After 50 years of Research into the Truth about Bessler’s Wheel……

After more than fifty years studying the life of Johann Bessler aka Orffyreus, inventor of a gravity-enabled wheel, I find it remarkable that no one has realised the extraordinary implications of producing a machine that worked precisely as his machine did.  How it would affect the world we live in; this world of ours with its pollution, global warming, energy inefficiency, falling options to produce more cheaper forms of energy, etc. etc.

Over the years I have produced five books, four by Johann Bessler with full English translations, plus one by me, a full biography of Bessler.  I included numerous documents to him, by him and about him.  I had eight web sites running at one time, each with different information on the subject. 

I’ve been running this blog for nine years, I’ve been interviewed by various radio stations both here in the U.K, as well as in the USA.  Italian TV flew me to Rome to take part in a documentary about a Bessler.  Articles about my research have appeared in Infinite Energy magazine and Omni magazine.  I’m well-known for my firmly held conviction that Johann Bessler built a genuine perpetual motion machine and exhibited it over many years in different town’s throughout Germany.

He demonstrated the machine to one of the most famous scientists of the day, Gottfried Leibniz who offered advice on how to exhibit his device and allow public tests designed to prove that it was genuine.  These tests were all added to the numerous exhibitions, but no sale resulted.

My point is that there is very credible evidence that Bessler’s claim was genuine and there is not a single piece of evidence against him. I fully understand the reasons given for its impossibility but given the overwhelmingly positive evidence for Bessler, the rest is an open road to a successful replication of Bessler’s free energy machine.

So why is it that no one is prepared too open their minds to the possibility that his machine could save this planet from all it’s apparent suicide aided and abetted by our so-called experts, scientists, teachers, nay-sayers, elitist politicians etc, etc.

There will be a gigantic reward for the person who finally succeeds in deciphering Bessler’s incredible collection of textual and graphic clues, codes and hints.  I’m sure there could be a Nobel prize for the one who does it.

Why haven’t I succeeded?  Well I think I will have succeeded if I’m allowed to live long enough.  I’m eighty years of age and I’ve found the secret and I’m building a replica which I’m convinced will mirror Bessler’s own configuration.

The five books are available from the top of the right hand panel where it says “Bessler’s Books”, and here’s a link https://johncollinsnews.blogspot.com/p/johann-besslers-books-and-biography.html

Those are digital copies, but you can get printed copies from 

http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/johncollins

If you need more convincing visit these web site that I have posted, maintained and updated since January 18th 1998!

http://www.free-energy.co.uk/   My original website still running.

http://www.orffyreus.org/          Info about Bessler’s unique windmill from which he fell to his death.

http://www.theorffyreuscode.com./  List of  interesting codes interpreted by me over the years.  These barely scratch the surface.  Search my blog for more.

http://www.besslerswheel.com/ More discussions about Bessler’s clues

https://www.gravitywheel.com/ My latest website which will have details of my new machine as soon as it’s finished.

Plus this blog of course!    https://johncollinsnews.blogspot.com/

JC

Perpetual Motion; An Ancient Mystery Solved!

The title of this post is taken from the title of my first book which was a biography of Johann Bessler - with one difference.  My book title ended with a question mark, but as you can see, here I have used an exclamation mark!  The question mark implied that maybe Johann Bessler had truly invented a Perpetual Motion machine.  The exclamation mark signifies a statement of fact.

One morning about 18 months ago I woke up with a clear image of the wheel in my mind.  It was an image from a dream I had had.  I could see the interior of the wheel showing some of the positions of the weights.  I believed from my dream that this showed the true concept of the wheel’s action; I could not see the complete configuration but I understood the concept and I was utterly astounded that no one had found it before or since.  I knew beyond doubt that not only would this work, but that it was exactly the same layout as Bessler’s wheel.

I wanted to build a working model, but I had not done much work on the wheel since I moved house the previous year.  Trying to describe the concept and sharing it went completely wrong and I decided, from previous experience, that nothing but a working model would persuade people that the design was the right one.  I marked out on a three foot diameter disc of MDF, the precise dimensions of each section and gathered together all my previously used metal parts with a view to adapting them to the needs of the new configuration.

But there were too many alterations needed to make the best use of the material I had, so I swapped the three foot diameter wheel for an eighteen inch disc and that proved to be the right way to go.  I had enough pieces of the old parts to begin the build.  The concept is easy to understand but by using old used parts, the sizes of some pieces takes more time and adjustment to make fit.  It has taken me such a long time that I began to fear I might not see the end of the process, but I’m determined to finish it.  I’ll be 80 years old in a few days so I am determined to complete the build at or near then. 

I’ve completed the mechanisms, adjusting, tightening or loosening them as necessary, and all I need to do is add the weights and the cord linkages to fulfil what Bessler called his connectedness principle.

In the mean time I’m also writing an abbreviated description of Bessler’s journey to success because it explains several details that help to prove that this is real.  This will provide a better explanation than some of my previous ones which failed to explain the concept adequately in either drawings or text. 

As far as I know, the complete concept has never been discussed anywhere.  I used the word complete because obviously bits of it show up occasionally, but without all the contributing factors included, it can’t  turn continuously.

It doesn’t conflict with any physical laws. It’s a simple concept.  It will turn continuously. It is enabled by gravity alone.  It’s simple understand but not quite so easy to build - for me at least!

I wrote the following on my blog in May 2012 and my opinion hasn’t changed -

“ The commonest error is the belief that his comment on the front of His Maschinen Tractate applied strictly to the drawings it contained.

“N.B. 1st May 1733. Due to the arrest, I burned and buried all papers that prove the possibility. However, I have left all demonstrations and experiments since it would be difficult for anybody to see or learn anything about a perpetual motion from them or to decide whether there was any truth in them because no illustration by itself contains a description of the motion; however, taking various illustrations together and combining them with a discerning mind, it will indeed be possible to look for a movement and, finally to find one in them.”

In fact only the toys drawings in MT contains useful information. There are additional hints in MT137 and in the letters 'A' which he used in MT, and there are hints too in some of the illustration numbers. The remaining drawings he was referring to are the four which appeared in his Das Triumphirende and of course Grundlicher Bericht and in a small way the one at the end of Apologia Poetica. These four drawings which contain the infamous pendulums also hold almost everything you will need to build his wheel.”

Lastly, the fact that I dreamed the solution is not imho, due to any other worldly input, but due to my many years of studying Bessler’s drawings allowed my brain/mind while I slept, to contemplate at leisure the problem and offer a potential solution.  In my experience I rarely remember dreams, unless I’ve fallen asleep again after I first woke up and then occasionally I do remember stuff.

JC

HAPPY NEW YEAR for 2025

 I wish all of you a happy new year!  This year, 2025, I believe we shall see the arrival of an actual working model of Johann Bessler’s perpetual motion machine.  This will have a massive impact on global warming, wind energy, solar energy, nuclear energy, hydroelectric power etc etc etc!

There are numerous coincidences running throughout this extraordinary story; too many to describe now although they are detailed in my forthcoming book.  I am revealing all of the numerous clues, codes and ambiguous hints in my new book, but first I need to complete the prototype before I spill the beans!

One coincidence includes the fact that Bessler used five mechanisms in his machine.  He embedded this information throughout his three books.  Each mechanism operated with another one to perform as pairs.  So that’s 5 mechanisms, each working in pairs, so that’s 2s. Next month on the 5th, I shall be 80 years of age.   My birthday will be on the date numbered 5 2 2 5, or 5th day of the second month, 2025.   Bessler embedded that date in his name more than 300 years ago.

Watch this space for the big reveal about Bessler’s wheel, on or very close to that date. I’m working as hard as I can to complete my proof-of-principle (PoP) wheel in time.

You can get copies of Bessler’s three books plus another which he never published.  Each book includes a full English translation.  In addition you can get my biography of Bessler, which includes numerous documents about the inventor.

Just click on the link at the top of the right side panel where it says, 

“ Johann Bessler’s Books and a Biography.”

 “Johann Bessler's Books and a Biography”

JC

 

Johann Bessler’s Perpetual Motion Mystery Solved.

The climatologists and scientists are clamouring for a new way of generating electricity because all the current method (bad pun!) of doing it are flawed.  

Solar panels on fields that used to grow crops, or feed cows is short-sighted and unacceptable.  

Windmills and wind farm are incredibly expensive to build and locate - upto £30,000.  The towers can last 25 years but the actual generator needs constant maintenance usually three times a year. A five-megawatt wind turbine can require 700 gallons of lubricant, and costly synthetic fluids are preferred in the industry. Typically, oil change intervals are scheduled for from 9 to 16 months.  

The other alternatives are also flawed but is there a solution to these problems?  Something that is low tech, clean and cheap.  Yes of course there is and we’ve known about for more than three hundred years!

Johann Bessler, aka Orffyreus, exhibited a perpetual motion machine in 1712. Of course it wasn’t a perpetual motion machine (PM for Perpetual Motion) in the sense that most people think of them.   For a start it wasn’t isolated from any form of external energy, which is a strict requirement for such a theoretical device. It used weights which means it was enabled by gravity.

A waterwheel is driven by the flow of a river, the combustion engine by igniting petrol.  These two examples could just as easily be described as PM machines too.  They are not isolated from any external source of energy, because the river flows down hill because gravity makes it.  It could in theory run continuously as long as the river flows thanks to gravity. The combustion engine will run continuously as long as it has fuel in its tank.

If the energy source is being maintained at a sufficient level, the machine will stay in motion like the so-called PM machine. But surely gravity isn’t an energy source?  No, but without it the water wheel won’t flow.

So Bessler’s wheel wasn’t a PM machine because it wasn’t isolated from external sources of energy.  But this is where confusion lies.  It was what people believed it to be, namely a PM machine.  But once people examined  the idea and defined it more precisely, they realised that many machines have external sources of  energy and they couldn’t all be PMs, so the idea was introduced, that a PM must be isolated from all external sources of energy including gravity.

The idea that a PM had to be isolated from all external stimuli and yet retain motion once started - and do work is utterly ridiculous.  No wonder PM is believed to be impossible.  Continuous motion can only happen if it can tap an external energy source.

Like every other would-be discoverer of the secret of PM, Bessler’s wheel used a number of weights in its interior, this is a well established fact.  This clearly implies that gravity had a role to play - the design of the machine required the movement of a number of weights configured in a certain way to produce continuous rotation. Thus we can say that his wheels were gravity-enabled.

But we have been taught that the force of gravity is not a source of energy.  This is actually true, but without its force the river wouldn’t flow.  Without its force the weights in Bessler's wheel wouldn’t fall.  But the water has to flow from higher ground to lower in order to run and turn the water wheel - and the weights have to fall; both events are driven to move by gravity.  In doing this gravity does work, expends energy.   But in both cases there has be an intermediate medium.  Water or the weights.  Without them no motion is enabled by gravity.

So when we say Bessler’s wheel is enabled by gravity, even though gravity is not a source of energy, it is a vital ingredient.  The energy for the work being done is generated by the fall of the weights, the intermediary between gravity and the wheel. This process seems to be ignored even by many who study this field, they are still battling with the idea that as gravity is not an energy source it can’t be labelled such.  But it is just the same as any system which relies on the presence of gravity to provide input at its most basic level….mass in motion.

The main argument against this point of view is well known and simple. When a single weight falls, it derives kinetic energy from the motion of its fall.  When a force moves an object of mass it does work.  In this case the force doing the work is gravity.  After the work is done the energy has been transferred to the object of mass.  

Bessler’s wheel was driven by weighted levers, causing the machine to rotate.  We know that a weighted lever beginning its fall from the twelve o’clock position in a clock face and being allowed to fall freely will only get to the six o’clock position before it has to begin to climb against the force of gravity to get back to its starting point at twelve o’clock position.

Even if we could remove all possible friction, the return point would only just reach the twelve o’clock point.  But we need the device to do work, not just overcome friction.  Theoretically thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people have studied this problem and tried to resolve it - but all failed except Johann Bessler.  Instinctively those many, many people knew that there was a solution to this problem, and there is.  Bessler found it and I believe I have found it.  I’ve been working on a PoP wheel, (Proof of Principle) and I hope to have finished by early next year.  It won’t be an attractive model, just a crude assembly of previously used parts, but one that proves the design.

But…Bessler was extremely confident that his machine would pass any test that could be arranged.  He even swore that he should lose his head if he should be found to have cheated. He also placed coded information in his three books which he published.  This information was encoded in different ways, some within the text and some within several drawings which he made and this information was designed to provide the full concept and solution to his machine.

theorffyeuscode.com describes some of the deciphered codes along with their meaning.

Click on the link below for all information about my published books.  There is my own biography about Bessler which includes all documents by or about Johann Bessler, plus you can obtain digital copies of all of his publications each with a full English translation.

https://johncollinsnews.blogspot.com/p/johann-besslers-books-and-biography.html

For more information about Bessler and his codes, view my YouTube video at

https://youtu.be/5BWVKtpuzn0  it describes some of the codes.

JC

The Bessler - Orffyreus Perpetual Motion Machine.

Johann Bessler, aka Orffyreus, exhibited a perpetual motion machine in 1712. Of course it wasn’t a perpetual motion machine (PM for Perpetual Motion) in the sense that most people think of them.   For a start it wasn’t isolated from any form of external energy, which is a strict requirement for such a theoretical device. It used weights which means it was enabled by gravity.

A waterwheel is driven by the flow of a river, the combustion engine by igniting petrol.  These two examples could just as easily be described as PM machines.  They are not isolated from any external source of energy, because the river flows down hill because gravity makes it.  It could in theory run continuously as long as the river flows thanks to gravity. The combustion engine will run continuously as long as it has fuel in its tank.

If the energy source is being maintained at a sufficient level, the machine will stay in motion like the so-called PM machine. But surely gravity isn’t an energy source?  No, but without it the water wheel won’t flow.

So Bessler’s wheel wasn’t a PM machine because it wasn’t isolated from external sources of energy.  But this is where confusion lies.  It was what people believed it to be, namely a PM machine.  But once people examined  the idea and defined it more precisely, they realised that many machines have external sources of  energy and they couldn’t all be PMs, so the idea was introduced, that a PM must be isolated from all external sources of energy including gravity.

The idea that a PM had to be isolated from all external stimuli and yet retain motion once started - and do work is utterly ridiculous.  No wonder PM is believed to be impossible.  Continuous motion can only happen if it can tap an external energy source.

Like every other would-be discoverer of the secret of PM, Bessler’s wheel used a number of weights in its interior, this is a well established fact.  This clearly implies that gravity had a role to play - the design of the machine required the movement of a number of weights configured in a certain way to produce continuous rotation. Thus we can say that his wheels were gravity-enabled.

But we have been taught that the force of gravity is not a source of energy.  This is actually true, but without its force the river wouldn’t flow.  Without its force the weights in Bessler's wheel wouldn’t fall.  But the water has to move from higher ground to lower in order to run and turn the water wheel - and the weights have to fall; both events are driven to move by gravity.  In doing this gravity does work, expends energy.   But in both cases there has be an intermediate medium.  Water or the weights.  Without them no motion is enabled by gravity.

So when we say Bessler’s wheel is enabled by gravity, even though gravity is not a source of energy, it is a vital ingredient.  The energy for the work being done is generated by the fall of the weights, the intermediary between gravity and the wheel. This process seems to be ignored even by many who study this field, they are still battling with the idea that as gravity is not an energy source it can’t be labelled such.  But it is just the same as any system which relies on the presence of gravity to provide input at its most basic level….mass in motion.

The main argument against this point of view is well known and simple. When a single weight falls, it derives kinetic energy from the motion of its fall.  When a force moves an object of mass it does work.  In this case the force doing the work is gravity.  After the work is done the energy has been transferred to the object of mass.  

Bessler’s wheel was driven by weighted levers, causing the machine to rotate.  We know that a weighted lever beginning its fall from the twelve o’clock position in a clock face and being allowed to fall freely will only get to the six o’clock position before it has to begin to climb against the force of gravity to get back to its starting point at twelve o’clock position.

Even if we could remove all possible friction, the return point would only just reach the twelve o’clock point.  But we need the device to do work, not just overcome friction.  Theoretically thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people have studied this problem and tried to resolve it - but all failed except Johann Bessler.  Instinctively those many, many people knew that there was a solution to this problem, and there is.  Bessler found it and I believe I have found it.  I’ve been working on a PoP wheel, (Proof of Principle) and I hope to have finished by early next year.  It won’t be an attractive model, just a crude assembly of previously used parts, but one that proves the design.

Click on the link below for all information about my published books.  There is my own biography about Bessler which includes all documents by or about Johann Bessler, plus you can obtain digital copies of all of his publications each with a full English translation.

https://johncollinsnews.blogspot.com/p/johann-besslers-books-and-biography.html

For more information about Bessler and his codes, view my YouTube video at

https://youtu.be/5BWVKtpuzn0  it describes the codes.

JC

Johann Bessler’s (aka Orffyreus’) Maschinen Tractate.l

The publication mentioned in the title of this post, Maschinen Tractate, was never published by Bessler but was found in his possessions after his death. I have producedca digital copy and a printed version available from the side panel of this post. It includes an English translation of Bessler’s handwritten notes, which were difficult to read, but still useful.

Bessler’s Maschinen Tractate (MT) consisted of 141 illustrations designed to lead one to the discovery of Bessler’s Perpetual Motion machine. Originally intended to provide material for his planned school for apprentices, it unfortunately lacks the final illustration depicting the solution. I called the final page, ‘The Toys Page’, because it includes a brief reference to ‘children’s games’. This final page has the numbers 138, 139, 140 and 141 added to the bottom left of the picture. The page immediately before the toys page was numbered MT137, which was the logical number for the preceding page.

There is a possible explanation for the inclusion of those numbers. Firstly 141 is only divisible by 3 and 47. Euclid’s 47th proposition shows how to construct a pentagram and I’ve shown that most his construction method can be seen in his two pictures of his Merseberg and Weissenstein wheel. 

But interestingly adding together all four numbers written at the foot of the ‘Toys’ page produces a total of 558, and 55 we know is one of Bessler’s most favourite numbers, but the 8 is not so easily explained. However adding these three numbers brings the total to 18, the key number in the pentagram. So here we have a typical Bessler move designed to make us think and seek an explanation - suggesting the pentagram again.

As I have pointed out previously MT137 contains the musical ‘circle of fifths’ diagram, a guide for musicians. It takes the form of a dodecagram, a twelve pointed star. See adjacent picture of MT137.

Some of you may be aware of the work I've published on www.theorffyreuscode.com .Three of the pages refer to the dodecagram on MT 137. I wrote that Johann David Heinichen, 1683-1729, a German musician, introduced the concept known as the ‘circles of fifths’ in 1711 (he called it Quintenzirkel). I suggested that MT 137 being similar to his quintenzirkel was designed to point to the circle of fifths, thus being another pointer to the number five.

I was drawn to this illustration, MT137 because it looked like a random addition but I knew that nothing in Bessler’s books was devoid of purpose. We know that Bessler was fascinated by the history and the relationship between numbers and letters and their hidden meanings and of course all the popular codes of the era, and it seemed to me that he had included the number quite deliberately, even if it was somewhat roughly executed. I believe that he added the Toys page later in life and replaced some of the existing pages which gave the secret of the wheel. My guess is that he also added the MT 137 at the same time.

MT 137, is the only illustration in the MT which doesn’t appear to show any mechanisms. One reason for this was, as I suggested above, to provide a hint towards the circle of fifths, but as Bessler usually included two or even three pieces of information in each of his clues I felt there could be something additional, that was invisible to me. 

I was intrigued by the possibility that the number 137 was recognised to have special properties in Bessler’s time. There are websites devoted to such things as the properties of the three main pyramids which allude to the number 137, plus the Kabbalah, numerology, Freemasons, etc. I’m inserting an interesting link about the number 137, the GOD particle.

“Leon Max Lederman is an American experimental physicist who received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1988. In his book, “The God Particle”, he writes:

“One hundred thirty-seven is the inverse of something called the fine-structure constant.”

https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-africa/hidden-message-khafre-s-pyramid-what-were-builders-trying-tell-us-008646#google_vignette

But I discovered that Bessler was hinting at the relationship between 137 and the golden angle or the golden mean, well known to the ancient Egyptians and the Greeks who called it phi, after the Greek sculptor Phideas. Phi, the golden ratio, is equal to 1.618, plus an unending succession of numbers. Plato discussed the subject at length in his Timaeus and of course there are the Leonardo Fibonacci series of numbers, and the laws of nature also dependant on the gold mean!

In geometry, the golden angle is the smaller of the two angles created by dividing the circumference of a circle according to the golden ratio, thus creating two arcs so that the ratio of the length of the smaller arc to the length of the larger is the same as the ration of the larger arc to the full circumference of the circle.

I must thank Trevor, a long time correspondent for pointing out the error in the above illustration.  360/1.618 is of course 222.5 and not 225.5.  I originally posted the illustration back in 2020, but nobody noticed then, me included. 😃

This provides two radii with angles of two particular degrees. The golden angle is 137.508. I suspect that using the number 137 for his dodecagram seemed like a good idea to the inventor, but he couldn’t name it MT 137.5, that would be too obvious. Bessler used the golden ratio routinely in his drawings and it was more commonly integrated in works of art than it is today. 

If you use two radii to divide a circle according to the golden ratio it yields sectors of approximately 137° (1.618, the golden ratio) and 222°, hence it being the numbered 137. 

To be accurate 360/1.618 = 222.5 and 360-222.5=137.5 Curiously 1/137.5 = 00727272727 etc. and 5x72=360, the basic numbers of the pentagram again.

But it is also interesting that 137.5/55 = 2.5 exactly because in his musical circle of fifths Heinichen explained that the circle of fifths gets its name from the fact that you travel across the circle from one point to another 5/12th away, or 2.5 segments away, in order to find circle of fifths. This is a way of organising pitches as a sequence of perfect fifths. 

In the above illustration the circle with its 137.5 degree angle also mimics a clock at five o’clock, which is a good pointer to the circle of fifths. But in truth with the hands showing five o’clock the angle would be 150 degrees (5x30) not 137.5. To show the angle as 137.5 with the hour hand at five, the minute hand is in fact closer to the number one on the clock, or 12.5 degrees nearer, 

Check out my web site at www.theorffyreuscode.com

JC

Update on My Bessler’s wheel.

Over the last few months I’ve received several emails and messages asking for news about my project to replicate Bessler’s wheel.  Many people in this area of research are aware of my own contribution to it but I stopped posting blogs about Bessler a few weeks ago preferring to promote my books in order to try to defray the ongoing costs of maintaining my six web sites. I intend to return to posting more details of the information I’ve recovered from Bessler’s books.  For info on my web sites see below.

http://www.free-energy.co.uk/

http://www.besslerswheel.com/

http://www.theorffyreuscode.com/

http://www.orffyreus.net/

http://www.orffyreus.org/

https://www.gravitywheel.com/

and a YouTube video I made several years ago!

https://youtu.be/5BWVKtpuzn0

___________________________________________________________________________

This is my current position concerning my efforts to build a duplicate of Johann Bessler’s perpetual motion device.  I dislike the term perpetual motion because it has such unfortunate connotations and is inaccurate - I prefer gravity-enabled continuous motion.

I know how Bessler’s wheel worked, and in fact I have known for all this year and some months last year, since I awoke one morning with the simple design open in my mind’s eye, having dreamed of it during the night.  Following the revelation I drew many pictures of it to examine the concept and immediately realised that it was correct.  In fact it was obviously the solution and I set to work designing a physical model to demonstrate it.  I decided not to publish explanatory drawings because it’s my belief that without a working model few if any will believe me and my past experience confirms this.  I think a video of an actual model working, showing the interior in motion is the best way to present a convincing explanation of the way it works.

So I’m still assembling a proof of principle model and I hope that this will help in my efforts to bring this device to the world’s attention.  In my opinion it’s a vital discovery which could offer a cheap clean alternative to the current energy sources.  You know the sources? Solar, nuclear, wind, fossil fuel, tidal and all the other multitude of expensive, wasteful, polluting methods.

So work on completing this model is made a little more difficult with my arthritic hands but not impossible.  I will continue to build and I won’t stop until I’ve proved I’m right!  I’ve never been so confident as I am now but even though I can see and understand the concept there are minor obstacles to overcome first. I know the exact concept but relative sizes of the various parts are not certain and I’m using old parts from former builds and some individual pieces maybe too small or too large but I am modifying them as I  go building them into at least one mechanism.  Then I’ll know for sure which works best.  It will be a crude model but it only has to prove the principle is  correct.

My enthusiasm to continue with this project has returned in full flood, but occasionally, there have been times when I lost some of my passion for this project to build yet another model, but even then I remained utterly convinced that Bessler told the truth. In those times I lost the energy to try yet another build without having a clear and convincing hypothesis explaining a workable concept

I know that losing some of your enthusiasm in life, losing some of the passion projects that you were once so excited about, losing your enthusiasm for your dreams - that could be disastrous. I wouldn’t say I’ve ever suffered from a lack of personal conviction that Bessler told the truth about his machine, but years of scornful dismissal can make a serious dent in your dreams and maybe you begin to think that perhaps your belief in Bessler’s perpetual motion machine was misguided or just plain wrong. Add the years of failed attempts to replicate his device and your thoughts begin to question that belief. But those years of research where I sought the truth about Bessler returned, buttressed my belief and that’s when the dream rescued me from my doubts.

So I will continue to the finish. I like to imagine the extreme delight I shall experience when I can present a working model to the world which I can prove is exactly the same as Bessler’s. How wonderful to silence all those doubters and naysayers who penned such scornful, derisory comments about me and my work.

So visit this site from time to time to check on my progress, and when I’ve finished it and it works, Bessler’s wheel will be revealed.

JC

Johann Bessler, aka Orffyreus. His Codes - What Do They Mean?

I wrote this post in July 2013 and I thought I’d repost it because it seems little has changed.

This blog is sub-titled, "A blog about Johann Bessler and the Orffyreus Code and my efforts to decipher it", so it should come as no surprise if I occasionally actually discuss the codes I've been working on.  It has always puzzled me that few people discuss my efforts at decoding Bessler's works, other than an occasional mention in passing.  I assume that it is either because the codes reveal little of interest other than continual references to pentagons and the number 5 - or the argument I put forward in explaining the codes does not convince. 

Despite the lack of anything of substance being revealed, obviously Bessler thought that anyone interested enough to find just the clues I've decoded, would seek to use the information to look for the real information so clearly hidden in all of his books.  Just because I have failed so far does not mean that someone else might not succeed and I hope that there are those out there working at the puzzle in an attempt to tease out what it was Bessler wanted us to know.

On my chief decoding site at theorffyreuscode.com I have provided brief but logical descriptions of the codes I've fathomed, and they are only the ones where the proof of their existence is irrefutable. There are others which are more speculative and I am reluctant to detail them because of that very fact; they are hard to prove.

But the real question that absorbs me is what do these many references to fives and pentagons signify? I always believed that he meant that there were five mechanisms needed, but my own experiments and his comments about having just one crossbar hardly made the wheel turn at all, implies that five is not necessary although it could be the optimum number.

Considering my findings about chapter 55 in his Apologia Poetica,  which you can read at http://www.orffyreus.net/html/chapter_55.html you can see that this part obviously contains a coded message, and the reinforcements of this message, 55 verses  etc, confirm this.  The only drawing in Apologia Poetica, the Apologia wheel as it has become known, contains a pentagram above the words, 'do you still not understand?'  Surely this book but not this drawing is the place to start looking for an answer?  

What of Das Triumphirende?  There do not appear to be any mysterious Xs, nor blanks in place of certain words - but there are drawings full of mystery and intrigue.  And even his Maschinen Tractate contains at least one pentagram... where? In number 55 of course!  Also MT137 an apparently random drawing thrown in to confuse has as its basis,  not the pentagram, but the 'circle of fifth's, well-known in musical instruction but not so well, outside the profession.  I speculated that it was the 'circle of fifths', because that particular invention is attributed to Johann David Heinichen, who coincidentally lived in the same village as Bessler did, at the same time, when he (Heinichen) was an aspiring musician, composer and teacher, and Bessler was making church organs for the same people.  The circle of fifths is built up from a simple circle within a square and the resulting points are connected at every fifth point producing the dodecagram familar to both MT readers and musicians.

So here are all the firmly decoded clues available for all since at least 2009 and yet barely a single comment about any of it.  What puzzles me further is that  there are people still trying to build wheels based on the Apologia wheel which I've demonstrated is no such thing but merely a pointer to a pentagram.  

Others ask questions which they could easily find the answer to, if they only look, or they make  assumptions  based on inaccurate information which leads to utterly erroneous conclusions because they did not take the trouble to study the information both here and on the besslerwheel forums.

PS Since I wrote this particular post more than ten years ago I have made a lot of progress in deciphering Bessler’s many clues and I now know exactly how Bessler’s wheel worked.  I’m building a proof of principle wheel which I hope to finish before my 80th birthday, early next year. 

JC

Johann Bessler’s Use of the 24 and 26 Letter Alphabet

In Germany and elsewhere in Bessler’s day it was customary to use a 24 letter alphabet and it has always been assumed that Bessler too, stuck to that tradition, but there is evidence that he used both forms of the alphabet.

It is clear that he was familiar with an old Hebrew albam code as this was self evident in the way he obtained his pseudonym, Orffyreus.  This system was also used extensively throughout history and was also known as the Caesar shift, and in modern times ROT13. ROT13 is a simple letter substitution cipher that replaces a letter with the 13th letter after it.

The image below demonstrates how BESSLER became ORFFYRE, which he then Latinised to become ORFFYREUS as was customary in his day.

In the above image matching alphabetic substitution letters share similar colours. Notice that the 24 letter alphabet includes two alternative letters I or J, and U or V.  But you have to work on the assumption that the two alternatives pairs of letter each have to remain in their number position as above.  If you use a 26 letter alphabet you get the pseudonym ORFFLRE instead of  ORFFYRE. This appears to confirm that Bessler used the 24 letter alphabet.

But at the same time that he adopted the pseudonym ORFFYREUS, Bessler added two more forenames to his Christened names.  He was born Elias Bessler, but added Johann Ernst to the former ones. So his new initials went from EB to JEEB.  Why?

Taking into consideration his use of the Caesar shift for his new name, when applied to JEE reveals itself as WRR, whether you use 24 or 26 letter alphabets. To explain this further we need to examine another code system.

In addition to alphabetic substitution Bessler also used alphanumeric substitution where each letter is replaced with its corresponding position in the alphabet.  For example A=1, B=2, C=3 etc.  in this case JEE becomes 9/10, 5,5.  WRR becomes 21, 17, 17.

In his first illustration in his book DAS TRIUMPHIRENDE (DT),  which shows an image of his wheel, Bessler, numbered all the parts from 1 to 24. This seems to confirm a 24 letter alphabet, at first sight.  Further examination of the image reveals the twelve hours of a clock with the eight o’clock line labelled with two 8s.  The labelling seems over generous leading to the suspicion that a specific number is sought.  Adding them together gives the total of 660.  When 660 is divided by the twelve hours of the clock, the number 55 appears.

This number is repeatedly indicated by Bessler and of course we just met it for the first time when we looked at the alphanumerical JEEB.  The two Es are the fifth letter in the alphabet, but what is the relevance?

I searched for the meaning of the number 5 and 55 within his books and this led to the discovery of some pentagrams hidden within some of Bessler’s illustrations.  The reason we can be sure of these conclusions and future ones is because Bessler always provided two or three ways of getting to the same solution through different ciphers, codes and clues. The number 5 is embedded in numerous places, too many to list here, but clearly it was important to him to make us aware of it.

I’ll leave the significance of the pentagrams for now, my aim in this post is to show why I think Bessler used both 24 and 26 letter alphabets.

There are four illustrations included in DT, we saw that the first one included a hidden clock face, the next one shows the wheel attached to an Archimedes pump, see below.  This illustration is also over labelled.  The letters when converted to numerals and added together total 324.  The number of letters actually used is 18 as we shall see in a moment and 324 divided by 18 equals 18, the basic pentagonal number.  Every angle in the pentagram is either 18 or a multiple thereof. 

But there is a curious feature used within the above image.  There are three letters which appear to be ‘W’s but could also be 10’s - and in fact in the list which accompanies the image they are listed as ‘10’s which is strange because all the other labels are alphabetical. The letter ‘J’ is omitted and the letter ‘T’ is the last letter used and therefore U and V are absent leaving just the W/10.  In the above picture I red ringed the W/10s. Why would he appear to use the letter W to blend in with the other letters when he meant the number 10?  Why not use the letter J if he meant 10 anyway?

The number of letters used is 17 and T is the last letter used and is the 20th letter, but you can add the W and get the 18 you need. So yes, 324 divided by 18 gives 18.

 

Bessler omitted the U and V, by stopping at T.  And by the including the letter ‘I,’ as the 9th letter he reached 17 letters.  If he had included the J to get it to 18, it would have appeared to be the alternative letter to ‘I’, therefore not part of the count of all the letters used.  By calling the ‘W’ by the number 10, it enabled him to reach his desired total of 324, but also by making it appear as a W’ he could add it to reach his desired 18.

You would be forgiven for thinking this is far too complicated and fanciful but I can assure you that this method of providing clues to the importance of the pentagram and its associated numbers is repeated in each of his illustrations as I can prove.

Bessler was telling us that he used both alphabets sometimes and there is one excellent reason why he did this.

Remember his use of the Caesar shift for his new name, when applied to JEE reveals itself as WRR, whether you use 24 or 26 letter alphabets. Remember that in addition to alphabetic substitution Bessler also used alphanumeric substitution where each letter is replaced with its corresponding position in the alphabet.  For example A=1, B=2, C=3 etc.  in this case JEE becomes 9/10, 5,5.  WRR becomes 21, 17, 17.

If we change to the 26 letter alphabet a familiar piece of information is revealed JEE becomes 10, 5, 5, and WRR becomes 23, 18, 18. Why is this important? Due to Bessler’s insistence on the importance of the pentagram and the number 5 and its associated number 18, we must assume that his intention was to draw our attention to it.  

It’s not easy to see but a careful study of the logo at the top of this page shows the ‘O’ of Orffyreus which also represents his wheel is supported on either side by the letter ‘R’ which means that the number 18, or the pentagram supports the wheel.  Notice also that the wording works in either direction just as his wheels did. RATH on the left side is written backwards.  It reads ‘RATH ORFFYRE’, Councillor Orffyre, his title when under the patronage of Karl, the Landgrave of Hesse Kassel.

Summary

At first sight there are most of the letters of the 24 letter alphabet present except both U and V are missing and J is also missing, although it’s atbash version is there masquerading as a ‘W’, but representing the number 10.  ‘i,’ is also present, representing the number 9.

In my opinion Bessler was telling us that he used both versions of the alphanumeric alphabet as well as the atbash cipher.

He used the name Johann to gain the J, this gave him the atbash version ‘W’.  Why was this significant?  He used the double V or interlocking Vs, to give in Roman numerals (which he also used frequently) two 5’s again.  There are other reasons which I won’t go into now for the need to show the letter W.

Of course he could have used the letter ‘I’, and used for example Ivan for his first name, but he needed the W and both ‘I’ and ‘J’ link to ‘W’, but in the 26 letter alphabet it is J that is the alphanumeric version which is needed, not I.

The letter R mimics part of the action in his wheel, as does the letter W. The ‘W’ as double ‘V’ represents the so-called ‘cross-bar’  but actually means the ‘cross’ or scissors mechanism.

Just to be clear there were five mechanisms in the early wheels.  Each mechanism had one weighted lever.  Each weighted lever worked with an adjacent weighted lever. Hence the obsession with the number FIVE, the pentagram, and its various angles all multiples of 18.

PS All of the above information has been posted in my blog over the last ten years but little notice is taken because almost everyone dismisses the idea that there were five mechanism required.  The reason for five mechanisms is simple.  With Bessler’s particular configuration he could get five mechanisms in the wheel which ensured a smooth rotation with no hesitation in each action.

JC