Perpetual motion machine

Perpetual motion machine
People have long produced a range of mechanical devices
and machines
from the simplest levers and pendulums
to more complex clockworks.
These devices have historically facilitated
the advancement of technology.
Inventors have been mulling just as long
over the idea of constructing a device
which would work forever
once it was started.
Intrigued by such an idea,
many scientists and laymen
have experimented with perpetual motion machines
since the Middle Ages.
Numerous devices have been built
which attempted to harness
the surplus energy of some kind of rotating
or falling body.
Despite the determined attempts,
a perpetual motion machine could not be created,
and the seemingly successful ones turned out to be hoaxes,
as the motion of these machines
was aided from the outside.
It took some time to understand
why all the attempts had failed.
By the 19th century,
physicists had established the first law of thermodynamics,
which states that the total energy of an isolated system
remains constant
and that energy can neither be created
nor destroyed.
The perpetual motion machine, however,
would violate this law,
as it would produce infinite energy output
from low energy input
- the only way it could move forever
and overcome friction between its parts and the air.
Nevertheless,
some people are still trying to build machines like this
to solve all the world's energy problems,
but current scientific views hold
that the invention of a perpetual motion machine
remains nothing more than a utopian dream.