Fred Hackman

Frederick Hackman was a German-born inventor who was reported to have designed a perpetual motion machine, the Hackman Fuelless Motor, in the late 1890s. The Hackman Fuelless Motor Company was incorporated in July 1897 by John M. Trunk, John F. Reiff, and Thomas W. Leahy at Milwaukee, Wisconsin, obstensibly to manufacture the device.

Press Coverage

• "A PERPETUAL MOTION MACHINE", St. Louis Globe-Democrat (St. Louis, Mo.): 3, 16 July 1897, https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/571082343, "The Hackman Fuelless Motor Company was incorporated in Milwaukee, July 2, for the manufacture of a machine, invented by Fred Hackman, of this city, which is an approach to a perpetual motion machine, says the Milwaukee 'Evening Wisconsin.' The apparatus is very simple, consisting of a wheel turning on its axis, supported by ball bearings, to reduce the friction to a minimum, and having on inner edges pockets. Into the latter weights are dropped, starting the revolution of the wheel, and passing from one pocket to the other down a fraction of the circumference of the wheel, they then run onto a track which forms a radius of the wheel, and are caught by a chain having other pockets to receive them. The chain, by an arrangement of cog-wheels, raises the weights, and drops them once more in the upper pocket, on the inner edge of the big wheel. One weight is being raised by the chain, while the other three are falling into the wheel's pockets, and causing the revolution. The leverages on a 2-foot wheel are in the proportion of 1 to 12, and the power of a 12-foot wheel will be from 175 to 200 horse-power. The statement has been indorsed, it is said, by the best engineers and mechanics in the city. A model of the machine is on exhibition at 85 Michigan avenue."