Mark N. Richardson

Mark N. Richardson (August 18, 1948 - August 15, 1974) was an American draftsman who reportedly spent the last six months of his life working on a perpetual motion machine of his own devising. Both Richardson and John Edwin Billstrom (1936-1974) were killed when the machine, built using components from an automobile starter and involving "an electric motor with six steel arms heavily weighted at the ends," exploded on 15 August 1974 in a machine shop at Rockford, Winnebago Co., Illinois.