THE METHOD. AND MEANS OF OBTAINING MOTIVE POWER."
Year: 1879

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by John Whiteley at the Office of the
Commissioners of Patents on the 10th April 1879.
JOHN WHITELEY, of Rochdale, in the County of Lancaster.
THE METHOD. AND MEANS OF OBTAINING MOTIVE POWER."
"IMPROVEMENTS IN
My improvements, which I may say first occurred to me so long ago as
November and December, Eighteen hundred and seventy-seven, and which I have
been engaged upon ever since, consist in methods and means of employing the
following forces of nature for the production of motive power, gravity, magnetism,
north and south, static electricity, positive and negative capillary attraction,
whether in elevation or depression of liquids and electricity, chemical affinity and
cohesion fall at least theoretically within the same list, and instead of permanent
magnetism may be employed residual with the give-and-take principle as it is
termed used in dynamo-electric machines. Working-power or energy is force
with distance to act through as the forces are constant; if the distance can be
maintained, then constant energy must necessarily follow if there be no deteriora-
tion in the working parts. But this constant energy is a residual or differential
one inasmuch as a portion of the whole is required for the maintenance of the
distance. The methods and means are as follows:-(a), capillary attraction and
gravity. A capillary tube of any convenient substance is placed in a vessel
containing a liquid, which rises in the tube inversely as its diameter in opposition
to the force of gravity; but that liquid will flow out of the tube into the vessel
again, if the tube be placed in a horizontal position which by suitable mechanism
can be done by reason of the energy of position or energy potential created by the
capillary attraction in raising the liquid. After the elevation of the tube which
may be accomplished by a weight or spring, the capillary force may again act upon
a liquid and the process repeated. Similar results may be obtained by employing
a liquid which does not wet the tube as mercury which is depressed instead of
raised; (b), static electricity, positive and negative, may be used in place of
magnetism, north and south, but contact must be avoided to prevent the recom-
position of the two electricities; (c), gravity is used in connection with magnetism
and static electricity, but elasticity may be employed as a substitute for it. One
When the two
permanent magnet attracts another permanent or induced one.
come together the distance for the magnetic force to act through no longer exists,
but if the effect of the first or attaching magnet be annulled or sufficiently modified,

page_text: The
the second one may be attracted by a third permanent magnet, and so on in
succession; or to bring the attracted magnet back to its former position the first or
attracting one may be reversed in its action to repulsion or elasticity, or gravity
may be employed for the purpose; the process may then be repeated. The
working magnet may move on a horizontal plane, be attached to a rotating wheel,
oscillate as a pendulum, rise and fall in a vertical or oblique plane inside a guiding
frame as when gravity is used, or may move in any other convenient manner.
annulling or modifying of the magnetic force may be done by any of the well-
known methods, by soft iron armatures or permanent magnets; but I prefer to use,
instead of two, four poles of two magnets or otherwise in pairs of which one pole
is attracted and the other repelled, that the magnetic force may be annulled or
sufficiently modified or the principle of the equilibrium valve in which the energy
required for opening is the same as for closing. These four poles as other parts
must work so that the co-efficient of friction is as low as possible. For greater
power any of the various means may be individually multiplied, or all may be
combined together in single or multiple form. The means of governing may be on
principles of annulling powers. In using residual magnetism there must be as in
all other cases sufficient initial force and distance, and the energy accumulated
must be always greater than that required for annulment or modification that
there may be a residual or differential energy for external work.