1^st May 2020

Resonance birthday, perpetual motion special

A special Wavelength produced for Resonance FM’s 18th birthday concerning quarantined inventor Hugh de la Cruz’s quest to obtain an antiquarian work on perpetual motion, ‘Perpetuum Mobile’ by Victorian engineer Henry Dircks (famous for designing the ‘Pepper’s Ghost’ stage illusion). Through occasionally-precarious phone reception, book dealer William English and Hugh de la Cruz unpick the confusion over the Henry Dircks editions (two distinct volumes published a decade apart, 1861 and 1870) and a subsequent re-edited semi-pirated edition published in the United States in 1916 by Percy Verance. Edited by Dan Wilson (who is also implicated in the Hugh’s Dircks search).