Robert Hare (chemist)

By the 1820s, Hare had developed the "galvanic deflagrator", a type of voltaic battery having large plates used for producing rapid and powerful combustion.

A year later Hare had converted to Spiritualism and wrote several books that made him very famous in the United States as a Spiritualist.

[6] One of his experiments utilized a board and spring balance, the other involved the movement of a table at which a medium sat caused a pointer to indicate letters on a wheel.

According to the psychical researcher Frank Podmore it would have been easy for the medium to move the table with their knees or other parts of the body but "Hare does not seem to have realized the possibility of fraud of this kind.

[9]Historian Timothy Kneeland has argued that Hare's interest in Spiritualism was consistent with political and social beliefs that he held throughout his career.

His book Experimental Investigation of the Spirit Manifestations (1855) promoted the restoration of social order based on principles of republicanism.