Recently I said that I would comment occasionally on one or two of Bessler's clues, so here is another one I've been working on. This one is my interpetation of the strange passage which follows:
“He will be called a great craftsman,
who can easily/lightly throw a heavy thing high,
if one pound falls a quarter,
it shoots four pounds, four quarters high.”
Firstly, the most obvious point is that if one pound falls a quarter and lifts another four pounds then we have a total of five pounds and those who are familiar with my work in decoding Bessler’s clues will at once recognise the presence of the ubiquitous number 5 again - which I have suggested refers to five mechanisms.
Secondly, he implies that there are five one pound weights (one plus four), but one of them is falling. Since one of the falling weights is one pound and the other four being lifted are also one pound each, all five of them are of equal mass - one pound each.
Thirdly it follows that if one of the weights was falling and four were rising, then there were either five one pound weights in total, alternately falling and being lifted again - or there were ten one pound weights, operating in pairs within the five mechanism, five falling and five rising. I suggest that there were in fact five pairs of similar weights, and the reason I think this, is because elsewhere he says,
“... a work of this kind of craftsmanship has, as its basis of motion, many separate pieces of lead. These come in pairs, such that, as one of them takes up an outer position, the other takes up a position nearer the axle. Later, they swap places, and so they go on and on changing places all the time.”
This description supports my contention that there must have been ten one pound weights operating in five pairs.
Fourthly, if "..it shoots four pounds, four quarters high,” then one pound is shot one quarter high, which is no big deal from a similar weight falling the same distance.
Fifthly, "...if one pound falls a quarter, " it means it falls 90 degrees. If a pendulum is placed upside down against a clock face with the weight at twelve o'clock, then it can only fall in total, 180 degrees, or half way around the clock to the six o'clock point. If it falls a quarter then it only falls from twelve o'clock to three o'clock, 90 degrees.
It should be also be remembered that when the bi-directional Kassel wheel was started from a stand still it required only the smallest of pushes from two fingers for it to begin to accelerate, BUT it was also reported that rotation did not begin until a single weight was heard to fall, hence the phrase "...if one pound falls..." , meaning that it only takes one pound weight to fall for the whole wheel to begin to rotate and therefore cause the other weights to move.
There is one more piece of information in the passage which I am still working on but I don't want to discuss it at this time.
The above quotation is an extremely clever piece of text containing a wealth of information and I believe there are other pieces which may also contain additional information if we only knew how to extract it.
JC
