Erick Ackerland

Erick Ackerland (b. c. 1879 - February 15, 1954) was a farmer who was adjudged insane by a North Dakota court in August 1912 and was thereafter incarcerated at the Jamestown State Hospital (a.k.a. North Dakota State Hospital at Jamestown), where he was held for the remainder of his life. The newspaper notice regarding Ackerland's case was entitled simply "PERPETUAL MOTION" and related he had been "working on the illusive perpetual motion theory, that has driven so many over the verge of sanity," suggesting a link between such pursuit and his mental condition, a popular trope of the period.