Posted by Nick Hall (195.74.122.243) on May 07, 2003 at 15:36:15:
I have been meaning to say this for a while, but the claim by VITW to have a working wheel (of some description) moves me to say it now!
The time will surely come (and may have arrived) when someone claims to have a working model, and we could save everyone a lot of time and hassle by setting up a simple verification procedure. Otherwise we just sit here debating whether or not it works and the inventor gets increasingly frustrated (sounds a bit like Bessler himself!)
My proposal goes like this:
If someone - VITW / Darren - gets something working, and I am sufficiently convinced that the person is not winding us up (pun intended!) THEN I will personally consider paying reasonable travel costs for a "suitable person" to travel to the inventor to check it out and report back to this group.
The inventor does not have to divulge any secrets to me but will have to engage in some private correspondence with me - I will not be asking for details, just basic facts like "How long does it run?", "Can it drive anything else and what happens?" etc)
"Suitable person" here means someone who would generally be regarded as having integrity by the rest of us and also sufficient background experience to say whether or not it is a gravity driven device etc.
Top of my list is John Collins! Sorry I haven't asked you if you would be willing John!
But you can all see the principle - if something does work, it will need to be verified before the wider world takes it seriously - and I have no desire to be reading debates on this board for months to come when we could answer most people's questions by a simple visit by a trusted person.
"Voice in the wilderness" - you have nothing to lose and everything to gain from making available a video clip of the device being started and running. I will gladly host it FOC for you on a high bandwidth server if you want. You have already given away the design, so a video clip can only help prevent a lot of "what happens...?" sort of questions...
If anyone does want to email me privately, the above email address works - as seen by the volume of spam it receives thanks to network solutions public domain policy! If I don't reply, please resend - I delete huge volumes of stuff regularly and may miss single posts!
Thanks
Nick