10. Redheffer's 



Perpetual Motion Machine 



The name of Charles Redheffer keeps popping 

 up in footnotes today, just as his remarkable per- 

 petual motion machine kept appearing and 

 reappearing in Philadelphia and New York, in 

 Liverpool, England, and no doubt in other cities 

 and towns, when he was alive. 



In Philadelphia, the showman Redheffer made 

 his appearance in the fall of 1812 with an adver- 

 tisement in the daily newspaper, Aurora, announc- 

 ing an exhibition of his "self-operating, self- 

 moving machine - ' in Chestnut Hill, a suburb of 

 Philadelphia. The admission price for gentlemen 

 was five dollars; "female visitors gratis." The 

 editor of the Aurora was impressed. In an edi- 

 torial comment comparing Redheffer to Godfrey 

 and Fitch, inventors of quadrant and steamboat, 

 respectively, he exulted in Pennsylvania's leader- 

 ship in mechanical philosophy. 106 



In 1 81 3, Isaiah Lukens built for Charles 

 Willson Peale's Philadelphia museum a model of 

 the Redheffer machine, and some 12,000 hand- 

 bills were printed to tell the inhabitants that it 

 could be seen in operation in the museum. 10, 



Redheffer returned to public notice again in 

 the summer of 1816 when he invited a 25-member 

 committee — including Nathan Sellers, Robert 

 Patterson, Adam Eckfeldt, and men of similar 

 stamp — to consider the merits of his machine. He 

 did this after the state governor refused to 

 appoint such a committee. After an initial meet- 

 ing in late July at the City Hotel, on Chestnut 

 street at Seventh, the group assembled on two 

 successive Saturdays in a room in the west wing 



of the State House to see the machine operate. 



They fidgeted for several hours on the first 

 Saturday while Redheffer tried vainly to start his 

 machine. On the next Saturday they listened to 

 the extraordinary proposition that two or three of 

 their members (Redheffer suggested Nathan Sel- 

 lers and George Clymer) be apprized of the secret 

 by Redheffer, and that they in turn reveal it to 

 the committee in the absence of the inventor. 

 The committee's response was a flat demand that 

 the machine be shown in operation immediately. 

 Redheffer said he "could not, with safety — but 

 refused to give reasons or explanations." 



The committee thereupon, on August 27, pub- 

 lished in Poulsons American Daily Advertiser, but 

 not in the Aurora, an account "To the Publick" 

 of the whole bizarre proceedings, appending their 

 names to a round and sound denunciation of 

 Redheffer and his behavior. 108 However, it is not 

 clear that anyone was convinced that there was 

 any overt fraud involved. Thomas P. Jones, edi- 

 tor of the Journal of The Franklin Institute, referred 

 to the machine in an article published in 1828, 

 12 years later. 



"On which side," Jones asked, "were the 

 scientific of Philadelphia ranged when Redheffer's 

 machine was exhibited at Chestnut Hill? Those 

 who recollect the period will find no difficulty in 

 answering the question. We believe that nine- 

 teen-twentieths of those who were so esteemed 



109 Quoted in Scharf and Westcott (cited in note 14, above), 

 vol. 1, pp. 561-562. 



107 Charles Coleman Sellers (cited in note 20, above), vol. 

 2, p. 280. 



ion According to Cadwallader D. Golden, Robert Fulton had 

 exposed the fraud when Redheffer exhibited his machine in 

 New York, in 1 8 1 3 (Coleman [younger brother of George Escol] 

 Sellers, "The Redheffer Perpetual Motion Machine," 

 Cassia's Magazine, September 1895, vol/ 8, pp. 523-527; this 

 article refers to Colden's The Life oj Robert Fulton, New York, 

 .817). 



79 



