Remembering David Jones: Nature's Daedalus Columnist

[BillTre]

David Jones, who wrote the Daedalus column in Nature has died of Prostrate cancer.
Here is a very interesting NY Times article on him.

I read his column when I was in labs that got Nature.
The times article had a lot of info on him that I was unaware of.
Very interesting guy.

 

[jedishrfu]

Quite interesting. I never read his column before and I'll have to see if there's an archive of his writings.

I found this book on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0198504691/?tag=pfamazon01-20

and article about his perpetual motion machines that perplexed the experts:

https://www.csmonitor.com/1984/0117/011707.html

and this article on bicycle physics which I did read:

http://www.phys.lsu.edu/faculty/gonzalez/Teaching/Phys7221/vol59no9p51_56.pdf

 

[Craftek_Ana]

Does anyone want to have a go at it?

My initial thought was powered by atmospheric pressure.

Cox's timepiece is a clock developed in the 1760s by James Cox. It was developed in collaboration with John Joseph Merlin (with whom Cox also worked on developing automata). Cox claimed that his design was a true perpetual motion machine, but as the device is powered from changes in atmospheric pressure via a mercury barometer, this is not the case. The clock still exists today but was deactivated at the time of the clock's relocation to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.[1]

 

[Craftek_Ana]

I can no longer edit the above post.

Of course perpetual motion machine are impossible ,as it would violate the first or second law of thermodynamics.

It is is a fake perpetual machine, one of four Mr. Jones built throughout his life.

He was quite the interesting fellow.

 

[OCR]

. . . died of Prostrate cancer.

Damn, another cancer worry. . . you just lay there until you're dead, I guess ? .

.

 

[jedishrfu]

While we don’t discuss perpetual motion machines at PF, we are allowing this thread to mention them in deference to David Jones and his many interesting topics in the New Scientist magazine as the writer of the Daedalus column.

David Jones began intentionally creating fake perpetual motion machines in order to challenge scientists and others to discover their source of power. In the @Craftek_Ana post, a David Jones creation was shown as part of an exhibit and the presenter explains its operation without giving away its secret.

His DREADCO company, stood for Daedalus Research Engineering And Development Company

More on Prof Jones

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_E._H._Jones