Charles Wondries

Charles Sigmon Wondries (1857-1918) was an American wallpaper salesman, hotel proprietor, and miner who claimed to have discovered the secret of perpetual motion through suction. Wondries sought to raise funds for the construction of enormously tall chimneys at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri (1904) and the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, California (1915), which he hoped would be used to demonstrate his theory; however, neither of these plans came to fruition.