetual motion holder from chasing each other, unless he shorted a wire across the poles. Shorting a wire across the poles would have also released the current, as in the experiment above. On The Other Hand With all of this being said, there is one thing that I feel I should add. I found what is apparently a very unusual method of dowsing for water. It was used by the same guy who discovered the "Bishops Rule" of dowsing in 1870, a French herdsman named Barthelemey Bl