Reed Bartlett

Reed Clark Bartlett (June 17, 1888 - November 18, 1965) was an American farmer and inventor who was reported in 1939 to have been financing production of a perpetual motion machine through the sale of stock in his Delaware-based Bartlett Manufacturing Corp. to buyers in Minnesota and Wisconsin, resulting in his arrest and prosecution over unregistered securities under Wisconsin's "blue sky" law, to which he pled guilty and received a one-year suspended sentence. The Bartlett machine was described as using perpetually re-compressing air as a source of energy.