Prairie Farmer
Thursday, November 17, 1859
Page: 12
Perpetual Motion—At Last.
About six years ago, we published the first description of a machine invented by Mr. James G. Hendrickson, Freehold, New Jersey, “to go of itself.� A model, which Mr. Hendrickson had made after patient whittling for forty years, was brought into our office, and we found that it would go without any impulse from without, and would not stop unless it was blocked. The power was self-contained and self-adjusted, and gave a sufficient force to carry ordinary clock-work without any winding up or replenishing. In short, we saw no reason why it would not go until it was worn out. Our announcement of the fact brought out a great deal of ridicule; the incredulous pointed at all of the projects to obtain a perpetual motive power which had failed in the past, and predicted the same disgrace to the new invention. Many scientific gentlemen visited it, and although they could not dispute the fact that it was “going�, they nearly all attributed the movement to some hidden spring or ingenious trickery. The inventor was an old man, who had spent his whole in pursuit of the object he had now attained. He had become so much accustomed to ridicule, that he was very patient under it; and the only reply he made to the cavilers who pronounced the thing impossible was –“but it does go!� The notice which we printed attracted the attention of the curious, and for the first time in his history, the inventor found a profit in his handiwork. He was invited to be present at various fairs and exhibitions of new inventions, and wherever he went his machine formed one of the chief attraction. Science, however, turned up its nose at him, and determined to put him down. The professors were all against him and as they had pronounced the whole thing a humbug, they were determined to prove the truth of their assertion. Accordingly, Mr. Hendrickson was seized at Keyport, N.J., for practising “jugglery,� under the “Act of suppressing vice and immorality.� At the trial, several builders, millwrights, engineers, and philosophers were called, and testified positively that no such motive power as that alleged could drive the machine, and that there must be some concealed spring within the wooden cylinder. There was no help for it; and the imposture must be exploded. An axe was brought, and the cylinder splintered into fragments. Alas for the philosophers, there was no concealed spring, and the machine had gone of itself! But alas, also, for poor Hendrickson, the machine would go no more.
With trembling hands he again resumed his spectacles and his jack-knife. His model once more completed, he had a new machine constructed of brass, hollow throughout, so that the eye could examine all its parts. This was brought to our office nearly two years ago, when we noticed it once more, and gave to our readers some of the facts we have now recalled. The inventor was trying to secure a patent for this discovery, but the work went on slowly. The Patent-Office required a working model to test the principle, and one was sent on to Washington. The moment the blocks were taken out, the wheels started off “like a thing of life,� and during ten months that the model remained in the Patent-Office, it never once stopped to breathe. The inventor had perfected two new machines, and made a very comfortable livelihood exhibiting them, prosecuting his efforts meanwhile to secure his patent, intending to apply the power to clockwork, for which it is peculiarly well adapted. Age crept upon him, however, before this point was reached; his highest art could not make his heartbeatings perpetual; and last Saturday afternoon he breathed his last, in the old homestead at Freehold. He had been so much persecuted by the incredulous, that he had provided a secret place beneath the floor of his shop, where his last two machines were deposited. It was in the form of a vault, covered by a trap-door, which was locked, and the floor so replaced as to avoid suspicion. After his last illness commenced, he made known this secret to his family, who examined the spot carefully, and found the contents exactly as described. The night after his death, the shop was broken open, the floor taken up, the trap-door pried off, and both models stolen. It is probable that the family in their visits had not taken the same precaution as the inventor, and some prying eyes had discovered the secret. Fortunately, the drawings are preserved, and there is a little machine, one of the earliest made, now running in Brooklyn, where it has kept up its ceaseless ticking for nearly six years. Mr. Hendrickson leaves a family of four sons and four daughters, all of them, we believe, given to inventions. Had he died ten years ago, how emphatically would it have been said that this life been wasted in “the hopeless effort to obtain perpetual motion.�—N.Y. Journal of Commerce.
Source: Prairie Farmer 
