A Machine to Die For - the Quest for Free Energy

Perpetual motion is the holy grail of science. It has sent many an obsessive and eccentric inventor to madness and suicide. A successful perpetual motion machine would alter the entire social and political balance of the world. It has been described as a 'machine to kill for'.

Conventional science claims it is impossible, yet generations of inventors have been mesmerised by the promise of an engine that powers itself.

We trace the story of totally sincere and committed inventors like Aldo Costa, who has spent fifty years building a kind of giant Ferris wheel in France, or the American John Bedini, propagating a whole race of electric motors that drive themselves.

We track obsessed oddballs like Canadian David Hemel who is building a huge granite powered spaceship under instructions form aliens who reside in his TV set. We nail frauds like Bill Less, fleecing the foolish with promises of water-powered cars. We explore the weird edges of the discipline of the Norwegian sculpture that just won’t stop rotating or the religious mystic in Switzerland which taps energy from - the 'aether'.

A couple of genial and ingenious polemicists are cental to the story. Bill Beaty is a nerd with a sense of humour, a recovering obsessive who understands the seductive power of the quest. Eric Kreig is a compassionate but righteous debunker who has dedicated his life to puncturing folly.

As a recurring centrepiece, we follow Aldo Costa still building his twenty-ton machine, funded only by his pension. We also follow the 1720 mystery of Johann Bessler who destroyed his perpetual motion machine in a rage after failing to get financial support. Did it work? Was he a fraud?

Great ideas and great inventions are all guesses, all begin in faith and are nurtured by optimism, and advance in the teeth of resistance. And who should tell a crusader when to stop?