The Future of Bessler’s Wheel.

Assuming a working model of Bessler’s wheel materialises very soon,  apart from generating electricity, I’m always interested in other potential uses /benefits arising from the design.  The world will be looking for ways to use it.  We have discussed many times the potential for energy generation and there are as many doubters as proponents of the potential for useful electricity generation.  For me it's simply a matter of scale; if you can produce a tiny amount of electricty from a small machine then a bigger one will produce more.  How much bigger the wheel would have to be remains to be seen, but as I have often said, several wheels in series, on one axle obviously has a much larger capacity to produce multiple amounts of power than a single wheel.

There are other possibilities for its use.  In third world dry climates there is the potential to pump water from wells, irrigation of crops, greening of deserts, air-conditioning and refrigeration units.  In cold climates there are a number of ways to produce pwarmth into suitably insulated buildings. But what of the actual mechanical design, might it be adaptable for other mechanisms?

I mentioned many years ago that because a working Bessler wheel would be changing linear motion into rotary motion, there could be potential for using the Bessler mechanism in a similar but alternative way, a reversal of the action.  So a device which converts rotary motion into a linear one. I'm thinking of an inertial thruster but not a reactionless drive.  So the mechanism is driven in reverse by, say, a small electric motor which rotates a disc with a weight on its circumference to produce a linear force on one side of the rotating mechanism.  Such a device mounted on wheels should cause it to move in the direction of the force.  It might even offer a space drive. Who knows if it would work, but logically if Bessler's wheel worked then so should this.

Once the technique Bessler invented is known, better ways of achieving the same thing may well  be invented and his design relegated to the history books, but that is progress and highly desirable. 

JC

Johann Bessler’s Annual Greetings to Karl the Landgrave of Hesse Kassel.

At the beginning of November I posted a ‘curious fact’, about how Bessler sent Karl a special greeting each year, on his name day, full of thanks and praise for the Landgrave, these were full of his favourite chronograms, each including the date of the document.  One curious feature was the discovery that he composed special editions dated 1519, 1619, 1719, 1819, 1919 and 2019!  Perhaps he anticipate that it would take another 300 rears or so to decipher his clues and produce a working model of his wheel?

I promised to post photos of all twelve greetings in case anyone wanted to study them and see if they could find evidence that there was hidden information in them.  The quality is not good but at least they are in public view and perhaps copies of the originals can be obtained.

The quality is not brilliant but you can enlarge them and maybe find the key to unravelling any kind of information hidden in the page.  I might be wrong of course in which case these pages can remain available for future consideration or not.

Anyway I’ve wanted to publish these for a long time. Good luck.

JC

                                                                     JC

My Interesting Career up to and Including Bessler

Following recent comments about my suggested Bessler codes and my interpretations of them, here is a brief resume indicating my expertise and experience in this field of research.

Having studied Bessler and his history for many years before I wrote a biography about him, I self-published it on the internet.

My first web site went up in January 1997, 28 years ago.  I wasn’t very computer literate then and I was helped by my son-in-law who did have a degree in this very early days of computers and the internet.  Here’s a screen shot from the wayback machine.

After that I posted a number of web sites, each including unique information about Bessler.  Eventually I had to let some of them lapse as they were proving too expensive to maintain.  I obtained every scrap of documentation connected with Bessler, including his publications, and found a fascinating polymath with an incredibly eclectic range of interests and abilities who kindly translated everything I threw at him.  Mike was a genius but unfortunately no longer with us. It is to him we all owe our thanks and I would ask you all to recognise and realise thst every quotation you use from this subject and published me, was originally translated by Mike.

The other web sites still active are listed below and if you wish to know more I recommend you visit each.

One more thing; the search box at the top of the right hand panel is a good way to find and read any posts I’ve made on a subject.  For instance, ‘pentagram’, ‘Five’, ‘golden ratio’, ‘137’,I ‘codes’ to mention just a few.  Each page comes complete with all the comments.

I began my interest at age fifteen, but did not get into research until I was about 30.  I joined the British Library and had my first experience of actually handling a copy of ‘Das Triumphirende’ (DT). I knew Bessler’s own hands had touched the book where my hands had. Subsequently, during a visit Karlshafen I managed to buy a copy of that book!

I was in the BSAP for two years, before joining the RAF for seven years as an aircraft engine fitter before moving to the British Aircraft Corporation where I worked on the Concord. Later I became a consultant engineer.

I’ve been interviewed on the radio several times,  mostly  in the U.K., although I did experience a memorable interview on a Redneck radio.  Also I was flown to Rome by RAI 1 TV, to take part in a discussion about Bessler, and which was broadcast as a documentary.  I did not perform well as the discussion was in Italian and the ‘experts’ all spoke in Italian!

The following web sites contain much information and are well worth a visit.

Besslerswheel.com………………….my hypothesis

The Orffyreus Code. Com…………..a few of the real codes deciphered

orffyreus.net/ chapter 55 decoded…chapter 55 in DT, partially decoded.

Bessler’s Windmill …………………the extant ruins of the original windmill.

https://www.gravitywheel.com/…….where I’ll post a successful wheel, 

………………………………………or the remnants of my failure!

https://youtu.be/5BWVKtpuzn0…….my old YouTube video about Bessler’s wheel.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LpCRxk4YPaI …………the Italian documentary.

JC

Read My Hypothesis On Johann Bessler’s Wheel.

Over the last few years I have tended to spend a lot of time and effort in finding Johann Bessler’s clues and seeking the correct meaning and intention.  I hoped that armed with as  much information as possible and shared as widely as possible, I or some other person or persons would finally find the solution and share it worldwide.  At this time the numerous ways of spreading this kind of information could not be better, thanks to the internet and all its variants.

I know I’ve come in for a bit of stick for not sharing my designs but hopefully my work on this old website will prove interesting. Click on each button on the left side of the page for more information.

www.besslerswheel.com

So in  2009 I began this blog and the following year I published my latest thinking about Bessler’s wheel.   Since 2009 my blog has managed to publish 869 posts and receive 30958 comments, 2862932 views.  I also made a YouTube video about Bessler in 2009 Viewed 19321 times.

The numbers look impressive until you realise they cover 15 years or so!

Fifteen years ago, I published some of my  ideas about how I thought Johann Bessler’s perpetual motion machine worked.  You can read them on my website at www.besslerswheel.com.  Back then, I had some interesting thoughts and I tried to express them with what I thought were valid points and apart from several details, I have more or less continued to support them.

My apologies for the fact that the text slightly overlaps its boundaries which makes it necessary to move it with two fingers in order to read the whole line, sometimes.  This happens on my iPad but not my laptop. I’m trying to alter the boundaries of the text but it’s not so simple.  

Briefly, I will first mention the words Bessler used to describe his machine thus, “according to the laws of perpetual motion, so arranged that certain disposed weights once in rotation, gain force from their own swinging, and must continue their movement as long as their structure does not lose its position and arrangement”

I will also point out that MT contains two illustrations containing swings.  MT 85 and 86.

You will discover my reason for sticking to the need for five mechanisms.

It was I, who introduced the ancient art of “kiiking” to the world of Bessler, as a curiosity. Just google the word “kiiking”.

You can read my theories on how Bessler’s wheel worked, they have moved on a bit since 2010, but I still believe they hold the key to success.

JC

Did Johann Bessler Find Another Place to Secure His Coded information?

When Karl the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel described Bessler’s wheel as simple and expressed surprise that it hadn’t been invented before, I think that gives a misleading impression about the wheel’s construction.   Yes, it was easy to understand when you could see it in action, but without that information available to one’s eyes, even with a written description it would be difficult to get the details correct.  When you add Bessler’s disguised hints and clues it confuses what one thinks one understands or knows.

Bessler also embedded pieces of information in some of his drawings, but again these were designed to inform but also to deflect instant conclusions from their eventual true meaning.  

Thus we find ourselves with so many pieces of information which can be pulled together resulting in a mishmash of half right and half wrong constructions which fail over and over again.

But in the end we can remind ourselves that the inventor succeeded in building a gravity-enabled wheel which rotated continuously for 54 days in one test and numerous short runs over many years.  It is clear that he intended us to find the correct solution, dropping hints that the information was available to anyone with a particular interest in looking. But he made it so damned difficult, that even though we believe him and we study every word and image he left, we still can’t seem to find the solution….yet.

His primary intention should he fail to find a buyer for his machine, would seem to have been achieving acknowledgement for inventing his perpetual motion machine.  Even though he occasionally referred to it, as just that; a perpetual motion machine;  he pointed out on more than one occasion, that his machine could run continuously but may be brought to a stop for a number of different reasons; worn parts, broken parts, external influences or just that everything wears out in time.  It could run continuously but not perpetually, but per se, as if it were a PM machine.

What was in his mind when he originally placed coded information in  Gruendlicher Bericht, which was his first publication? It looks like an advertising booklet and although there is little or no sign of coding, it does contain his first published image of his wheel, and that definitely contains embedded information about the design of his wheel.  Obviously he planned to hide information in plain sight to coincide with his first certified attestation that his machine was genuine.  The first public test was witnessed and signed by several people of more than local importance

Here’s a curious fact. Bessler sent Karl a special greeting each year, on his name day, full of thanks and praise for the Landgrave, these were full of his favourite chronograms, each including the date of the document.  One curious feature was the discovery that he composed special editions dated 1519, 1619, 1719, 1819, 1919 and 2019!  Perhaps he anticipate that it would take another 300 rears or so to decipher his clues and produce a working model of his wheel?

I have never studied these documents other than in a cursory manner because I did not have my good friend Mike Senior who did all the translation for my books available, because he passed away before I obtained them.  It is obvious from studying them that Bessler spent a lot of time and effort in designing them and I’m not sure if Karl would have had the time and inclination to do more than admire Bessler’s work.  This begs the question, why did Bessler take so much trouble?

One thing is certain; every single document issued and received by Karl, was duly recorded and saved, and I think that Bessler had this in mind when he created these items addressed personally to the Landgrave.  What better way to ensure any information hidden within the documents is still available every year until now?

I plan to publish pictures of them here as soon as I can do so.  I may have to post small versions of the originals as they are a little larger than A4.  I’ll try to make them as sharp as I can to allow downloads which can be enlarged. There are in total twelve pages some containing text and other chronograms with Bible references

My purpose in this is to make them available to as many people as possible so any attempts at translating and deciphering the content can be posted here or elsewhere.  The encoding appears to include some pages of chronograms with Bible references attached and that leaves the widest possible option for codes of varying kind, for deciphering.

NB    A chronogram is a word, phrase, or sentence with specific letters that are interpreted as Roman numerals to represent a date. These inscriptions can be found in various contexts, from historical monuments and poetry to modern applications like a type of phylogenetic tree with branch lengths proportional to time. The word itself means "time writing," combining the Greek words chronos and gramma.

NB    Karl’s nameday is not a standard historical record for him. However, he was born on August 3, 1654, and his baptism date was August 17, 1654, which may be related to a name day celebration.

There are examples of Bessler’s chronograms in all three of Bessler’s published books.

JC

A Brief Reminder About Bessler’s Machinen Tractate - The Toys Page.

I think most of us are familiar with Bessler’s Maschinen Tractate (MT) and in particular the ‘Toys’ page and its curious numbering.  At the foot of the page the numbers 138, 139,140 and 141.   This totals 558. The 55 seems a popular number for Bessler, but what of the 8?  Well the three numbers in 558 total 18 and that is the basic number in the pentagram, all the angles are multiples of 18.  So that might be his intention., but later we’ll see further information about this suggestion.

MT 137 comes just before the toys page, as it should, but before that is MT 136 which contains a mechanical construction and is the last figure containing any such thing.  MT137 shows a duodecagram, which is easily identified as circles of fifths, a well-known term used in musical theory. It is believed to point to the importance of the number 5. It also reveals the reason for the choice of number MT137.

Below is the image MT137, with the number 5 linked to 12.  

On a clock face the time at 5 o’clock looks like the image below.

The angles between the hands is shown in the picture below.

Thus we see the reason for numbering MT137 as he did.  

We can also see that he also embeds the golden ratio or mean as described by Fibonacci and Plato, in the picture below. This version comes from Euclid, 300BC.

To inscribe an equilateral and equiangular pentagon in a given circle….”

It seems as though Bessler intended there to be 141 images but having hidden or destroyed many of them that  revealed the secret of his machine he was attempting to fill in the gap between his last image of a mechanical construction, MT136, and the Toys page image to total 141.  But there was more to this than meets the eye. What  other reasons might there be for choosing to accentuate the number141 ?  Why else load the last image (the “Toys” page) and add four numbers to the bottom of the page?

The only factors of 141 are 3 and 47, and I’ve shown how Bessler embedded Euclid’s 47 th proposition describing how to construct a pentagram.  So was this yet another hint.

See the image below, of the Toys page.

The items are lettered ABCDE, but C and D appear twice.  To add to the confusion there is a plainly written 5, which might match the five lettered images but doesn’t seem to as there is rough drawing of a spinning top, lacking its string pull.  Confusing?

Splitting the drawings into five parts reveals some information.  In each division in 'A', you can see, drawn vertically, two uprights surmounted by a single one.. They bear a striking resemblance to the figures labelled 'C' and 'D', which are shown horizontally.  But why two 'C' and 'D's?  I think only one hammer is needed in 'C' plus the parallel rods.  The same in 'D' but the hammer used is rotated around the other way to point outwards or to the left, because of the spirals and it also lacks arms.

So for me ‘C’ is an active part at the same time ‘D’ is passive.  ‘A’ shows ‘C’ figures connected by a single rope or cord when ‘C’ falls it pulls ‘D’ up.

The item marked 'E' is the storks-bill, lazy tongs, scissor jacks or whatever you prefer to call them.  Item '5' is a spinning top, just in case no one makes the connection that this is all about a rotating device.  Without its cord or string it can’t work, just the same the other items on the Toys page. Maybe he’s suggesting the missing string, is present in Item ‘A’?

Item ‘B’ in my opinion represents the storks bill looked at from above with the alternate blobs showing the pins holding the storks bill together.  Looking along the drawing the red lines connect two of the outer pins and two inner ones plus one more for the weight.

The top end of item ‘A’ shows the weight attached to the end of a lever.  It shows two positions; one when the storks bill is closed and shortened;  the other with the storks bill extended.

JC

Don’t Just Simulate, You’ve got to Fabricate.!

 

Looking back I see I wrote something along the lines of this post back in 2009, 2012, 2019 and 2022!  Why am I so hooked on making working models, after all a working model can be simmed and will be if one ever materialises? 

But a suggestion on the Bessler wheel forum yesterday prompted me to re-examine my model and I saw a simple but crucial error that I  might have missed on a sim.

Anthony (a newbie) has this signature “it’s not where you see the weights on the wheel that matters, its where the wheel (FEELS) the weights thats important”.  Now that is a fact I learned so long ago that I almost forgot how important it is.

Imagine you place pendulum on a wheel with its pivot just below the axle, so the weight hangs downwards.  If you rotate the wheel a few degrees clockwise, the pendulum rotates anti-clockwise relative to the wheel.  The pivot bears the weight of the pendulum and as long as the pendulum moves relative to the wheel, the weight is pulling down on the pivot.

But if you place a stop in the path of the pendulum forcing it to stop and remain motionless, the weight is no longer felt on the pivot, but rather where the weight actually is, resting against the stop. 

As soon as the pendulum is free to move again the weight is again felt at the pivot.

The error I found was a simple mistake. A supporting rod I had fitted into the mechanism was too short,  meaning the part it was supporting did not have its pivot close enough to the axle to gain a big enough advantage?  Unless you keep the fact mentioned in Antony’s signature in mind you might not even realise you’ve overlooked it.  Like I did!  

Actually I didn’t forget about it, but I was so intent on correcting what I saw as an unnecessarily long lever in a drawing, I  shortened it too much.

JC

Did Bessler’s Perpetual Motion Machine Arrive Before ItsTime?

There has been some discussion about the potential power available from Bessler’s wheel.  Comparisons have been made between the Merseburg wheel and the Kassel wheel.  The two wheels were of a similar diameter but the Kassel wheel was 18 inches thick compared with the Merseburg wheel’s 12 inches.  The Kassel wheel, which turned more slowly than its predecessor, the Merseburg wheel, was designed to complete a long endurance test, of over one month of continuous rotation, which it easily achieved.  Clearly a slower speed of rotation would withstand wear and tear to a greater degree than a faster rotation.  The design had to be modified to achieve the slower rotation speed but the machine was still able to lift similar weights to previous machines and I suggest the extra thickness of the wheel satisfied this need.

Bessler wrote that he could make wheels of greater or smaller size and with various speeds.  He went on to suggest that the useful output of the machine could be multiplied by increasing the size of the interior workings, or by making wheels of up to 20 ells in diameter, about 37 feet! In 1700, John Rowley built a tidal wheel to pump water from the Thames to the Royal family at Windsor which measured 24 foot long by 12 foot high, so Bessler’s estimate was quite possible.  An alternative number of identical wheels could be mounted on a single axle thus multiplying the power of the resulting assembly many times.

These suggestions make good sense, so deriding the potential power possible from Bessler’s wheel without considering how one might increase the output and versatility of this remarkable invention seems like “throwing the baby out with the bath water”, an old German proverb.

Bessler’s suggestion that his wheel could help pump water from water flooded mines was never developed due to the Newcomen steam engine, but increasing the power of his wheel was never examined due to the distrust built up by the maid’s false accusations.

This does raise the question, what could have his perpetual motion machine be used for?  He suggested mills, and irrigation but satisfactory alternatives were in daily use and there was little call for his invention to be brought in to test the market.  Of course electricity generation would have provided an excellent use for his machine, but he was about 300 years too early! But not now - the time is right, with global warming, pollution from fossil fuels, lack of affordable, low tech ways of generating  electricity Bessler’s wheel is needed today.

JC

Johann Bessler’s Coded Secret Information is Ignored.

I expect everyone knows I believe Bessler’s wheel had five mechanisms.  Before you move on and dismiss what I’m going to write, just hang on for a moment.  I’m satisfied with my current and long held belief for excellent reasons, the majority of which you don’t know.

Imagine you are Bessler and you have this amazing secret which you believe is worth a fortune, but you can’t tell anyone anything about it, because you want to sell it first.  You decide that you are going to publish details of the secret but hidden in such a way that no one will ever find out unless you reveal the way to decipher it.  You believe that there are three possible outcomes.

Firstly you sell the machine and it’s secret and you decipher all the ciphers and publish the coded information and the world will gradually realise how exceedingly clever you have been.

Secondly, you never find a buyer and you die with the secret intact.  But you have sold many copies of your books.  You have inserted various comments that the books contain secret information about the Perpetual Motion machine and a clever person can study the books and eventually decipher the clues and discover the secret.

Lastly, someone else discovers the same solution and publishes it.  You prove your priority by demonstrating the clues and codes published in your three books containing all the information, from years before.

It wasn’t just the money he wanted, Johann Bessler sought recognition, which is why he went to so much trouble encoding information in various ways, adding secondary codes for confirmation in many places.  He stated that he would rather die without having sold his secret, than just give it away.

To continue imagining you are seeing things as if you were Bessler; before you even go public with your invention, you have planned everything.  First you adopt a pseudonym, but it’s not just an assumed name, it’s a clever contrivance, ostensibly to disguise your real name, but actually since everyone knows your real name, it appears to be a stage name.  Simple codes were in popular use at the time, and it was very obvious that Bessler chose an easily deciphered code name, using a well known code such as the Caesar shift, to call himself Orffyreus.

Why?  Because the use of a simple code in his assumed name, plus the few words of encouragement to readers of his books to search for the encoded secret, was intended to make people like myself and others, search for the coded information and decipher it. Exactly what we have been trying to do for many years.

At the end of the day, we know that Bessler invented a way to obtain continuous rotation enabled by the force of gravity.  We know he left secret information which was designed to show us how his machine worked.  Why on earth would we ignore this wealth of clues and codes and hints and struggle onwards dismissing this treasure trove of information?

I’ll post some of the clues I’ve uncovered and deciphered in another post, most of which I haven’t shared before.

JC