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.

Press Coverage

• AP (16 Aug. 1974), "Rockford men die in blast from invention", The Pantagraph (Bloomington, IL): 1, https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/73151239/ 
• AP (17 Aug. 1974), "Perpetual Motion Machine Kills 2", Kansas City Times (Kansas City, MO): 32, https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/676397248/, "The machine apparently involved an electric motor with six steel arms heavily weighted at the ends. The device was supposed to start with electric power, but once started was intended to produce sufficient electric power on its own to keep running after the current was cut off. 'There are no diagrams of the machine,' [Christine Richardson, Mark's sister] said. 'He didn't want it down on paper.'"