6635. PERPETUAL MOTION, Delusion of.—
I am very thankful to you for the
description of Redhefer's machine. I had never
been able to form an idea of what his principle
of deception was. He is the first of the inventors
of perpetual motion within my knowledge,
who has had the cunning to put his visitors
on a false pursuit, by amusing them with
a sham machinery whose loose and vibratory
motion might impose on them the belief that
it is the real source of the motion they see.
To this device he is indebted for a more extensive
delusion than I have before witnessed
on this point. We are full of it as far as this
State, and I know not how much farther. In
Richmond, they have done me the honor to
quote me as having said that it was a possible
thing. A poor Frenchman who called on me the
other day, with another invention of perpetual
motion, assured me that Dr. Franklin, many
years ago, expressed his opinion to him that it
was not impossible. Without entering into contest
on this abuse of the Doctor's name, I
gave him the answer I had given to others before,
that the Almighty himself could not construct
a machine of perpetual motion while the
laws exist which he has prescribed for the government
of matter in our system; that the
equilibrium established by him between cause
and effect must be suspended to effect that purpose.—
To Dr. Robert Patterson. Washington ed. vi, 83.
(M.
1812)
