Perpetual Motion Machines and Free Energy

The USPTO will not knowingly issue a patent for a perpetual motion machine and the American Physical Society states that they deplore attempts to mislead and defraud the public based on claims of perpetual motion machines or sources of unlimited useful free energy, unsubstantiated by tested established physical principles.

However, on a personal note, I am fascinated with this stuff. Did the USPTO miss a few patents for forbidden machines that were granted; for example: patent No. 6,362,718 for a "Motionless Electromagnetic Generator".

Free Energy & The Laws of Thermodynamics

The existence of a perpetual motion machine has been generally accepted as being impossible according to accepted laws of physics. In particular, most scientists believe that perpetual motion machines would violate:

• either the first law of thermodynamics, the law of conservation of energy - a perpetual motion machine which produces power without energy uptake. Such a machine would, once started, operate indefinitely.
• or second law of thermodynamics that entropy, or disorder, always increases - a perpetual motion machine which converts heat completely into other forms of energy.

With the principles of thermodynamics being so well established, serious proposals for perpetual motion machines are met with disbelief on the part of most physicists, which makes a discussion of the merits of the proposal difficult if not impossible.

Is Free Energy Possible?

Serious discussions of perpetual motion are now occurring on the topics of open systems, aether theories, and vacuum energy.

• History of Perpetual Motion Machines & Free Energy Machines
  The history of pm machines and free energy machines.
• The Museum of Unworkable Devices
  PM machine proposals are often dismissed by scientists in a manner that appears to the layperson as hasty rejection using dogmatic assertions that such machines are prohibited from working by the "laws of thermodynamics".
• Perpetual Motion Machine Designs
  Collected designs for perpetual motion machines.
• The Energy Machine of Joe Newman
  Inventor Joseph Newman, is perhaps one of the most notorious inventors associated with pm machines and free energy claims.
• Maxwell's Demon
  A machine of this type, of great antiquity and fine pedigree, is Maxwell's Demon, the prodigy of James Clerk Maxwell, one of the biggest brains in nineteenth century science and the architect of the modern classical theory of electricity and magnetism. A perpetual motion machine of the second kind is one which manipulates energy with perfect efficiency, i.e. one for which no energy ever leaks away into "useless" heat.