← A. Inventions, No. 37
Jedediah Elam (1913–1998)
Elam’s Ending-State Energy System
1946
North Banks Abbott Laboratories, est. 1936, Chicago, Illinois. Zinc, copper, borosilicate glass, neon, nickel electrodes, synthetic rubber, butyl rubber, polyester. 15 × 9⅜ × 12¾". Collection of the author.
Surely no perpetual motion machine was more beguiling than the Ending-State Energy System of Jedediah Elam.
Perpetual motion, of course, is impossible, a violation of the first two laws of thermodynamics. But Elam’s notion was nonetheless provocative, and his devices beautiful. A metaphorical adaptation of the ‘magnet motor,’ in which rotational movement of a motor is maintained by magnetic attraction, Elam described the full rotation of the system as a series of four quarters, and postulated that if a discrete portion of the system’s total potential energy could be fixed in the third quarter, and projected into the fourth quarter to define its limits, then the imbalances in total energy could be recalibrated in order to produce a sustainably dynamic system.
Published January 16, 2023. Copyright © 2023 Jonathan Hoefler.
About
The objects in the Apocryphal Inventions series are technical chimeras, intentional misdirections coaxed from the generative AI platform Midjourney. Instead of iterating on the system’s early drafts to create ever more accurate renderings of real-world objects, creator Jonathan Hoefler subverted the system to refine and intensify its most intriguing misunderstandings, pushing the software to create beguiling, aestheticized nonsense. Some images have been retouched to make them more plausible; others have been left intact, appearing exactly as generated by the software. The accompanying descriptions, written by the author, offer fictitious backstories rooted in historical fact, which suggest how each of these inventions might have come to be.
These images represent some of AI’s most intriguing answers to confounding questions, an inversion of the more pressing debate in which it is humanity that must confront the difficult and existential questions posed by artificial intelligence.
Previously:
No. 36. Color Capture Devices
Next:
No. 38. Board Games
