Dr. Hannibal Mills and the Self-Impelling Motor
An aspiring inventor blames 'poison rum' for his recent legal troubles and pleads his case in the newspaper.
Dr. Hannibal Mills, the inventor who got into trouble a few days ago through the use of an unloaded revolver, objects to being called insane. He claims his erratic behavior was the result of liquor and assures the public he is now sober. He requested the Post-Intelligencer to publish his statement, in which he touts his inventions: a self-impelling motor currently under construction at the Vulcan Iron Works and a frictionless ball-bearing journal valued by experts at millions of dollars. While local machinists acknowledge the potential merit of the ball-bearing design, there remains skepticism regarding his extravagant financial claims.
“Will you allow a dealer in Poison Rum to prosecute, persecute and incarcerate a stranger, a gentleman and an inventor—an unequaled inventor of a self-impelling motor?”
This is a classic 'eccentric inventor' story from the Gilded Age, a time when individual tinkerers were often heralded as the future of the industrial boom. The Vulcan Iron Works, where Mills worked, was a key piece of early Seattle's industrial infrastructure that has long since vanished to make way for modern redevelopment.
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