While I was writing the "Look Before You Leap" blog, I paused occasionally to ponder upon Bessler's dilemma, i.e., how to get paid for his secret without giving it away.
I remember professor Hal Puthoff suggesting to me once, that he had a number of interested parties who would like to have a chance of investing in the wheel, should someone finally succeed. This was several years ago now, but at that time, it got me thinking about what I would do in that situation. Advice I received was that the buyer could not be allowed to examine the wheel to verify my claims for it, because no one could be certain that he would not just walk away and replicate it, leaving me with nothing but egg on my face and empty pockets! This advice was not intended to cast any doubts on Hal's integrity and I completely trusted him then, as now, but I could see what they meant - how could someone be found who had sufficient knowledge to know if I was trying to fool him and at the same time, how could I know if he was planning to steal the design for himself or to sell on?.
It was suggested that any money agreed for the sale should be held in escrow by a disinterested third party pending verification of the claims and only once they had been substantiated, only then would the money be released. Coincidentally this is exactly what Daniel Schumacher proposed to Bessler on behalf of the Russian Czar, Peter the Great, who was intending to buy the wheel. Bessler rejected the suggestion outright because the same problem applied then, the verifier might be no safer than the buyer. He said there was only one way forward; the buyer must put a bag containing all the cash agreed, on the table next to the wheel; and the two parties could then go their separate ways, Bessler with his payment and the other with the wheel.
That sounds highly mercenary and harsh and yet what other way was there open to him, given the lack of a patent process. He was not prepared to let anyone see the inside of the wheel unless the cash was literally on the table. Since he trusted no one and no one trusted him - impasse!
Of course this need not happen today, any more than it need not have happened in Bessler's day. All he had to do was give it away, but for what? Kudos? Kudos was not sufficient for his needs nor for his ambitions.
Today one could give the secret away and perhaps it might provide sufficient finances for future needs, and that is probably the best way, but poor old Bessler was in an impossible situation and that is why he sought out Princes and other rulers who had the wealth and power to satisfy his demands, if only he could find one he could actually trust. Karl the Landgrave of Hesse could have been that man but he had his own requirements and Bessler's wheel did not satisfy them.
JC
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