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Article: Jan Welzl (1868-1948).(Essay)
- Article from:
- Arctic
- Article date:
- September 1, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 Arctic Institute of North America of the University of Calgary. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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In the 1930s and 1940s, a man named Jan Welzl lived in the Yukon Territory's Dawson City, a town more or less surrounded by goldfields. Unlike other Dawsonites, however, Welzl did not prospect for gold. Instead, he occupied himself with the construction of a perpetual motion machine. This contraption seems to have been composed of various pipe fittings, axles, and counterweights, with the occasional beer bottle and tin can thrown in for good measure; it also had a cavorting ball, to which Welzl--called "John Inventor" by his neighbours--would point and, in his typically broken English, say: "She go up, she go down, she go "yah, yah, yah."
Welzl is remembered in ...