Object Status:
Extant
Accession Date:
October 14, 1813
Primary Source Reference:
Peale Museum Accessions Book, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, p. 70
Additional Source Text:
"It is wound up by means of one of the knots on the top of the frame."
Notes:
Charles Reheffer, said to be from Germantown, Pa., claimed to have created a perpetual motion machine. The fraud was exposed when Isaiah Lukens (1779-1846), a Philadelphia clockmaker, designer of tools and scientific instruments, and co-founder of Philadelphia's Franklin Institute, built this model demonstrating how the mnachine was actually powered. For an account of this episode, see the Wikipedia entry on Charles Redheffer and Selected Papers, 3: 182-188.
