Bessler WAS mad....& your excuse???

[getterdone]

Bessler was a pius man. From what I read ,he would often live on a diet of bread and water. From what I understand of the middle ages, the rich people would eat wheat bread , and the poor people would eat rye bread. It's well known today that moldy rye bread produces LSD. YEE-HA, some historians think that a lot of legends of demonic possessions and vampires , worewolfs etc can be traced back to periods of drought when people had no choice but to eat that moldy old rye bread.

Just another possibility

Leo

[Gill Simo]

Does anyone have a solution or anything to aid that solution.... at all? I'm on here in aid of that solution ....but what the hell, chill, let's have a poll on who's mad and who isn't.... Bessler.... Shmessler, he can wait.
You all act quite, quite, mad to me, that's all I know.

[Gill Simo]

Jesus.....suddenly I'm an enthusiast, after 7/8 years I've finally caught the bug! Could someone perhaps, please explain the relevence of that meter thingy next to my name.....does it go all the way up to "Congratulations, you did it....?

[DrWhat]

Once you (or someone) reveals the mechanism your reputation will be irrelevant as this site will be swamped with so many visitors you wont get a look in!

[teokox]

........... Bessler knew damn well that he couldn't patent it, nothing to do with too simple.....too simple does not refuse someone a patent. ........

Correct! Also simple methods or devices can be patented. Indeed important patents regard simple inventions. Why Bessler did not want to patent his wheel? Because he thought the world did not deserve it and the patent should not protect his invention? No money and no glory! Why? He was really depressed! (Depression is a very common condition for many inventors)
This mystery will ever never unveiled.

tk

[docfeelsgood]

Ol Johann was mad ?? perhaps he caught the syph from the scurvy maid while scorin a beaner ??????

[Ed]

The definition of mad: using more than two question marks in a sentence.

[laikkis]

Was he mad or not ? There is no answer.

What was the wheel power source ? My opinion is temperature.

" The first clock powered by changes in atmospheric pressure and temperature was invented by Cornelis Drebbel in the early seventeenth century. Drebbel built as many as 18 of these, the two most notable being for King James VI & I of Britain, and Rudolf II of Bohemia. The King James clock was known as the Eltham Perpetuum, and was famous throughout Europe. It is mentioned in two works of Ben Jonson."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cox%27s_timepiece

[nicbordeaux]

"Michael" Nick, it doesn't take a genius to understand that if you place a glass of water on a rickety and warped table that there is a good chance it will tip. Where as placing it on a well made and stable table it will sit just fine.

Michael, you are on the verge of discovering selfsustaining motion. Maintaining extreme susceptibility to change in position within the confines of a "frame" is the best hope for "OU" .

It's not different with personality, or really much anything else. My disagreement is with the belief, which I hold to be a wives tale, is that genius needs insanity. There are plenty of people who it can be said possess genius who are not "mad". And there are some people who at times fit the term of "mad" who can at other times possess genius. Using a simile as the example, genius like a drowning swimmer can surface up through the ocean of madness at times. But the two are distinct from each other

.

Not necessarily, they can be symptoms of some "ailment" or "gift". A disease usually has quite a few symptoms, and they aren't necessarily concurrent, they can be successive, and/or overlap.

Which brings me to the next point which you also have brought up, which I agree with. Eccentricity. I do believe that a notable characteristic of people who possess genius is one where at times they appear to be eccentric. But what is eccentricity? It's being different from the norm. And what's the norm? It's the widely accepted agreement of what is socially right way to act and be. In other words it’s a label that comes from a group of people who see the difference from their agreement. But it’s not madness. And it could very well be that the group of people who are in the “norm�, in various examples, are the ones suffering from a form of madness, because they might be socially brainwashed and accept the program without question.

Eccentricity often takes the form of provocative, "childlike" behavior, probably arises from frustration at not being able to communicate for lack of an audience able to understand. Or maybe it's another symptom. The norm is a accepted set of beliefs and behavioral patterns amongst a group, whatever it's size. This throws back to tribal/territorial issues, instincts that humans share with other species. Civilization or "ordered society" is only possible given a high idiot proportion of population if "norm" exists. Two other scenarii exist : stop breeding, or bring on the Brave New World.

As for monomania, if someone is focusing on one objective then they might be able to get quicker results, but if one is obsessing on the same futile path, then as Einstein said, madness is knowing what's right but chosing to make the same mistakes over and over again.

Low IQ monomaniacs for want of a better term drive themselves up dead end streets and repeatedly bang their heads into the wall. Monomaniacs with a modicum of intelligence realize when something is wrong, such as a wall, and think laterally,or differently, look at every different approach. They have perspective.

Nick, please tell us why you consider yourself an armchair genius and what requirements are filled to meet that label. We might then be able to tell if you are, or if your " mad", or somewhere in between.

An armchair genius is either too lazy or insufficiently motivated to prove that he is a genius, so he/she sits around having great ideas but not doing anything much about them. Or a person with too many ideas in too many different domains to be able to be able to do more than sit and think more and more ideas. Probably reduce that to an armchair genius is a genius who has too much perspective to go monomaniac and actually get heavily involved in anything. Armchair genius' usually make good journalists. Or philosophers. Not being a genius, this definition doesn't apply to me.

And you Michael, what sort of genius would you be were you to admit to being one ?

ps : if you play chess, an online game anytime.