L. R. Banks

Leonard R. Banks (January 8, 1851 - August 30, 1926) was an American lawyer, Baptist minister, and inventor who claimed to have discovered a secret process for super-cooling liquid air that would be self-perpetuating (though he stated it was not a perpetual motion machine, claiming rather that it draws energy from the environment without requiring further electrical input once it has begun operating). In 1913, Banks co-founded the Automatic Power Company of Cincinnati, Ohio to support the development of his "free energy" machine; four years later, he told local media that he believed his process was the same as that of Garabed Giragossian, who had petitioned for support from the U.S. government for his "Garabed" device.