First published in German in 1910 and in English as late as 2011 Das Perpetuum Mobile: Die Geschichte einer Erfindung/The Perpetual Motion Machine: The Story of an Invention narrates the German visionary writer and artist Paul Scheerbart’s (1863-1915) obsessive efforts to produce numerous models of a fantastic machine. Written in the form of a diary between 1907 and 1910 and supplemented by twenty-six diagrams the book is a record of his “flights of imagination” manifested in a series of fanciful ...