In 1712 Johann Bessler, aka Orffyreus, exhibited a machine which he claimed was a perpetual motion machine.  It took the form a a wheel mounted on two pillars.  Despite numerous accusations of fraud he was able to continue to display the machine’s capabilities for several years without a single instance of fraud being identified. Having taken advice from the most famous scientists of the age, Gottfried Leibniz and Christian Wolff, for example, he produced larger and more powerful wheels.  The last one measuring twelve feet in diameter and eighteen inches in thickness.  To avoid accusations that the wheel was wound up, the inventor produced two new machines which were able to turn in either direction.  These machines accelerated from a slow start provided by a gentle push in either direction, quickly reaching their maximum sped of 26 rpm within three turns.  They were seen raising heavy boxes of stones weighting 70 pounds and operating archimedes screws for pumping water. Other tests included a 54 day continuous run under lock and key and armed guard and translocation of the machine to a second set of bearings.  No satisfactory explanation of how Bessler did this has ever been offered, and one must conclude that his claims were real.

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