Which Clues Are Helpful/Useful?

 I’m conscious that some people are criticising my expressed certainty about  the clues I’ve presented here. I understand completely and despite my certainty, of course I realise interpretation is a difficult task unavoidably involving one’s personal bias and viewpoint.  

The kind of clues I’ve presented tend to be mainly concerned with the drawings but there are some pieces of text where I have offered my interpretation, based on my knowledge of Bessler.

When I’ve challenged comments which dismiss my conclusions it is not meant to inflame discussion, it's just that I have arrived at my personal convictions after much deliberation and to have it routinely dismissed apparently with little consideration is mildly annoying, but I accept that I have probably over reacted.  So apologies to all. I do actually appreciate all comments both for and against.

I posted a lot of Bessler’s coded clues with my interpretations included, on my web site at

http://www.theorffyreuscode.com/

These are easily seen and understood but we still find it difficult to make use of these interpretations in preparing a Bessler wheel.   

Given that Bessler told us that he had left clues to help us find his solution we should pay attention to every clue we can find and try to obtain a particular configuration which offers a potential path to the solution.  That is why I’ve offered so much material with that aim in mind.

There are a number of clues which are not necessarily subject to the vagaries of interpretation, but which are not being regarded as helpful.  I merely point to the staggering quantity of pointers to the number five.  It has an always seemed to me that there is a curious avoidance of the more obvious conclusion that 5 mechanisms is a key ingredient.  Further to that, a number of clues suggest 7 or 9 mechanisms.  Surely the undoubted suggestion is that only an odd number of mechanisms will do.  Add to that thought, the actual instruction that the weights  act in pairs seems to me to fit very well with an odd number of weighted levers.

But in the end we have to find a concept which shows how we obtain a continuously rotating wheel, which consumes enough energy from a falling weight to supply more than enough energy to lift the fallen weight back up to its pre-fall position.

So before we can find the right configuration from Bessler’s clues we need the actual concept which supports the non-stop rotation of the wheel.

My previous suggestion is still, in my opinion, the only way achieve a working Bessler wheel and it is this.

The only source of energy available is that generated by the falling weight.  But how do we get enough energy to return that weight to its starting point? 

There are two features available from the action of the falling weight.  The first is to use the potential energy generated during the actual fall to guide the weight to the most advantageous landing point on the rim of the wheel. This is achieved through the use of the scissor mechanisms.

The second feature  requires us to configure the wheel to make the falling weight land further back along the rim of the wheel, than is usually achievable with a simple pivoting weighted lever.  This would cause the wheel to rotate further forward thus creating a larger retrograde motion in the previously fallen wheel.  This would reduce the height needed to return the fallen weight back to it pre-fall position.

Bessler stressed how useful scissor mechanisms are, and as he commented they are like crabs in that they work best when they move horizontally, and crabs are designed to move  sideways too. Because the scissor mechanisms are able to react to variations in the horizontal attitude, they can expand or shrink contract as their angles varies. 

If you look at my previous attempt you will see the scissor mechanism.  Where they begin to act is a problem I need to discover the solution, but also how large should they be and do they work with just one scissor or two like my model.

Finally they need to work in pairs which requires cords between two levers- but which ones?

One cord must be fixed to the falling lever, but the other end needs to be fixed to a lever which actually needs a bit of a lift, just 30 degrees is suggested by Bessler.

The concept I have described should work, if the parts are correctly placed, but to date I have failed. My skills and materials have depreciated due to my age and time.  I can no longer find the energy to test my theory.

There is a lot of material left to study but I’ll get around to publishing it one day 

Over to you guys!

JC

Thirty Degree Lift & The Great Craftsman Passage.

 

In 2017 I posted this interpretation of the “great craftsman passage.  Bessler wrote,

“A great craftsman would be he who, as a pound falls a quarter, four pounds shoots up four quarters”

This is an abbreviation of my original post. We saw in the first part that the word ‘quarter', referred to, not just 90 degrees but also to a clock.  In the second part the word ‘quarter' also refers to a clock but this time he has used the words ‘four quarters’. ‘Four quarter’s equals ‘one whole hour’.  Each hour on a clock is divided into 30 degrees, so the words ‘four quarters’ meaning ‘one hour’ as used here equals thirty degrees.  To paraphrase Bessler’s words, “a great craftsman would be he who, as one pound falls 90 degrees, causes each of the other four pounds to shoot upwards 30 degrees.”  

Fortunately Bessler provided more information about this clue. His second image in DT is shown below.

In the next picture notice the pentagram which joins the two pictures, also note the horizontal bar on the pendulum is exactly in line with the extended chord from the pentagram.

In the picture below notice besides the pentagram there is also another feature of all the illustrations in DT - his use of the numbering the parts. This time he only uses the numbers from 1 to 10, but added together they total 55 - there’s definitely a theme here! - and when all the numbers in the right hand picture are added together they also total 55.

In the illustration below, I have filled in the pentagram in red. Originally the two drawings were on adjacent but separate pages. In the crease of the binding there were two rows of black and white lines allowing one to push together the two pages to make a perfect join at their two black borders as in the illustration.

The red line extends the upper right side chord of a pentagram in the left hand drawing, to coincide with the centre of the right circle. The triangle has a bottom angle of 30 degrees, and an upper right angle of 72 degrees and the remaining one, 78 degrees, to complete the triangle.  In a pentagram that triangle has two 72 degree angles and one 36 degree but in this case the small bottom angle measures 30 degrees so the upper right one is 72 degrees which means the remaining one has to be 78 degrees.

Notice that in the the left picture the wheel contains horizontal hatchings and outside of the wheel they are vertical.  In the right picture the hatch marks are vertical and there are none outside the wheel.  The left picture is cut off on the right side. It looks as though we are meant to slide the right one over to the left, above the left one.

The elliptical or ovoid shape on the bottom of the triangle is designed to tell us to rotate the whole pendulum around it.  I realised this was necessary because of the three lines coming out of it seemed to suggest this as a possibility. and because we know the 30 degrees is the size of the lift required in Bessler’s connectedness principle.

In the above illustration I have copied across the large triangular pendulum and tilted it so that the centre of the three verticals coming out of the ovoid are located on the centre of the left side wheel and aligned with the hatching lines  The two weights identified with red circles fit precisely on the rope, showing the 30 degree lift. The blue lines demonstrate the position if we ignore red circled weights, which I think shows that they shouldn’t be ignored.  

I only moved the pendulum because I didn’t need to move the actual right hand wheel. But the right wheel rotated 90 degrees would align the two sets of hatch marks.

This picture shows graphically the desired lift of 30 degrees to match the craftsman text.

NB.  Subsequent to this post I found a second or corrective interpretation connected with the craftman passage. Instead of a fall of 90 degrees I propose a fall of just 45 degrees.

On a clock face, if the weighted pendulum fell from the twelve o’clock point to the six o’clock point, his maximum fall would be 180 degrees.  A quarter of 180 degrees is only 45 degrees, so to paraphrase Bessler’s words as he might have intended them to mean, “  “a great craftsman would be he who, as one pound falls a 45 degrees causes each of four pounds to shoot upwards 30 degrees.”

A more likely scenario?

Here’s a gift from Gustov :

JC

Identifying Bessler’s Clues and Trying to Interpret them,

 We who have researched the legend of Bessler’s wheel are firmly convinced that the device was genuine and the inventor’s claims true.  This, of course, goes against the published opinion of the world of science.  They have thoroughly denounced such devices as fraudulent and impossible. However a serious consideration of the evidence casts doubt on the professional opinion of these “experts”.

Johann Bessler spent an extraordinary amount of time writing his books, embedding numerous clues of an extremely diverse nature in both texts and graphics, all done to ensure that even after his death his clues would be found, deciphered and a version of his gravity wheel built and his name for ever be acknowledged as the true inventor of the gravitywheel.

So I too have spent many years finding and interpreting a host of clues which I always believed might/will eventually lead me to build a working model.

The clues I’ve found are visible to anyone once they are pointed out.  Some I may have deciphered or interpreted wrongly, but they are clearly real and not invisible.  These are not the same as other clues suggested by followers of a more mystical method which relies on psychic prediction.  These are invisible to the naked eye and therefore of little use in persuading non-mystics among the general public of our persuasion that the wheel was real.

Only the visible clues are helpful and even then they baffle us as to their correct meaning.

There is only one true way of persuading the world at large that Bessler’s wheel was genuine and that is to build a replica that actually works.  I have built many replicas that don’t work!

Of course if one of the more mystical revelations should lead to a working model, I would immediately and gladly accept that they were right and I was wrong!

JC

                              Copyright ©️2026 John Collins.

Some of Bessler’s Clues Hidden In Plain Sight.

I’ve often mentioned how Bessler liked to leave clues disguised amongst innocent seeming text and illustrations. In other words ‘Hidden in plain sight’, something that should have been easy to spot, but in fact was so unobtrusive that nobody noticed them, or they were part of something else of little interest. Bessler used the term ‘drawing a veil over something’ and then saying ‘when I lift the veil, etc. Also in MT11, he wrote “but there is more in it than meets the eye, as will be seen when I pull back the curtain and disclose the correct principle at the right time.

So here’s the first of so many clues that I’ve lost count.

The over-numbering

In his publications, Grundlicher Bericht (GB) and Das Triumphirende (DT) all of  the parts in Bessler’s illustrations were labelled and numbered. Two of his illustrations are shown below. 

 This 

In the above illustrations  notice the main pillar supporting the wheel is labelled 4, not once but three times. This is a common feature of all the illustrations in both GB and DT.

It is worth noting that he had only 24 numbers to play with and if he wanted to put enough numbers available in the illustration to achieve a certain total he had to repeat as many of them as he needed.  When all the numbers are added together their total is 660. To find the purpose of guiding us to this number, Bessler hides another clue within the illustration.

The clock.

One day I was idly drawing in the lines of perspective, aligning with the various parts in the illustration, in the Merseberg wheel drawing, fig 2. I noticed that they all centred on the point of rotation.  I became curious when I noted that the line upon which two weights were placed were each labelled ‘8’.  Could this represent the eight o’clock line on a clock face?

Yes. A quick study of the clock illustration shows the extent of the clock-face.  Notice that the twelve o’clock and the three o’clock lines are accurately placed, and as shown by the small red rings, the eight o’clock line is accurate also.   I had no idea why this was done, but that it was deliberate was clear and I eventually realised that the number twelve was a hint to divide the 660 total to obtain the number 55.

Yes it’s that number again, inserted in his name, and in other pictures and throughout his published books in various forms.  I’ll discuss the reasons for its ubiquity later. For now I want share another piece of hidden information.

The Enlargement of Bessler’s Wheel.

There are clues available which indicate that Bessler’s wheel as shown in both GB and the DT illustrations is actually larger than shown,  see the illustration below.

The meaning of one of the inconsistencies apparent in the illustrations in both fig 1 and fig 2, puzzled me for a long time.  In the drawing below, I have red-circled the upper two ends of the wheel supporting pillars.  Notice that they are higher than the two pairs to the left, they are green-circled.  To my eye this looked wrong, and the tops of the columns are different.  Why were they not all of equal height? If you look at the first two illustration you can see a short horizontal line on top of each of the two higher pillars.  I discovered that they were datum points, and intended to provide a reference to further alterations to the drawing. 

Given that the left end of the horizontal beam, shown in yellow below, extended just outside the wheel’s rim on the left side, I drew a circle with my compasses, centred on the wheel axle. which included its outer end.  I also included the two short lines on the pillars.

The outer circle is shown in blue in the second illustration below. I mentioned earlier, the other two datum points, not outlined in red or green, which are placed just to the left of the main wheel and are shown at different heights.  This confirms that the pentagram discussed earlier is deliberate,

In the illustration below, the green line is perfectly aligned with these two additional datum points as well as the hatching infill, and therefore runs parallel with the lower yellow chord which forms part of the pentagram shown many times before. 

https://johncollinsnews.blogspot.com/2023/04/johann-besslers-tilted-pentagram.html

The blue circle skims the bottom of the main pillar supporting the wheel. It also just touches the point of the triangular padlock and then aligns with the right edge of the illustration.

Why the padlock is numbered 24 in the GB illustration and 42 in the DT version

It has on occasion been regarded as a typo, but in fact it was done deliberately.  There is no way such carefully crafted number could accidentally been carved wrongly.  In my opinion it was done for one reason - how would someone correct it without physically altering it?  I believe we are meant look at it upside down in effect swapping the two numbers 4 and 2, to read 2 and 4.  The picture could looked be at in a mirror, or flipped horizontally or vertically, but in the end I think Bessler intended us to simply rotate it 180 degrees.

The design hidden within the wheel drawing, includes five weighted levers.  By turning the picture upside down, the next lever to fall can be seen in the illustration below.

In my last build I introduced scissor mechanisms to push the falling weighted lever further back towards the following yellow radius.

The Shadows Clues.

Note in the following illustrations the differences between how the shadows are drawn.  In the DT picture the shadows cast upon the ground are changed in direction in parts of the whole picture compared with GB1.  I think that the purpose of the shadow change is to create a separation of one side from the other.  So the shadows under the wheel in the DT version of the Merseberg wheel point the opposite way to those on the left and to how they were first shown in the drawing of the first version of the Merseberg GB wheel.  

In the first picture below, the shadows all point to the left, but in the next one you can see that the shadows under the main wheel point to the left, but those in the left half point to the right. 

In the picture above I have included a close up of the two versions for ease of comparison.

——————————————————————————————————

There is a lot to take in here but there is so much more, and now I’ve started I’ll keep posting more information.  It does take me some time to collect and present the information in an abbreviated form so I’ll probably not post a second collection for a few days.  I hope you all enjoy it and perhaps it will ignite more enthusiasm for the project and maybe we will discover the actual solution.

I’m considering opening another page on which to post any of your pictures if acceptable.

JC

Copyright ©️2026 John Collins.

Some of Bessler’s Clues which I haven’t Shared with you yet.

 

More than five years ago I began to write a book detailing all the clues I had found and my interpretation of them, hoping I would eventually discover the solution, but - so far …. zilch! However these details I’m going to post here are genuine clues supplied by Bessler.  I’m certain that his intention was to provide sufficient information to enable the rediscovery of the design of his machine, his perpetual motion machine.

I’m copying and pasting some of the information I had assembled in my book, in the hope that someone visiting this blog will make the intellectual jump necessary from the clues I post to finding  Bessler’s hidden meaning and build the first gravity-enabled continuously rotating device since his own wheel.

There are too many to put in one post, so I’ll work my way through them and probably repeat some which some readers may be already familiar.

I’m trying to abbreviate the written text because it will take up too much room in each blog, but it depends on how complex the clues are, but I expect I’ll be able to post two three clues in each post.

The secret to finding the clues is complicated but easily understood once you discover the technique.  And that is before you even get to trying to interpret them which is another matter, but very often Bessler will provide two and even three clues to  the same answer.

So I’m just completing the first post, ready in a day or two

JC

UPDATE - Alternative Simpler Solution…….Hopefully!

 My recent post suggesting that Bessler might have found two different solutions was, at the time, an almost random thought that was generated by a discussion about the Gera wheel and the subsequent iterations which he presented to the public.

Comments about the proportions of the first wheel, galvanised my brain cells into considering how my suggested mechanisms would have fitted inside a wheel’s interior of potentially less than two inches.  I concluded that they wouldn’t have fitted.

Some of the comments by spectators of the Gera wheel suggested that the wheel contained a dog or a cat, because of the scratching noise which came from within.  This suggests that the mechanisms were rubbing against some part of the wheel, probably the casing protecting the interior from the public seeing inside.

Once the idea had settled in my mind that the Gera wheel was, at the very least, a simpler configuration compared with my later attempts to find a work-around for the later larger wheels, I began to reconsider what we know about the Gera wheel and Karl’s comments about it; simple to understand its principle, easy to build; couldn’t believe no one had discovered it before.  My concept might still have value but it wasn’t the design Karl had seen and I’m sure it wouldn’t have fit inside the Gera wheel.

So I have returned to my various designs over the years but this time with the knowledge that it needed to be simple, able in its most basic form to fit within the Gera wheel. So I have some ideas but I’m not sharing anything yet, but it feels good to be building from scratch again.

I’m using the previously discarded 18 inch diameter disc to test my latest theories on, but if it looks like it will work, I’ll repeat the build on a new disc.  I’m using parts from many discarded attempts, so it won’t be the most attractive model, but I’m past caring  about its looks - other than to say the 18 inch disc has so many holes it sometimes difficult to find an empty space!

Whether I succeed or not, I’m not going to waste much time in reconsidering past failures, but I do have a couple of ideas I never considered before.  Being of a vastly simpler design I don’t expect it to take long to test, and as soon as I know, one way of the other, I’ll post about it in case it stimulates someone else to success.

JC

Did Bessler Invent Two solutions?

Although I’m reasonably satisfied with my Bessler-Collins theory, the truth is the design looks more complex than we’ve been led to believe it was.  Karl is reported to have expressed surprise that the solution had not been discovered before. On another occasion, when asked if it was complicated, he replied that he thought a carpenter’s boy could make one if he was allowed to study it.

On the other hand we extracted certain information from the text in two of his books, that as well as weights and levers there was also a number of pulleys and by inference some lengths of cord. These items were all operating according to their design, so I guess the action was relatively narrow with minimal overlap.  

Given the size of his first wheel exhibition at Gera, 6th June, 1712, which measured nearly six and  half feet in diameter but with a thickness of just 4 inches, it seems hard to imagine all of the internal mechanisms fitting comfortably within such a narrow space.  

I built my wheels on a flat disc of wood material but given the shortage of flat sheets of wood, other than very expensive wood veneer, I’m sure Bessler built on a skeletal structure made of wood, which would have been more stable than mine.  Karl’s use of the words “carpenter’s boy”, suggests that perhaps the majority of the wheel was comprised of wood which was also used extensively in organ-building, and was his brother, Gottfried’s area of expertise.

If the mechanism was attached to two structures in the shape of a pentagram, I think the interior would be tight but sufficient for a similar mechanism to mine.

Bessler used oil cloth to cover the sides of the two largest wheel. Apparently oil cloth was typically made of heavy linen or cotton canvas, treated with boiled linseed oil to create a durable, waterproof material. It was often coated with iron oxide pigments (such as red Spanish brown or yellow) for colour. It was similar to a ship’s sale of the day but thinner and still difficult to penetrate and surprisingly heavy.

Finally Bessler said that between each move he “smashed the wheel”.  He blamed this action on the antics of his so-called enemies, Gartner, Wagner and Borlach.  I don’t believe he destroyed his wheel, so much as took it to pieces.  He then gathered all the parts ready to use on another larger wheel at his new address.  Material such as he needed for his wheels was hard to come by and expensive; it doesn’t make sense to just chuck everything away.

The emotive quality of the words disguises the fact that the safest way to transport the wheel without risking the danger of someone attempting to steal it, and thus the secret, was to disassemble it. It was merely a security precaution. Even when he died, the one remaining model of his machine was found in pieces, and it made sense to take such action to protect his invention being stolen.

So did Bessler invent a  simpler gravity wheel, but one with less power potential than the+later ones? Just in case he did, I’m checking back to see if there is the vaguest hint  that he might have done, I’ll let you know if I find anything.

JC

The Bessler-Collins Theory of Gravity-Enabled Continuous Rotation.

 

I mentioned previously that we should concentrate on the WA (work-around) proposal and deal with the result of that before we try to design a method of incorporating it in a working wheel. The reason being, that even though I’m confident that the concept is right, I’m not a hundred per cent confident on how to incorporate it in a working wheel.

Returning to my previous post, the point I’ve tried to explain, so far unsuccessfully is this.   In the image below, repeated from my previous blog, the two blue levers show the start and end positions as if they were scissor mechanisms with a weight on the end if each.  

Sorry I omitted the weights, but compare the blue levers with the red ones and it is obvious thar the blue ones with a weight  on the end, finish in a more favourable position, with

 each weight further back from their starting position causing the wheel to turn forward a lot more than with the red ones.

In the image below, also copied from my previous post, the pink scissor mechanisms expand to put the weight near the outer edge of the wheel and the following radius with its own scissor mechanism ready to fall.  The falling mechanism will naturally expand under the influence of gravity.  The cost is continuous and  the same as if it fell straight down.  But in this case the weight moves sideways and downwards.  So at no cost in gravitational energy, the design has increased the amount of torque available for lifting the fallen weight.

I wrote “no cost”, but there is a small and acceptable cost; the falling weight falls more slowly, as Fischer von Erlach stated that 'the sound of about eight weights may be heard landing gently on the side toward which the wheel turned'. So the scissor mechanism does slow the fall down a little, but achieves the desired end result, more torque.

So when people ask, “where does the extra energy to lift the fallen weight come from?” The answer is there, thanks to the scissor mechanism falling further back against the wheel’s forward rotation and of course the fallen weight’s  roll back from its landing position, towards its next fall.

Remember each mechanism is linked to another one, so as one weight falls, another weight is lifted, moving the centre of gravity backwards, over and over again.

This repeated falling and lifting results in an incredibly smooth rotation, as noted several times in the witnesses recordings of the tests. Because a weight falls, generating rotation, at the same time lifting another weight which removes any braking or balancing effect, the wheel is continuously out of balance and hunting for equilibrium.  

The initiator of rotation seems to be the falling of the first weight, that is arguably not necessarily true.  If the weight has not fallen yet, then the previous one must have fallen, therefore the wheel is still out off balance, hence the need to apply a brake to stop its continuous turning.

In my next post I’m going to show you how I found the design is all the mechanisms within Bessler’s images.

JC

Re-Inventing Bessler’s wheel Part Two

 I’m going to try to provide a better explanation for my design.  This will be in two parts because there are two aspects to this explanation.

To answer questions from my previous blog, the scissors mechanisms are mild steel, but the curved  guide arms are/were aluminium.  The weights are mild steel and there are two per lever, each pair weighs 80 gram grams about 2.8 ounces.  Not much but it seems to be enough on 36 inch diameter wheel.

To begin with I’ll concentrate on the so-call “work-around”, (WA) without which my wheel design won’t work.

Some of the text which follows contains assumptions about Bessler’s thinking.  The ideas described are how I imagine Bessler’s thoughts proceeded.

The main focus of action occurs around the six o’clock radius, when a mechanism approaches it from the right.  I use the word “approach”, because as we know, the wheel is permanently out of balance.  The weighted lever in the approaching mechanism is almost vertical but leans back to the right, or to the rear, by 18 degrees.  This encourages it to fall back a full 90 degrees immediately it’s pivot reaches the six o’clock radius.

At this point I believe it’s worth reminding everyone that every angle inside a pentagram is a multiple of 18 degrees, so the angles include - 18, 36, 54, 72, 90 and 108.  But there is one 30 degree added which doesn’t normally appear in the pentagon.

So the weighted lever falls to 108 degrees from the vertical radius, 18 + 90 degrees = 108. This provided a very small mechanical advantage (MA).  It wasn’t enough to do more than rotate the wheel a few degrees.  

It occurred to Bessler that making the weighted lever fall back to a point closer to the following radius and its weighted lever, would generate a considerably larger MA.  If he could design a system that achieved the extra MA, then the wheel would rotate further than the few degrees from before.  Incorporating this feature to generate the extra forward rotation would cause the previously fallen weight to counter-rotate, making its weighted lever ride further backwards towards its pre-fall position.  From this position the weighted lever would require less lifting effort to return it to its original pre-fall position.

Bessler noted that in the action of a  falling lever there were very few comments about the potential energy generated by a falling weight.  He thought that the loud noise made as it landed disguised the possibility that he might be able to tap the small extra source of energy before it landed, which it usually spent creating noise and miniscule heat.

He designed a scissor mechanism which would control the descent of the weighted lever, sending it in an elongated arch straight towards the following radius which had its own weighted lever ready to fall.  

The scissor mechanism could expand or contract and was operated by a weighted lever.  Bessler warned us to put the horse before the cart, so the weight used it’s falling mass to begin operating the scissor mechanism, reacting to its lever’s position and driving the mechanism.

The path of each mechanism was controlled by one long lever which was fixed to a pivot close to the wheel’s centre of rotation. The other end was connected to the mechanism but was lengthened to pass through it almost to the edge of the wheel.

Bessler used the scissor mechanism because he had observed that it was the most suitable method given it worked best when moving horizontally.  A slight slope would send it extending, whereas a slope in the opposite direction would send it contracting.  

The long control lever extended through the scissor mechanism to provide an anchor at its outer end to tie the end of a cord.  The outer end of the long lever was thrust backwards quite strongly by the fall of its weighted lever, providing a good pull on the attached cord. The cord passed over two pulleys.  One pulley was positioned close to the edge of the wheel and  directed the cord up and around a second pulley close the axle.  This redirected it down to the weight on the weighted lever in the previous mechanism.  

NB.  This last sentence is not necessarily correct.  The images I’ve interpreted suggest it might not connect with the previous fallen mechanism because it would be counter-rotating anyway.  Alternate suggestion requires the lifting of a weight around two or three o’clock, i.e, just past TDC.

Continuing…

As the first mechanism at six o’clock fell, it’s cord pulled the weighted lever in the previous mechanism back up just 30 degrees, into a neutral position aligned with the inner circle upon which all the lever pivots are stationed.  This small lift is designed to be work as quickly as possible.

This fast lift is necessary because once the the weighted lever moves past its own radius, it begins to travel uphill, causing a braking action on the turning of the wheel.  It can be likened to the action of a pendulum which falls until it reached bottom dead centre, and then begins to climb, unless the pendulum is shortened somewhat, when it speeds up.

The potential energy formed during the weights fall is used by the scissor mechanisms to drive them sideway towards the rear and the oncoming mechanism.

In the above image the pairs of red lines show the start and stop positions of a single weighted lever, according to Bessler’s original design.  The blue lines on either side of the sic o’clock radius, show the theoretical start and stop positions of each weighted lever when fitted with the scissor mechanism attaching it to the pivot point.

Comparing the two stop positions it’s clear that the blue lever has the better potential for lifting the fallen weight.

In the picture below I’ve removed the metal strips I added to reduce the lateral sway evident in my own model as they are not necessary in a well-built model! 

Hope this helps. More details in next post.

JC