Charles J. Wolfe



Charles J. Wolfe (May 23, 1865 - February 23, 1954) was an American inventor inspired by the sight of a stalled Ferris wheel at the 1893 World's Fair to create what the press reported in 1926 was a perpetual motion machine (though Wolfe stated that since it could be started and stopped by a lever that it was not truly perpetual).[A] The Wolfe Automatic Power Machine was described as a gravity-powered wheel with eight projecting arms, these arms having long cylinders filled with mercury attached, operating such that when the wheel is rotating, half the cylinders are perpendicular and the other half descend.