Crop Circle

Certain evidence, such as the Mowing-Devil, suggest the appearance of crop circles well before the 20th century. Nevertheless, there are important differences between that story and modern crop circles. The story of the mowing devil involves the cutting of the crops following a dispute over crop harvesting and an invocation of the devil, no geometric patterns were reported.

Bower and Chorley

In 1991, self-professed pranksters Doug Bower and Dave Chorley stated that they had started the phenomenon in 1978 by making actual circles on crops with the use of simple tools.^[3] After their announcement, in a demonstration the two men made a crop circle in one hour.
After the revelation of the hoax, crop circle-like patterns continued to be made and became more complex. Some even came to resemble extraterrestrials as portrayed by certain science fiction movies, fractals, and archaeological, religious, or mythological symbols. Among others, paranormal enthusiasts, ufologists, and anomalistic investigators have offered hypothetical explanations that have been criticized as pseudoscientific by skeptical groups like the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.^[4][5][6][7]

Art and business

Aerial view of crop circle in Diessenhofen, July 2008

Since the early 1990s the UK arts collective founded by artist John Lundberg, named the Circlemakers, have been creating some crop circles in the UK and around the world both as part of their art practice and for commercial clients.^[8][9]
On the night of July 11–12, 1992, a crop-circle making competition, for a prize of several thousand UK pounds (partly funded by the Arthur Koestler Foundation), was held in Berkshire. The winning entry was produced by three Westland Helicopters engineers, using rope, PVC pipe, a trestle and a ladder. Another competitor used a small garden roller, a plank and some rope.
In 2002, Discovery Channel commissioned five aeronautics and astronautics graduate students from MIT to create crop circles of their own, aiming to duplicate some of the features claimed to distinguish "real" crop circles from the known fakes such as those created by Bower and Chorley. The creation of the circle was recorded and used in the Discovery Channel documentary Crop Circles: Mysteries in the Fields.