Robbie's laissez-faire approach of simply placing my 080401 post in the
archive is acceptable to me.  This was done with my previous post on
the Owyhee Hydraulus.  Confusion there was perhaps benign, since it was
on a totally fictitious subject.

But I would enjoy seeing my reply to Gerhard Dangel [see 080402 MMD]
inserted in brackets at the beginning of the archive copy to make it
clear that the letter is both a spoof and a more serious conjecture as
to how the Welte-Mignon system could have worked.

If there is considerable interest, I would greatly enjoy corresponding
with persons who would like to prove out these concepts in hardware.
Many other more erudite hypotheses have been put forth which don't fit
comfortably into the few facts as I see them.  Many mistakes have been
made about what James D. Crank actually saw at Simonton's.  After
several hours on the phone with Jim yesterday, I am surer of the narrow
limits of what he did see and that much we have seen published as fact
remains conjecture.

Karl Petersen
Washington, Ill.