My favorite shelf in the home library is where Raymond Roussel, the Comte de Lautréamont, E.T. A. Hoffmann, Leonora Carrington and other writers form a brilliant phalanx of eccentricity and marvel. I ...

On Sept. 20, 1913, rumors were running rampant around North Dakota that J. W. Kennedy, of Mandan, North Dakota, had invented just such a machine. A news clipping about J.W. Kennedy and his perpetual ...

A wheel weighted with swinging mallets. A cylinder rotating in a sealed, water-filled container. A siphon that transfers liquid back in forth in a seemingly endless loop. These may sound like the ...

Let's start with a water wheel in still water with an electric generator hooked up to it. Let's say it has a ratchet wheel so it can only turn in one direction. I want to calculate the probability ...