Johann Bessler and the Orffyreus Code

I’m temporarily recycling a previous post about the Legend of Bessler’s wheel,  because I need to concentrate on finishing my own attempted reconstruction of his machine.

At my age I find time seems to be accelerating and weeks shoot past and I seem to have accomplished very little.  I am determined to finish it really soon so I can prove to myself, at least, that I am right and that there are sufficient clues from Bessler to permit anyone to build his wheel. Success would mean that the design I’m working on would match his, which I know many people doubt is possible.  Obviously I will post the information here first, if it works - or even if it doesn’t.

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.

After more than thirty years he died in poverty.  He had asked for a huge sum of money for the secret, £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 verifying that it worked.  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. It is well-known 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 72).  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 one of his codes; the simplest one, and I am confident that I have the complete design.  Due to unfortunate family circumstances I am currently unable to complete the build I have undertaken but shall return to it as soon as possible and I sincerely believe that 2018 will see the reconstruction of Bessler’s wheel.

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 published three books; "Grundlicher Bericht", "Apologia Poetica" and "Das Triumphirende..."

I have also published Bessler's collection of 141 drawings and I have called it Maschinen Tractate, but it was originally found in the form of a number 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 one of my web sites at www.theorffyreuscode.com

One last thing.  Perpetual Motion machines have been utterly proscribed and Johann Bessler’s claims ridiculed - however, it seems that more than a handful of scientists have now come to the conclusion that it might theoretically be possible to design a mechanical system which is continuously out-of-balance and therefore will turn continuously using the repeated fall of weights for energy.  Gravity but not directly.  These open-minded people remain tight lipped for now, awaiting proof of their hypothesis.

JC

Gottfried Bessler, a little speculation.

Following up my previous post, I’ve received a couple of emails pointing out that Gottfried Bessler, Johann’s brother, might be another potential source of information about Bessler’s wheel.  It seems to me that he could have had some knowledge of the machine’s construction, if so, its possible that he could  have passed it onto his children at some point.

Bessler says he first obtained assistance from a relative called Bessler, who worked as an artist, organ maker and turner.  In Johann Bessler’s account of Christian Wagner’s unscheduled examination of the wheel, which happened when Bessler had fallen and injured his head, he says that Gottfried allowed Wagner and Borlach to view and test the wheel. It seems safe to assume that he was referring to Gottfried when he called him his relative, and on the occasion of Wagner's visit, the original German refers to his assistant as “mein Matz” which has numerous meanings, but the most likely is “my little brother/toddler/squirt” etc.  In other words, a term of affection.  We know therefore, that Gottfried was his assistant from the beginning.

To show the wheel to the visitors, Gottfried must have had access to the machine.  As Johann was unwell and confined to his bed, the only way his brother was able to show Wagner and Borlach the wheel turning, was if he borrowed a key to get into the room containing the wheel - or he customarily had access to it anyway.

It seems unlikely that Gottfried could have assisted Bessler for two or three years without learning somethings about the wheel.  So if Gottfried knew how the wheel worked he probably had to swear on oath never to reveal it, and we know Bessler often used oaths to secure silence.  I imagine he might have been overawed by Johann enough to obey him. He was some eight years younger than his brother, about twenty-two or so and probably, happy to oblige his far more charismatic older brother.

But it is possible that he passed on what knowledge he had to his children, perhaps after Johann died. Unfortunately I don’t know if he had any, but I have contacted my source to see if he has any relevant information, but a brief search of various lists on line does not seem to help identify which of the many Besslers is the right one, if any of them are.  it is fairly certain that the information is available, but it may take a while to find it.

We know that apart from a brief visit to London, he lived most of the remainder of his life with Johann and their parents in, at first Kassel, and subsequently in Carlshafen.

There is one small detail which might be completely innocent, or it might be a hint at something of interest to Øystein? At one point in Apologia Poetica, Bessler makes reference to his blue-apron’d assistant,  which we know referred to Gottfried.   I did some research into the use of the term during Bessler’s era and there are references to Free Masons and their use of aprons and in particular, blue ones.  I’m not saying this is conclusive, merely possibly suggestive of a link.  It may also refer to apprentices, which of course also links to Free Masons, but also to indentured apprenticeships.

Blue aprons in modern times are closely linked to chefs  who wear them while learning to cook, and it is difficult to eliminate that relation from the one we seek which was evident over 300 years ago.

JC

Johann Bessler's Family and his descendants?

Someone recently mentioned the possibility that there might be a living descendent of Bessler's who might have inherited some information about the wheel.  I'm not convinced that there is a chance that this might be possible, but I don't like to rule it out. So what follows is the only information I have to date on his parents, brother, wives and children. It may be that someone might be more familiar with ancestry research than I, and find the limited information below of use in their research.
 
Elias Bessler, (he assumed the other names Johann Ernst at a later date) was the son of the day-labourer Andreas Bessler, and his wife Maria, née  Maucke.  He was baptised in Zittau on 6^th May 1681; his parents having been married in Zittau on 11^th February 1680.   Customarily, baptism took place no more than three days after birth.

His brother, Gottfried, was baptised in Zittau on 26^th May 1688.  There were three other children who all died early or were still born.

Dr. Christian Schumann, the mayor and physician of Annaberg,was persuaded to ask  Bessler to heal his desperately ill daughter. The girl recovered and became Orffyreus’s wife.  Her name was Barbara Elisabeth Bessler née Schumann.  She died 10.05.1726 at the age of 40 from tuberculosis 

Bessler had four children with Barbara Schumann, they were;

1. Name unknown, died before 1726.

2. Maria Barbara Elisabeth, born 5.1.23, married George Conrad Gercke in 1735.  He was a widowed preacher.

3. Johanna Maria Christina, born 9.12.23, died 4.2.24 - aged just three weeks.

4. Carl Friedrich, born 6.10.25. His Godfather was the Landgrave, but he wasn't present at the baptizing. Died 5.5.26  aged seven months.

Infant mortality rate was high in those days regardless of class.  Karl and his wife Amelie, had
seventeen children, fourteen of whom lived long enough to have names, but only nine reached twenty years of age or more. 

 
On January 31st in 1731 Orffyreus married Catharina Elisabeth Krone (born in 1713)
They had five children only one of which survived to adulthood.as below

1. Johanna Magdalena Elisabeth, born 6.4.31

2. Johanna Wohlradina [very strange name] Sybilla, born 15.7.34, died 16.09.43

3. Catharina Conradina 30.10.37

4. Magdalena Catharina, 25.11.39

5 Margaretha Maria, 25.7.45, married Amtmann Kurtzbube in Fürstenberg.

Catharina Elisabeth Krone was the daughter of Castle blacksmith, Johann Adam Krone, who died 14.6.50 in the age of 76.

Besslers father, Andreas, died 19.6.27 in the age of 87, he lived with Bessler for his remailng years as did his mother, Maria.

His brother Gottfried, died 3.5.65 and was buried  in "Orffyreischen Begräbnishaus" (Bessler's crypt) 

'docfeelsgood', a well known and respected forum member of Besslerwheel forum, sadly no longer with us, was convinced that the court blacksmith, Adam Krone might have passed on the secret of the wheel's construction to his children because there is a letter in which, in return for his daugjhter's hand in marriage, Bessler would share everything about his wheel.  There is no evidence that he did so, but just in case there is such a possibility the only potential source might be Margaretha Maria, who married Amtmann Kurtzbube in Fürstenberg.  I do not know whether Adam krone had any other children, but that is also a possble avenue of research.

I think the following explains that 'Amtmann' is a title. ' 

The Amtmann was usually a member of the nobility or a cleric. In towns, he was also often a member of the wealthy classes amongst the citizenship. He resided in an Amthaus or Amtshaus and collected taxes from the district (Amtsbezirk), administered justice and maintained law and order with a small, armed unit.  [wikipedia]

Alternatively a search for any descendants of his first daughter’s marriage to George Conrad Gercke might be worth researching.

Good luck to anyone who wishes to take on this task, please share anything you discover even if it results in a dead end.

EDIT - Some additional informationhas come in from a similar post I made on BW forum.  'Helmholtz' posted the  following.

"1. There was another daughter called Dorothea Christina Sophie who married Emanuel Christian Wolff.
2. One of her sisters married Johann Georg Musi, Hofgeismar, who still lived in 1792.
3. Not Gottfried but his widow died in 1765 and was burried in Carlshaven. I think it would be more interesting if one could trace Gottfried, not Crone, because Gottfried was familiar to Bessler, not Crone.

It was one of Besslers "Privilegia" that he himself as well as his descendants & compagnons should be remitted from paying taxes. When Bessler impregnated Crone's 17-year-old daughter, it might have been a good compensation to call him a compagnon not to share any secrets (why should he?) but the exemption of taxes."


JC

Bessler’s Codes Exist - For What Reason Other Than FYI?

I’ll be away for few days from the weekend but if possible I’ll respond to any comments about things in this post.

I have often argued that I thought that Bessler’s use of various pieces of code such as the atbash cipher or Caesar shift which he used to obtain the name Orffyreus from Bessler, indicated an interest in codes.  He also mentioned that  he had learned about the ‘Book of Nature’, and ‘The Language of Angels’, which are well known allusions to historic writings of a secret nature. His actual use of Hebrew hyroglyphics in one of his books at least supports his claim to have been taught some Hebrew.  I have copies of his panagyrics to Karl which include numerous examples of his favourite obsession with chronograms, including some dated, 1519,1619, 1719, 1819, 1919 and 2019!

There are numerous occasions where he uses alphanumeric codes, easily proven, and also alphabetic substitution which again are not difficult to see.  He also inserts the the initial capital letter of his three enemies, Gartner, Wagner and Borlach on several occasions within a single sentence with the initial letter accentuated. Often the sentence is less than complimentary and is clearly a way of critising the gang of three without actually naming them. I mention these minor examples to show his familiarity and habitual use of such systems for secrecy in writing.

Although these are quite innocuous pieces of code, when comments such as ‘those who seek answers should study this little book’, (paraphrased from memory) are taken into account, one starts to think perhaps there are other pieces of code which may contain more important information.  I have barely scratched the surface of the huge amount of information embedded in these four books, so why is it that so many people dismiss the possible existence of precise instructions for building Bessler’s wheel?

I think it is because no-one has published anything which has been derived from a  deciphered piece of code which even looks as if it might refer to some mechanical design.  To me this is obviously part of Bessler's plan; get people interested in codes, simple ones first, and then hope that they will search out the harder ones and eventually get his full meaning.  But he didn't want this to happen to quickly, hence the difficulty of getting to the truth.

Another possible reason is that since no-one believed him anyway, despite all the evidence that he was telling the truth, those people with a particular competence of code breaking were probably convinced that the physics teachers were correct, and what Bessler proposed and exhibited was impossible.

So given the likelihood that he did intend to publish coded information about the construction of his wheel, that may be why he expended an inordinate amount of time publishing his ‘Orffyreus Declaration of Faith’, containing 141 bible references, some of which don’t exist in any known bible?  Why did he duplicate five of them?  Why did he use 55 verses in chapter 55? I could go on, but why not visit my web site and see what an astounding document within his Apologia Poetica this is? I think he used the passage above to describe in his own words the way his wheel worked to complement his drawings.   See my work on the Declaration of  Faith by Orffyreus at...

http://www.orffyreus.net/

And for more examples of Bessler’s use of codes see my website at....

www.theorffyreuscode.com

The amount of time he must have spent divising and implementing such secret writing must surely have had a purpose, other than to impress or confuse his readers.  What possible purpose could he have had other than the desire to convey secret information to his readers at some point in the future, a future that might not be reached until after he had passed away.

JC

Update for August 2018 - Are there some missing Clues?

I have been finding the occasional half hour or so to work on my Bessler-wheel and I am confident it will be finished some time in September or October.  I’m away for a week in September but I hope to finish it once I return from my brief holiday.

I'm assuming that this latest construction will work - and my test mechanisms does perform exactly as I planned.  There have been minor construction problems which had to be overcome along the way but so far I have dealt successfully with each one.  They are not serious setbacks, typically, a case of rearranging some pieces so they don’t collide with other parts of the same mechanism.

Despite the apparent difficulties in understanding the clues and interpreting them correctly the concept is not complicated and Bessler could have provided easier clues, but then his fear of someone interpreting them too soon, prevented him.  This raises an interesting question.  Did he ever expect anyone to decipher his clues in his lifetime?  One would assume not, in which case, why did he think someone would be able to do so after his death?  Was there some additional clue that he hoped would assist in deciphering his clues after his death.  I mention this because I have not found any evidence that anyone attempted to solve the clues during his life time.

I’m sure that, in the event that he failed to find a buyer for his secret, he intended to leave enough information available after his death to allow people to reconstruct his machine and give him the acknowledgement he so desperately needed.  He commented on that very point in his Apologia Poetica and said he'd be content with post humus acknowledgement if he failed to sell his secret. That document was published in 1715, only three years after his first claim to have built a working perpetual motion machine, so even then he was considering the possibility of no-sale and what he could do about it. 

One can imagine the frustration he suffered, thinking that he could sell his secret quickly and get on with his future plans but then discovering things were not as easy as he had thought.  After only three years he was considering his options, and yet he continued for another ten years at Kassel castle without a sale.  No wonder he was described as ill-tempered and unpleasant.

In my book I surmised that since he sought permission to build a grave or mausoleum in the garden of his house in Carlshafen, it might have contained a clue, but unfortunately the latest estimate is that the garden is now part of a car park in town, so probably the gravestones which might have held a useful clue, have long since been obliterated or lost.

There is the possibility that the Maschinen Tractate drawings which he destroyed were intended to reveal the secret after his death because they would be found in his effects.  But as he wrote, the arrest made him destroy them, because once he was incarcerated someone might have gained access to his possessions, or his wife might have sold them, and the secret would be worthless.

JC

After 300 Years Bessler’s Wheel is Nigh.

One of the endless problems we face, researching Johann Bessler’s claims to have invented and built a perpetual motion machine, is the reaction of the vast majority of people.  It isn’t just the scientists, teachers, theoreticians, historians and other “experts”; it is ordinary people like ourselves who dismiss with either scorn, humour or irritation our tentative suggestion that Bessler might have been telling the truth.

I have never believed that Bessler’s perpetual motion machine supported itself with an internal closed energy supply and those people who mock us for thinking that, must think we are complete idiots. The definition of perpetual motion has altered somewhat in the intervening 300 plus years but I have always believed that it must have an external energy supply and in my opinion, gravity lies at the root of the energy consumed by Bessler’s wheel. Gravity is the best and probably the only force capable of providing continuous rotation to Bessler’s wheel.

The energy supplied by gravity enables the weights to fall, so some people insist that Bessler’s wheel was gravity-enabled not gravity-driven.  If a wheel can be built and the weights within,  fall due to the effect of gravity, and they are configured in a similar way to those within Bessler’s wheel, resulting in the wheel rotating continuously, then I cannot see anything wrong with calling it a gravity-driven wheel.

There are so many ways we use gravity’s force via some other medium, that to suggest it couldn’t have been done in Bessler’s wheel is just ignoring the evidence that his wheel worked.  I know all the arguments repeated parrot fashion ad nauseam against this subject and I have firmly dismissed them over the last few years.  At the beginning I wasn’t sure, but the more I studied it the more certain I became that I was right. Johann Bessler himself was not entirely happy with the designation, “perpetual motion” for his machine, but could only say that it was propelled by the weights.

I once thought it would be possible to persuade a scientist or professor of the truth of Bessler’s claims, and thence get him to devote time and money to studying Bessler’s wheel and in the end develop a working model.  But the reaction to my efforts was universal.  Fear of failure, fear of peer’s bad reaction, loss of reputation, fear of losing job, fear of not getting another, fear of family recriminations and worst of all, loss of standing in a very reputation conscious society.  I did find a scientist who was very interested but he wanted to see a working proof of principle model, before he committed time and money to its development. Nothing has changed.  We are on our own and even when we succeed there will be doubters and a vicious backlash from the intellectuals, and there are even some who suggest that a planet full of gravity-driven wheels will somehow effect earth’s rotation and stability and doubtless they will join in the clamour of discontent and disbelief.

But no one can argue with working gravity-wheel and once it’s design and method of application have been explained they will all eventually have to concur that they were wrong.

JC

A Vicious Circle and a Virtuous Circle.

Someone commented that using Bessler’s wheel to generate electricity was a medieval method and once the wheel’s concept was understood it could be applied for use with other forces such as gravity.  It made me think about other methods we use today which still relate to an origin first invented in years gone by.

Waterwheels have been used for at least 2500 years and although they are slowly going out of use their basic function to supply energy in some form or other is still being investigated in different ways, for instance tapping tidal energy.

Windmills too, are of ancient lineage, at least 2000 years of age, with similar uses, grinding corn etc. Again they’ve been adapted to produce giant electricity generators but with several disadvantages but they do provide electricity as long as the wind blows, and not too hard!

Steam engines are a relatively new invention, although  their first reference goes back 2000 years to Hero of Alexandria.  But we still use a derivative of the steam engine in our giant electricity generating turbines, most of which still depend on steam to power their mechanical rotation.

Finally there are the weight-driven clocks - not, of course, continuous motion in the way the earlier examples work, but similar in some ways.  The first examples at the beginning of this post all depend upon a supply of energy of some kind.  That energy reveals itself in action, moving water, pressurised steam from heated water,  or wind blowing over the sails of a windmill.

But is there an origin either in history or nature, as there is for the above examples, in Bessler’s wheel? Actually all of them rely on a constant supply of energy and despite what we have been taught so does Bessler’s wheel.  This is usually where we part company with mainstream ideology!

Remember that we are taught that perpetual motion machines were declared axiomatically impossible by Hermann von Helmholtz in 1847, because, he declared, no one had ever built one!  An axiom is a statement or proposition which is regarded as being established, accepted, or self-evidently true.  Only Helmholtz did not accept the validity of Bessler’s wheel otherwise the axiom would be demonstrably false.

Most of the above examples obtain their energy from something already in motion and simply draw their energy needs from it.  Wind and water; Bessler’s wheel drew its energy from something in motion too.....weights, falling weights responding to gravity.

I think that no PM machine has revealed itself, other than Bessler’s, because these other kinds of machine were available and more obviously capable of being designed to make use of whatever medium the builders had in mind.  Bessler said that the reason he was successful was that he devoted so much more time and effort in finding the correct principle than anyone else had ever been able do.

Helmholtz  declared that  Perpetual Motion machine’s were impossible because no one  had ever built one.  This is a perfect example of circuitous reasoning and perhaps a literary example of perpetual motion.

Question  - why has no one ever built a perpetual motion machine?

Answer- because Helmholtz says they’re impossible.

Question - why are they impossible?

Answer - because no one has ever built one.

Repeat ad infinitum!

The terms virtuous circle and vicious circle refer to complex chains of events that reinforce themselves through a feedback loop. A virtuous circle has favorable results, while a vicious circle has detrimental results. Bessler's wheel demonstrated a virtuous circle.

JC