In the early 19th century, two German mechanics, Zoll and Koppe, arrived in Russia, demonstrating an unprecedented machine, a perpetual motion device, to the capital's public for 2 rubles. The audience was thrilled by the foreigners' engineering skills. Among the visitors was the talented mechanic Alexey Filippovich Gladkoy, whose portrait has not survived to this day. Possessing a natural gift for invention, it took Gladkoy only half an hour to understand the principle of the device's operation. In his workshop, he recreated an exact copy of the machine and discovered that the continuous motion was provided by a small wheel with a spring inside, which was periodically wound up, maintaining the pendulum's movement.

A few days later, Gladkoy placed advertisements in newspapers stating that he had also created a perpetual motion device and invited everyone interested, including the German engineers, to see it in his workshop. When the foreigners arrived, Alexey Filippovich first demonstrated his apparatus to them, then disassembled it, revealing the secret of Zoll and Koppe. Under the disapproving gazes, the deceivers had to leave the workshop. Soon, all of Petersburg was talking about Gladkoy's talent. He had no idea that this event would mark the beginning of his engineering career.

Alexey Filippovich began to receive invitations to factories and plants. For the Alexandrovsky manufactory, he developed a universal spinning machine that produced four times more output than the English one. Gladkoy also worked on modernizing production and repairing equipment at other factories. He was not afraid of complex tasks and, for example, assembled clocks based on foreign blueprints, whose pendulums were insensitive to temperature changes, and the chronometers were only 2 seconds slow by the end of the year, an astonishing accuracy for that time! Ivan Kulibin spoke highly of Gladkoy: 'It's a pity I'm so old! Otherwise, I would have gone to Moscow to embrace my peer.' The Russian land is indeed rich in talents!