72 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE 



the owner to prevent them. When the spring had run 

 down, they placed the machine again on the table and 

 offered the owner fifty pounds if it could then set itself 

 going, but notwithstanding his fingering and pushing, it re- 

 mained motionless. A constable was sent for, the impostor 

 went before a magistrate and there signed a paper confess- 

 ing his perpetual motion to be a cheat. 



In the " Mechanic's Magazine," Vol. 46, is an account 

 of a perpetual motion, constructed by one Redhoeffer of 

 Pennsylvania, which obtained sufficient notoriety to in- 

 duce the Legislature to appoint a committee to enquire 

 into its merits. The attention of Mr. Lukens was turned 

 to the subject, and although the actual moving cause was 

 not discovered, yet the deception was so ingeniously imi- 

 tated in a machine of similar appearance made by him and 

 moved by a spring so well concealed, that the deceiver him- 

 self was deceived and Redhoeffer was induced to believe 

 that Mr. Lukens had been successful in obtaining a mov- 

 ing power in some way in which he himself had failed, 

 when he had produced a machine so plausible in appear- 

 ance as to deceive the public. 



Instances of a similar kind might be multiplied in- 

 definitely. 



The experienced mechanic who reads the descriptions 

 here given of the various devices which have been proposed 

 for the construction of a perpetual-motion machine must be 

 struck with the childish simplicity of the plans which have 

 been offered ; and those who will search the pages of the 

 mechanical journals of the last century or who will ex- 

 amine the two closely printed volumes in which Mr. Dircks 

 has collected almost everything of the kind, will be aston- 

 ished at the sameness which prevails amongst the offerings 



