Nicolae Vasilescu-Karpen (November 28/December 10, 1870, Craiova – March 2, 1964, Bucharest) was a Romanian engineer and physicist, who did pioneering work in the field of telegraphy and telephony. He also had notable achievements in mechanical engineering, elasticity, thermodynamics, long distance telephony, electrochemistry, and civil engineering.[1][2]
After studying at the Carol I High School in Craiova, he went to the School of Bridges, Roads and Mines in Bucharest.[3] Upon graduation in 1891, he worked as a civil engineer for three years. He went to France to study physics at the University of Paris. In 1904, he was awarded a PhD degree in physics; his thesis was titled Recherches sur l'effet magnétique des corps electrisés en mouvement (Research on the magnetic effect of electrified bodies in motion). After a year spent as Professor at the University of Lille, he returned to Romania, to teach at the School of Bridges, Roads and Mines, where he was appointed director in February 1920. Due to his efforts, the School was transformed later that year into the Polytechnic University of Bucharest. Vasilescu-Karpen was the first rector of this University, serving in that capacity until 1940.[2]
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The Karpen Pile is claimed by some to be a battery that has provided continuous energy for over 60 years, making the Karpen Pile either a supremely effective method of storing energy or a Perpetuum mobile. The device is supposedly housed at the National Technical Museum "Dimitrie Leonida” [4] however there has been no evidence offered to back up the claim of continuous functioning.
The "Dimitrie Leonida" National Technical Museum from Romania hosts a weird kind of battery. Built by Vasile Karpen, the pile has been working uninterrupted for 60 years. 'I admit it's also hard for me to advance the idea of an overunity generator without sounding ridiculous, even if the object exists,' says Nicolae Diaconescu, engineer and director of the museum. The invention cannot be exposed because the museum doesn't have enough money to buy the security system necessary for such an exhibit. Half a century ago, the pile's inventor had said it will work forever, and so far it looks like he was right. Karpen's perpetual motion machine now sits secured right in the director's office. It has been called 'the uniform-temperature thermoelectricpile', and the first prototype has been built in the 1950s. Although it should have stopped working decades ago, it didn't. The scientists can't explain how the contraption, patented in 1922, works. The fact that still puzzles them is how a man of such a scientific stature such as Karpen's could have started building something 'that crazy'. The prototype has been assembled in 1950 and consists of two series-connected electric piles moving a small galvanometric motor. The motor moves a blade that is connected to a switch. With every half rotation, the blade opens the circuit and closes it at the start of the second half. The blade's rotation time had been calculated so that the piles have time to recharge and that they can rebuild their polarity during the time that the circuit is open.—Ovidiu Sandru, Karpen's Pile: A Battery That Produces Energy Continuously Since 1950 Exists in Romanian Museum[5]