The Legend of Bessler’s Wheel and the Orffyreus Code

I’m posting the Legend of Bessler’s wheel again because I’m going to be working hard on finishing my reconstruction of Bessler’s wheel.  It’s been a busy year with little time to spend in my garage where the build should have been happening, but time is racing by and I must concentrate on finishing the job.  My apologies for promising fewer blogs but the sooner I finish it the sooner I can publish everything.


Please feel free to comment if you wish and I will try to check back daily. So here it is again, 


                                              The Legend of Bessler's wheel.


Karl the Landgrave of Hesse permitted Bessler to live, work and exhibit his machine at the prince's castle of Weissenstein.  Karl was a man of unimpeachable reputation and he insisted on being allowed to verify the inventor's claims before he allowed Bessler to take up residence  This the inventor reluctantly agreed to and once he had examined the machine to his own satisfaction Karl authorised the  publication of his approval of the machine.  For several years Bessler was visited by numerous people of varying status, scientists, ministers and royalty.  Several official examinations were carried out and each time the examiners concluded that the inventor's claims were genuine.


Over several years Karl aged and it was decided that the inventor should leave the castle and he was granted accommodation in the nearby town of Karlshaven. Despite the strong circumstantial evidence that his machine was genuine,  Bessler failed to secure a sale and after more than thirty years he died in poverty.  His death came after he fell from a windmill he had been commissioned to build.  The windmill was an interesting design using a vertical axle which allowed it to benefit from winds from any directions.  


He had asked for a huge sum of money for the secret of his perpetual motion machine, £20,000 which was an amount only affordable by kings and princes, and although many were interested, none were prepared to agree to the terms of the deal. Bessler required that he be given the money and the buyer take the machine without viewing the internal workings.  Those who sought to purchase the wheel, for that was the form the machine took, insisted that they see the secret mechanism before they parted with the money. Bessler feared that once the design was known the buyers could simply walk away knowing how to build his machine and he would get nothing for his trouble.


I became curious about the legend of Bessler’s Wheel, while still in my teens, and have spent most of my life researching the life of Johann Bessler (I’m now 74).  I obtained copies of all his books and had them translated into English and self-published them, in the hope that either myself or someone else might solve the secret and present it to the world in this time of pollution, global warming and increasingly limited energy resources.


For some ideas about Bessler’s code why not visit my web sites at www.theorffyreuscode.com

On 6th June, 1712, in Germany, Johann Bessler (also known by his pseudonym, Orffyreus) announced that after many years of failure, he had succeeded in designing and building a perpetual motion machine.  For more than fourteen years he exhibited his machine and allowed people to thoroughly examine it.  Following advice from the famous scientist, Gottfried Leibniz, he devised a number of demonstrations and tests designed to prove the validity of his machine without giving away the secret of its design.


This problem was anticipated by Bessler and he took extraordinary measures to ensure that his secret was safe, but he encoded all the information needed to reconstruct the machine in a small number of books that he published. He implied that he was prepared to die without selling the secret and that he believed that post humus acknowledgement was preferable to being robbed of his secret while he yet lived.


It has recently become clear that Bessler had a huge knowledge of the history of codes and adopted several completely different ones to disguise information within his publications.  I have made considerable advances in deciphering his codes and I am confident that I have the complete design.


Johann Bessler published three books, and digital copies of these with English translations may be obtained from the links to the right of this blog.  In addition there is a copy of his unpublished document containing some 141 drawings - and my own account of Bessler’s life is also available from the links.  It is called "Perpetual Motion; An Ancient Mystery Solved?"  Bessler's three published books are entitled "Grundlicher Bericht", "Apologia Poetica" and "Das Triumphirende...". I have called Bessler's collection of 141 drawings his Maschinen Tractate, but it was originally found in the form of a number of loosely collected drawings of perpetual motion designs. Many of these have handwritten notes attached and I have published the best English translation of them that I was able to get. Bessler never published these drawings but clearly intended to do so at some point.


JC

Kreuz Means the X in Storksbill/Pantograph.

In a recent blog I posted a small coded clue, thinking that if anyone had a go at it they would need help in solving it.  Wrong!  One anonymous person got it quite quickly.  The clue was  an anagram, which looked like this.  “Karl’s next mobilizers sunk.”

The solution was this, “kreuz means x in storksbill"

Check this earlier blog

Friday, 10 November 2017

Johann Bessler's so-called Cross-Bars

So what does this mean?  When I published Apologia Poetica my translator suggested Kreuz meant crossbar, as there were literally dozens of potential meanings available depending on the required meaning and he could not think of anything more suitable. But actually the basic translation is “cross”.  Knowing Bessler’s propensity for offering clues which are vague or have more than one meaning and with no apparent reference to other things, it took me a while (about 30 years!) to make the connection.  The X's also known as “crosses” are a basic component of the famous “storksbill” or “pantograph”. Some shown in red and some in yellow as below.

When Bessler says that when he used just one cross, the wheel scarcely moved (paraphrased) but when he added more it turned, he simply meant that you needed more than one. 

This seems to me to suggest that although the pantograph mechanism was used, it was a small part not requiring a lengthy travel, just more than one link. He possibly designed it as one rectangle without an X to begin with and then adapted it as he saw fit. 

He also takes the opportunity to throw in the information that he used cords and pulleys as well as weights. If you study my version of the “Toys” page (first published here on Wednesday, 16th January 2013) you will see that I've divided each component of 'A' into five equal parts.  The divisions run across the page to include the scissor mechanisms.  The line including the top of 'A' and 'B' division includes three pieces of scissor mechanisms, but only two complete X's.  This I believe was done because he identified the parts of the scissor mechanisms with the X for purposes of confusion, but although there are three complete pieces of scissors, there are only two X;s, hence the suggestion he needed more than one.

Note the inherent suggestion that there are only five mechanisms required, as claimed by myself and hinted elsewhere and everywhere in Bessler's work.

JC.

Fabricate Not Simulate....Again.

I know I’ve posted on this subject before but I've always maintained that the only way to solve the problem of Bessler’s wheel is to try to build it and not to try and do it with computer simulations alone. If I was a betting man I would wager that Bessler’s wheel will not be discovered without a build, a working model.  I don’t just mean that a working model is essential in proving your solution works, no what I mean is, all those who design through simulations alone will not succeed in finding the solution.  The reason why is clear to me and has been amply proven (to myself) several times over.

For instance I believe I have had the solution to Bessler’s  wheel for several months but knowing how it was done and discovering how to make it work, in the flesh so to speak, is another matter altogether.  You see I had the design down pat and I manufactured the pieces and put them together and for reasons I didn’t understand at first, one part of the mechanism I made simply would not move according to the way I wanted it to do.  The action was wrong. It was close but not close enough.  I made numerous alterations to try to correct its action but I could not get it right.  I searched through Bessler’s works and eventually I found the answer in the ‘Toys’ page.  The answer was in front of me for years and years, but I had thought it was a clue to another part of the mechanism.  The part I thought it applied to had already been shown with the correct information in another place. So this particular part shown in the ‘Toys’ page revealed the correct alteration to the mechanism and as soon as I made the changes it worked in accordance with my design intentions.

The point I’m making is that I would probably never have thought of the adjustment if I hadn’t interpreted it correctly in the end, thanks to the particular feature on the ‘Toys’ page.  But if I had simulated it without a prior build I might have assumed that my design was right and very likely it would have been rejected. Or perhaps the simulation would have approved the design, wrongly, but then a working model would have failed. So even though I might simulate my design and it either proved I was right, or proved I was wrong, I would not have discovered that the mechanism was wrong until I tried to build a proof of principle machine. Through building your design you learn and discover new designs, new concepts, think through to new angles and even that old favourite, think outside the box.

Discovering that the mechanism would not act correctly did not put me off because I knew that the basic concept was right and that some kind of alteration or addition was needed to make everything work together.  I tried several variations to bring the mechanism under my control but I didn’t think of the one thing which would have worked.  Bessler seems to have provided hints for every obstacle encountered along the way, but obviously it will only help those who build.

NB - I haven't finished building the  wheel yet,

JC

Johann Bessler and the Orffyrean Code

I’m posting the Legend of Bessler’s wheel again because I’m going to be away for a few days.  I’ll respond to any comments as and when it’s possible. My work on my wheel will get on faster when I return and with any luck I’ll finish it soon.

Please feel free to comment if you wish and I will try to check back daily. So here it is again, 

The Legend of Bessler's wheel.

On 6th June, 1712, in Germany, Johann Bessler (also known by his pseudonym, Orffyreus) announced that after many years of failure, he had succeeded in designing and building a perpetual motion machine.  For more than fourteen years he exhibited his machine and allowed people to thoroughly examine it.  Following advice from the famous scientist, Gottfried Leibniz, he devised a number of demonstrations and tests designed to prove the validity of his machine without giving away the secret of its design.

Karl the Landgrave of Hesse permitted Bessler to live, work and exhibit his machine at the prince's castle of Weissenstein.  Karl was a man of unimpeachable reputation and he insisted on being allowed to verify the inventor's claims before he allowed Bessler to take up residence  This the inventor reluctantly agreed to and once he had examined the machine to his own satisfaction Karl authorised the  publication of his approval of the machine.  For several years Bessler was visited by numerous people of varying status, scientists, ministers and royalty.  Several official examinations were carried out and each time the examiners concluded that the inventor's claims were genuine.

Over several years Karl aged and it was decided that the inventor should leave the castle and he was granted accommodation in the nearby town of Karlshaven. Despite the strong circumstantial evidence that his machine was genuine,  Bessler failed to secure a sale and after more than thirty years he died in poverty.  His death came after he fell from a windmill he had been commissioned to build.  The windmill was an interesting design using a vertical axle which allowed it to benefit from winds from any directions. 

He had asked for a huge sum of money for the secret of his perpetual motion machine, £20,000 which was an amount only affordable by kings and princes, and although many were interested, none were prepared to agree to the terms of the deal. Bessler required that he be given the money and the buyer take the machine without viewing the internal workings.  Those who sought to purchase the wheel, for that was the form the machine took, insisted that they see the secret mechanism before they parted with the money. Bessler feared that once the design was known the buyers could simply walk away knowing how to build his machine and he would get nothing for his trouble.

This problem was anticipated by Bessler and he took extraordinary measures to ensure that his secret was safe, but he encoded all the information needed to reconstruct the machine in a small number of books that he published. He implied that he was prepared to die without selling the secret and that he believed that post humus acknowledgement was preferable to being robbed of his secret while he yet lived.

I became curious about the legend of Bessler’s Wheel, while still in my teens, and have spent most of my life researching the life of Johann Bessler (I’m now 74).  I obtained copies of all his books and had them translated into English and self-published them, in the hope that either myself or someone else might solve the secret and present it to the world in this time of pollution, global warming and increasingly limited energy resources.

It has recently become clear that Bessler had a huge knowledge of the history of codes and adopted several completely different ones to disguise information within his publications.  I have made considerable advances in deciphering his codes and I am confident that I have the complete design. 

Johann Bessler published three books, and digital copies of these with English translations may be obtained from the links to the right of this blog.  In addition there is a copy of his unpublished document containing some 141 drawings - and my own account of Bessler’s life is also available from the links.  It is called "Perpetual Motion; An Ancient Mystery Solved?"  Bessler's three published books are entitled "Grundlicher Bericht", "Apologia Poetica" and "Das Triumphirende...". I have called Bessler's collection of 141 drawings his Maschinen Tractate, but it was originally found in the form of a number of loosely collected drawings of perpetual motion designs. Many of these have handwritten notes attached and I have published the best English translation of them that I was able to get. Bessler never published these drawings but clearly intended to do so at some point.

For some ideas about Bessler’s code why not visit my web sites at www.theorffyreuscode.com

Finally,  I'm repeating the coded clue I left at the bottom of my previous blog. An Anonymous person solved it. It's an anagram and below it is the solution;

Karl’s next mobilizers sunk.
Kreus meams X in storksbill.

JC

Revisiting www.besslerswheel.com, 'kiiking' and Bessler's MT.

In 2010 I updated my web site at www.besslerswheel.com to include what was then my latest thinking about Bessler’s wheel.  Now, thanks to a comment on this blog, almost ten years later I returned to my site to read what I had written back then, and I’m pleased to note that it is not too far from my current thinking in a general sense.  The swinging technique described there was not intended to imply that swinging was a necessary part of the mechanism, but I was looking for clues as to where and when to apply force to the wheel to make it turn and I used the actions of getting a swing started and accelerated to identify the best positions.

I introduced the sport of kiiking from Estonia, which, it seemed to me might have some useful input to the question of how Bessler’s wheel worked. In Estonian, ‘kiik’ means ‘swing’. In kiiking, the swing arms are made of rigid steel to enable a person to swing through 360 degrees passing over the pivot bar of the swing.  The person swinging is fastened to the seat by their feet in order to support them as the swing goes upside down during one complete rotation. In order to swing he (or she) begins to pump it by alternately squatting and standing up on the swing. The swing gains momentum and can rotate right around the pivot bar.  It is a competitive sport in Estonia and the person who succeeds in completing complete revolutions with the longest shafts is the winner.

 

Here is a link to the above town provided by PLMKRN with thanks

https://www.google.ee/maps/@59.4354789,24.7438651,3a,90y,111.62h,117.79t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sX5PX_yUhCNDf2vJpajZVAQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 

 

My theory was very simple, too simple compared to what I now know, but nevertheless I think it was fairly well argued considering it was done over ten years ago.  All the weights weigh the same and there are five mechanisms for reasons I explained on the web site.  Each mechanism has two weights so there are ten in total.  These facts still apply to my current design

But now there are several alterations and additions which include the use of scissor mechanisms, cord and pulleys.  The fact that some of these are included on the 'Toys' page implies that they are required in some way but it is not as straightforward as many have assumed - and it is not as mysterious as others would have you believe. 

In my opinion, fascinating as the Maschinen Tractate (MT) is, it was originally designed as a teaching aid to be used in his Fortress of Wisdom for the education of his young apprentices in the arts and skills required in the local industries of that time.  I believe that the final pieces of information which he had intended to teach to his pupils would include how to build his perpetual motion machine.  So it would have contained full details of how and why it worked. Because of the arrest he was panicked into removing the final pages but I no longer believe that the 'Toys' page was added to replace them, I am convinced that this page was intended to be part of the whole MT.  This document too, originated from a wood cut, therefore it must have been constructed long before the arrest.  He would not have had time to create the wood cut and print it on paper, I can only surmise why he had made that page, but I think Bessler must have intended to include it within his MT, perhaps to tease his pupils with hints and clues.

To me the whole document appears to be the basis for discussion within his classrooms and that is why it includes some obviously incorrect drawings.  He intended to ask his apprentices if they can see why this or that won't work.  So what does the 'Toys' page tell us?  More on that in a future blog, but note that some of the pages in MT are not numbered but have a block ready for a number to be added, except for 'Toys' page.  The preceding page numbered MT137 also has a block but it is too big for just a number so I believe it has a bit more than just a number attached.

Just for fun here is a little clue.  It is well-known, but it has been misinterpreted and is quite important. Unfortunately I have disguised what it says!  

Karl’s next mobilizers sunk.

JC

Why I Believe in Johann Bessler Despite the Laws of Science?

I have been asked on numerous occasions, why do you continue to believe Johann Bessler’s claims to have built a Perpetual Motion machine despite what you have been taught about the subject?  My typical response has been to describe the overwhelming empirical evidence that proved, to my mind at least, that the inventor told the truth.  But this is only part of the picture; there must be an underlying reason that makes us continue, in the face of scientific argument, to seek Bessler’s solution, and to deny the loud accusations of fraud, delusion and naivety.

Could there be an unconscious psychological aspect to our  apparent obsession? Not anything psychologically defective, but rather I’m thinking of instinct and intuition and gut-feelings; in the unconscious assimilation of information which is processed by the brain and revealed to the conscious mind through a variety of ways.  Instinct is a genetic inheritance which can have a psychological ingredient that is generally thought to enhance our ability to cope with vital environmental contingencies, but it does not necessarily lead to any intellectual solution  which we might seek.  But we often say that we know instinctively that Bessler’s wheel was genuine.

Intuition is a person's capacity to obtain or have direct knowledge and/or immediate insight, without observation or reason. It's the "gut feeling" you get. People often place an enormous amount of faith on their intuition even making decisions that seem to go against all available evidence. I prefer the term ‘insight’. Insight is the capacity to gain an accurate and deep understanding of someone or something.  

The ecstatic feelings of triumph when you feel that you have made a discovery or sensed some progress in your search for a solution might be the carrot part of a carrot and stick approach, but I doubt if it is enough to overcome the depressing effect of years of utter failure.  So what is it that drives us onward with something we are told quite remorselessly is a waste of time and energy, not to mention financial resources? Obviously it can only be a gut feeling or intuition if we “know” we are right and the golden cup at the end of the rainbow is just out of sight, but available if we can only find the way.

Of course one needs to be an incurable optimist as well, because repeated failure can dull anyone's enthusiasm for a task.  So intuition, insight and optimism seems to be the key ingredients, plus a good analytical and open mind, able to consider any ideas, no matter how apparently wrong, and the determination not to give up.  Finally the ability to build to your design because without a working model you have nothing, as I have been reminded countless times.

So we who labour long and intensely in the search for the solution to Bessler's wheel know intuitively that those who would have us believe that we are wasting our time, are wrong, so very wrong that we simply cannot wait to prove it.  In this perpetual pursuit perseverance is paramount.

JC

Update - Bessler’s Wheel.

This is a brief account about my work on my wheel over the last couple of years.

Two or three years ago a friend made a simulation of a design which I believed at the time would work. The sim revealed the flaw in my thinking but also gave me some guidance in the right direction. There has to be at least two actions and although I had two, one of them had no positive effect on the wheel’s motion.

Building the first successful Bessler wheel, is an ongoing perpetual job, pardon the pun, but it has to be, to get to the solution.  I’ve tried getting my head around simulations, but generally I prefer to build.

I often think I’ve found the correct basic concept but it is never quite that straight forward. I find that the process of laying out the pieces in their predicted places and moving them by hand is more informative than a sim. It is at this early stage that you can see where the design needs to be altered, or discarded.

Curiously I have occasionally worked on a design which I had just thought of, and realised that it has echoes of a previous design that I might have rejected years ago - it happens.  The new inspiration can reveal some aspect of the original design that you overlooked initially, or made an incorrect assumption about how it was supposed to work, so it makes sense not to reject too quickly.

So where am I now?  The concept and the design work are done.  It is more complex to make than it may seem once it’s in action....hopefully. I’m gradually putting the mechanisms together, but I sometimes only get a ten minute slot to work on it, but I will finish eventually.

If you saw the wheel in action you might think that’s so simple, just like Karl did. He understood how it worked, but could he have correctly imagined how it might work without seeing it first and in action?  To me it’s like learning a foreign language; translating given foreign words into English is hard at first but it gets easier, but translating English into another language is harder because you are not given the foreign words to translate the English into.  Karl understood how it worked by watching the mechanisms in action, but he could not have envisaged the design and then made it.  It’s the same for all of us.

As time races by and I’m struggling to finish my wheel, I adjust pieces which are the correct ones but which are not acting exactly as I predicted, but then with a little consideration I get the right action. A few months ago, that  process then led me to discover yet another of Bessler's feature which I had ignored, but without which the mechanical action does not produce the desired result.

There is a lot of adjustments and minor alterations to make even if you have what you believe to be the complete solution in your mind. I have found that I can ‘see’ the action in my mind but the reality sometimes reveals an unwanted additional problem. This can be resolved if you are physically building, but not in a simulation, in my experience.

You may have correctly assumed that my perfect design should be precisely the same as Bessler's, but sometimes I encountered a problem in my build which seemed insurmountable, but further study of Bessler’s clues led me to  make a connection to a piece of information which I had ignored as a piece of non-information, this has happened on several occasions and that is why I like to build rather than use sim software. Having said that I think a sim would be useful to validate a design once it is finished and working.  In other words you don’t really know if your design is capable of being validated until you know that it works because you have a working model, and that is when you have definitely finished the wheel, and there are no more alterations to make because it works!

It might seem pointless to get verification that a wheel works when you have a working model already, but to my mind seeking verification of a design which you haven't tested in a build is even more pointless, because there are features of mechanisms which don't appear until you build them.  Mechanisms can lock up at either or both ends of their range of movement, and that can lead to loss of part of the advantage indicated in the original design.

 I will continue to work on this wheel until it’s finished and then publish the results and the design, but doubt that  seek verification with a sim.

JC