Is David Wesely the Origin of Polyhedral Dice in RPGs?

This interview by Claude Clyde L. Rhoer, III of David Wesely was uploaded on August 30, 2010. The original interview file and notes can be found here: https://web.archive.org/web/201312201... The discussion about polyhedral dice runs from approximately 01:21:37 to 01:30:50. Wesely tells the story of seeing numbered plastic geometric solids in his high school geometry class, later connecting them to a 12-sided teetotum referenced in Totten's Strategos. Wesely bought a set of polyhedrals from the Edmund Scientific catalog for about $6, and introduced them to the Twin Cities gaming group. As far as Wesely's attitude toward protecting his intellectual contributions to the hobby versus sharing things, he says quite clearly around 01:39:21, "[S]o here I am. I gave my gift to the world, right? This is it. Never mind. I don't get no credit or I don't get any money for it. There you go. Um, so but that was the, uh, that was the thing with the dice." There's also an earlier moment at 01:20:11 where he expresses a similar attitude more casually, when Arneson asks permission to run Braunstein games while Wesely is in the Army: "Dave, I don't own it. Have fun." And at 01:27:16, he explains why he never pursued a copyright on polyhedral dice: "I'm not running out and putting in a copyright for that 'cause everybody already knows it, right?" Finally, Dave Wesely draws a parallel between himself and scientist Joseph Henry. Henry is unknown while inventor Samuel Morse got credit for inventing the electric telegraph. At around 01:36:34, Wesely tells the story about Henry actually inventing the telegraph, Morse commercializing it, then coming back to Henry for help with a technical problem. Henry gives him the solution (hang the wires on poles with glass insulators) and when Morse offers to cut him in, Henry declines, saying he's a scientist and his work is free for everybody. This interview was released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license and thus I am obligated to share this information using the same license. See https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... I will make the transcript available on my substack. The interview was transcribed using ElevenLabs and then I cleaned up a few things with Claude. Claude was also able to generate a subtitle file so this will hopefully be available in other languages immediately upon processing. It cost $22 to gain enough credits on ElevenLabs to be able to process this interview. If you like the work I am doing to preserve the hobby, please check out one of my products: Dragons Beyond https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/... Midwest Fantasy Wargame https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/produ... Men in Metal https://www.amazon.com/Men-Metal-rule...