Monday 26 September 2011

Do the pendulums regulate or obfuscate?

Many among we 'Bessler's wheel' researchers have our own pet theories about different aspects of our self-appointed task, and they can be as diverse as the numbers of people involved. So it comes as no surprise to find my own theories treated with as much indifference as I treat many other people's - no offence intended and none taken. But one theory I have subscribed to, among a couple of others, for most of my life is the one about the pendulums indicated in two of Bessler's drawings; I refer to the drawing in Grundlicher Bericht published December 1715 and the one in Das Triumphirende published in October 1719. Both depict Bessler's Merseberg wheel and include a complex pendulum and according to Bessler they could be used to regulate the speed but, if not required, could be dispensed with. However as at least two reports comment on the extreme eveness and regularity of rotation of the wheels, there seems little or no requirement for their use.

My very first thought was that they were included to add interest to what was after all, pictorially a pretty dull subject matter without them. This thought was supported by the later drawings in Das Triumphirende which show an archimedes screw being turned. However not content with that drawing, Bessler also added another one which shows a large triangular pendulum with three bobs. As we have already dismissed the need for pendulums to regulate the wheel's speed why would he include yet another one, four years after the first?

I therefore dismissed the idea that they were there as mere decoration. I took the view that they were intended to convey information about the inner structure of the wheel; the mechanism in fact. I have expressed this thought elsewhere but my opinion has been largely ignored and it seems that most people attempt to make the case for their use as governors, something I would argue against.

Following my belief in the true purpose of the pendulums, I have over the years, played with a number of mechanisms designs loosely based on the pendulms, several with interesting properties, but nothing that subscribed to the concept which I have favoured for some years now - the actual way that gravity alone was able to drive Bessler's wheel.

But, as I've been unable to get on with my Bessler wheel experiments for the last few weeks, due to other commitments, I have been restricted to just thinking about it and studying the drawings - and I think I have discovered something interesting in his main wheel drawing. It's extremely obscure and I'm fairly confident that you are unlikely to find it unless you've followed my own train of thought over the last three or four years. Having said that I wouldn't be surprised to learn that others have made the same connection, but I should think that if I am right then so should they be and therefore we would surely have heard about it by now - in which case either I'm wrong about this particular aspect of ther drawing - or no one else has made the connection.

I hope to make an experimental mechanism to test my thinking next week and if it works I'll follow it up with a full prototype - and that may test my basic hypothesis to destruction!
JC


54 comments:

  1. They regulate, I would say. Others tell me I'm wrong, but I still believe that at last one pendulum was part of the mechanism, probably the "regulator" or "system clock". Especially as a regulator they are stable (not necessarily part of the driving mechanism) and independent of load thereupon. In my view ideal to set and reset parts of the driving mechanism at timed intervals.

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  2. Good luck with your new approach, John.

    However, in the past, whenever I have developed an acute case of "pendulumitis", I have found it helpful to lay donw in a darkened room until it passes!

    Unlike the winch, stamping machine, or Archimedean screw, those crank driven pendulums don't actually do anything useful. They were either added as distractions or, perhaps, to demonstrate how a wheel's rotary motion could be converted to oscillatory motion. And, of course, they can to a degree regulate the motion.

    Bessler states somewhere that they could be used to "modify" a wheel's motion which I suppose would be done by adjusting the location of a pendulum's compound center of mass by changing the position of its lower weight. If so, then perhaps at public demos of his wheels he would slide the bottom up and down along its shaft to show people how he could adjust the speed of a free running wheel.

    I seriously doubt if they have anything to do with the internal mechanics of the wheel. My guess would be that he purposely included them in the drawings to steer people looking for answeres in the wrong direction.

    If Bessler had not been a mobilist, he would have made an excellent stage magician. They are also masters of distraction.

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  3. I think it's great that someone is trying this approach. My feelings are that it won't work, but then again, all the obvious things have already been tried, so sooner or later, someone may stumble upon the real secret.

    These strange pendulums I feel were added after the wheel stopped during one of the demonstrations as detailed in the "Wagner critique".

    >>>At this point the person asked: "What does this mean?" In his anxiety, Orffyreus could think of no reply other than: "The wheel rubbed against something."<<<

    They are indeed curious. Normally the bearings themselves would have taken the load and maintained the wheel in an upright position. Such a system of leverage would however make the bearings superfluous. The only other reason why I can see they're there would be to provide a lateral adjustment, for when the wheel moved too far towards either the left or right supporting column. However, in such a case, the left and right pendulums may be acting in opposition to each other. This is my preferred explanation, as when doing demonstrations of the wheel, Bessler would have had to move it to all sorts of places, with no guarantee of the floor being absolutely level. Such an arrangement would have compensated for a floor that appeared flat but may have sloped by just a degree or two - thus avoiding the need for earthworks to prepare the site properly.

    However, I could be wrong; I've been wrong before, and I can be wrong again.

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  4. Guys,.. I appreciate youre adherance to the laws of thermodynamics and that is a good thing, but don't let that put you off.The gravity wheel is not subject to laws that man has laid down.
    For instance,if you take an inert weight and an inert force and some how cause them to turn a wheel,how can you quantify that in terms of thermodynamics.That wheel can do a job of work where no heat is involved.
    On the other hand if I use the force of the wheel to generate electricity creating heat and ultimately mechanical motion and back to heat,then this is where you can use thermodynamics to equate the two.
    After all heat is a form of movement or vibration.It can just dissapate into space and add to the excitment of atoms maintaining our perpetual universe.
    If you are worried about the excess heat generated out of nothing,adding to global warming,then don't.What about the millions of Btu's being relaesed by motor cars suddenly from oil that has lain dormant in the ground for thousands of years.
    I'm telling you that this hidden principle that Bessler discovered is as he suspected,the very thing that maintains motion of the planets apart from enertia of course.

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  5. Trevor, have you been posting under the influence? The blog police will need to see some ID.

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  6. Pendulums are fun to play with, but I have yet to see one output more energy than was originally put into it to raise its weight against the pull of gravity. Their resulting motions only demonstrate the periodic transformation of gravitational potential energy into kinetic energy and then back again into gravitational potential energy. This energy is eventually completely lost as the air surrounding the swinging weight is pushed out of its way. (Has anyone every tried putting a pendulum inside a vacuum jar and mounted it with a magnetic fulcrum bearing to see what would happen?)

    Meanwhile, my question from the JC's last blog entry goes unanswered.

    If Bessler's wheels, being genuine PM wheels, did not tap energy from outside of their drums and they had no internal power supplies, then from where did the energy they outputted come from??? (A skeptic can only say that the energy HAD to have come from a hidden supply inside of the wheels and, therefore, Bessler was a hoaxer of the cleverest type.)

    An answer to this simple question would seem to be the beginning point of any serious attempt to duplicate his inventions.

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  7. Ha,Ha,LOL,..You guys are clutching at straws.Can't you see the solution is right under you're noses.Remember the logo ROR.It's all about Reaction-Reaction.

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  8. Apparently John, the pendulums obfuscate your gentle readers.

    Techno, the energy had to have been external to the wheels. They were too small to contain their own source for long periods of time. If bessler was a fraud, he was smart about it and didn't get caught in the act.

    Trevor, isn't it mostly the sun's gravity that maintains the planets' motion?
    The ROR logo is just that, a logo.

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  9. @ Doug

    You wrote:

    "Techno, the energy had to have been external to the wheels. They were too small to contain their own source for long periods of time."

    Then you are basically saying that Bessler's wheels were NOT genuine PM wheels. This, of course, does not necessarily mean that he was a hoaxer. He might not have realized exactly how his wheels worked although that certainly seems very unlikely to me.

    But, what about Bessler's statement that his wheels "moved from their OWN INNER force"??? That doesn't sound like they were moved by an external power source to me.

    No, something INSIDE the wheels must have moved them...but what? Any ideas that do not violate known laws of physics or require the assumption of imagninary processes?

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  10. I've previously suggested the stored rotational energy of the Earth as a possible energy source. It's huge, but apparently no-one knows how to get at it efficiently (I certainly don't).

    Here's another very faint possibility: permanent magnets. Bessler would have had access to lodestones, which can be quite strong if large enough. You can do more things with magnets (which are of course masses) than with non-magnetic masses. They can be attracted, repelled, and their flux can be augmented, and shielded in steel, etc.

    Maybe when Bessler allowed one of his weights to be assessed by feel but not by sight (he covered it with a handkerchief) that could have been because it was a lodestone?

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  11. Techno, bessler said a lot of things that were meant to obfuscate (!).
    Force is one of those things. If he had said it's own inner energy,well , that would have been more helpful.
    What forces are there at our disposal? None that can turn wheels. Gravity. Some think centrifugal force is responsible. Spring force. Electrical, magnetic. Resistant forces are obviously no help. Forces only indicate the presence of a form of energy. His wheels required energy, you are right. We can't forget that.

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  12. I spent many years trying to get a permanent magnet motor operational. I never saw anything that looked like it might "go of itself" despite using some of the most powerful magnetic materials available. I doubt if Bessler would have done better with the relatively weak fields of lodestones.

    Yes, the Earth truly does have enormous rotational energy, but the only thing I've seen that could tap it was the Foucault pendulum. Even so, the power outputs of such a device are slight. The same goes for various gyroscopic machines.

    Perhaps in unraveling the mystery of the source of a Bessler wheels' energy, I can reframe the question in another form that will, for the moment, get us away from the wheel and the automatic responses it can draw from us.

    Imagine the following scenario:

    A man walks through a forest while eating an apple. When he is finished with the apple, he throws its seed containing core into a sunny clearing.

    The seeds find fertile ground and, a decade later, a mighty apple tree laden with shiny apples stands in the clearing.

    One day a cute little bunny rabit seeks shelter under the apple tree from an uncoming summer storm.

    The wind picks up a bit and the branches of the tree sway about. Suddenly, one of the apple's stems breaks and the apple drops off of its twig and accelerates downward to the ground.

    The apple strikes the bunny dead center on top of his furry little head and knocks him out cold. Later, after regaining consciousness, he scampers away resolved to avoid the tree in the future.

    Now, here's my question again in the reframed form.

    It took considerable energy to knock the bunny out cold. Where did that energy ULTIMATELY come from?

    Yes, this is a "trick" question. But, I think answering it will put you all farther along the road to solving the mystery of Bessler's wheels than almost anything you will find on the web.

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  13. I have always believed that the energy for the wheel came from gravity. I've heard all the arguments that this is impossible, etc; but that is my viewpoint and I have a simple concept to explain how.

    In Bessler's day hardly anyone understood or could explain gravity other than as an intrisic 'heaviness' that objects of mass had.

    As for the question of PM, I have always declared that it was not strictly speaking a PM device as it required an external energy source. PM used to be defined as one in which there is no external energy supply. This definition has subsequently split into two categories, a closed system and an isolated system. In my opinion Bessler's wheel would fall into the category of a "closed system" as according to wikipedia "Closed systems cannot exchange matter with the surroundings, but can exchange energy. Isolated systems can exchange neither matter nor energy with their surroundings, and as such are only theoretical".

    Personally I think these sub-categoriesd are meaningless. Bessler's wheel used gravity which is both an external and internal potential source of energy.

    I believe I have a solution to the problem that being a conservative force makes it impossible for it to drive Bessler's wheel. It requires no changes in the laws of physics, just a reveiew of the way we interpret some aspects.

    JC

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  14. Techno,the apple got its energy from the sun like everything else.

    John, the definitions for PM is split, or rather confused, between closed and open systems, not isolated. Isolated systems are only theoretical, like the definition says.
    The subcategories of open and closed are meaningless to you because of your stance that gravity is a form of energy. Energy can't transform to or from a force. Energy can take the form of heat, so in a wheel such as bessler's it would lose energy in the form of heat to its environment, making it a closed system, (not for the reason you give, that gravity is the energy external and internal to a wheel). To qualify as an open system, a wheel would have to exchange physical matter with its environment. They don't do that.

    A machine that uses external energy such as ocean currents isn't considered PM because it's an open system. It will run as long as the ocean currents are there. To fit the criteria for PM, a machine has to be a closed system.

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  15. Has anyone here considered joining forces to build experimental models?

    I get the feeling that some are engaged in such serious work but others consider Bessler, his wheel's, and the hidden codes just small topics for armchair discussion. I know that this is legally a difficult concept because the prize money is huge, but a group working on a project that sounds feasible (if not mathematically proven), may bring the rewards much sooner.

    As the rewards will be immense, sharing them shouldn't be too much of a problem; how much can you spend in a lifetime?

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  16. Great Bear, I'm with you on this. I too think that combining forces would be beneficial in many ways. I don't care much for the money and the fame. That will come by itself - after all, we're talking about the biggest business on the planet, literally trillions of dollars.

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  17. I ask because I need someone who's a good model maker. You've heard of the bad workman blaming his tools? Well that's me. Don't get me wrong, I can build all sorts of things, but sometimes (often) my patience runs out and I cut corners with devastating results.

    I don't even begin to build experimental models unless the maths feels right, or it's a system which intuitively feels right. Even so, I've a small catalogue of models which have produced better than expected results but have ultimately failed; sometimes because I don't have the time to regress a few steps to build a wizened model, but rather make ad-hoc changes to try to offset the current failings, sometimes because I don't have the four hands to hold everything in place.

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  18. JC is 100% correct concerning gravity. It CAN be considered, in certain situations, as a form of energy just as electromagnetic radiation is a form of energy.

    A sudden change in the arrangement of matter within an astronomical sized body can result in the production of a spherical shock wave within its gravity field that will emanate out from the body into space at light velocity. This shock wave can then transfer energy to any surrounding objects that it passes through and induce forces in them.

    There is some evidence that the tectonic activity within our Earth's crust generates such gravity waves. But, the energy they transmit to surface ovject is very low. Special, highly sensitive equipment is needed to detect them. I doubt if Bessler's wheels could have been rotated by these natural gravity waves if they were "so simple a carpenter's boy could understand and build them."

    @Doug

    You wrote:

    "Techno, the apple got its energy from the sun like everything else."

    Excellent...but, you are not quite 100% there yet.

    Now from where did the Sun get that energy?

    That bunny rabbit had already figured it all out as he was nursing that lump on his head.

    @Great Bear and Andre

    I've noted efforts on various free energy sites over the years to form a research team to finally develop a working over unity device. Unfortunately, they all eventually fall apart as members quit or die and become demoralized by their lack of progress.

    Bessler set the standard for this field as being one dominated by lone wolf researchers. Nothing as changed in 300 years and is unlikely to change in the next 300 years.

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  19. Gravitational waves are so weak, they decay the orbit of the earth by about the diameter of a proton each day.
    So no, I don't think that's the answer either.

    The sun's energy comes from its nuclear fusion. The pressure at the center (from gravity, I guess that's what you're looking for)creates the conditions for energy production, released as gamma radiation which keeps the sun from collapsing under its own gravity.

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  20. Yes, Doug, it is the release of energy, as gamma radiation, during a fusion reaction that accounts for the Sun's energy output.

    But, WHAT happens during the fusion process that produces this energy in the form of gamma ray photons?

    The answer to this has much to do with what was happening inside of Bessler's wheels when they were in motion and producing mechanical enegy.

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  21. The atoms of hydrogen are fused because their positive (repellent) charges are overcome by the high speed acceleration from the thermonuclear temperatures they experience, allowing the attractive nuclear force to fuse the hydrogen atoms into plasma and a waste product,helium. The release of a free neutron or proton creates mega electron volts of energy, much more than required to fuse the nuclei together.

    I'm pretty sure bessler had no clue about nuclear fusion processes.

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  22. Doug, your answer is generally correct, but not complete. You missed a critical thing that occurs during fusion.

    For example, if four hydrogen nuclei fuse together inside of a star to form a single helium nucleus, the helium nucleus is about 7/10ths of 1 percent LESS massive than the combined masses of the four separate nuclei from which it formed. It is the mass that is lost by the helium nuclei which then supplies the energy to form the gamma ray photon that the reaction emits. Thus, during fusion, SOME mass is directly turned into energy. Over time, all stars get less massive as they continue to emit radiation (they also get less massive from all of the particulate matter they eject into space).

    I am convinced that the same basic thing was going on inside of Bessler's wheels. No, it did not involve fusion or gamma rays, but Bessler's wheels were able, when running, to continously convert SOME of the mass of their weights (on the order of a fraction of a picogram per wheel rotation) directly into mechanical energy which would then power outside devices. With weights of lead weighing tens of pounds and a power output of tens of watts, his Merseburg wheel could have continously powered an outside device (assuming no part failures) for...incredible as it might seem...BILLIONS of years before the weights were rendered massless by the transformation process. No, it's not exactly "perpetual", but it's close enough for me!

    Now the question that remains to be answered is just how did Bessler manage to do this? And, of course, skilled craftsman that he was, he would have been ignorant of such modern concepts as fusion, gamma radiation, and even atoms.

    Odd to think that the energy to cause that bunny's lump was derived from the masses lost by fusion products in our Sun.

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  23. That's a helluva stretch. If you're convinced, go for it. But you have a huge hurdle to get over.

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  24. Actually, Doug, the process of continuous mass depletion should automatically take place in any wheel that truly remains overbalanced despite its rotation.

    Weights that drop in a gravity field increase their kinetic energy because they transform some amount of their mass into this energy. Conversely, weights that are given kinetic energy in order to rise in a gravity field will store that energy as additional mass.

    Any continously overbalanced wheel will always have its descending side weights dropping FASTER than its ascending side weights rise since weights near the axle travel along a shorter path than do those weights farther from the axle. Thus, in such an overbalanced wheel descending side weights lose mass (by having it transformed into kinetic energy for use by the wheel and atached devices) at a GREATER rate than ascending side weights regain mass (by taking kinetic energy back from the wheel and transforming it back into mass again).

    It was this slight difference in the rates of lost and regained mass by the revolving weights within Bessler's wheels which explains "where" their outputted mechanical energy came from. There is absolutely nothing mysterious about this. His wheels did not create energy out of nothing. They simply transformed a tiny amount of each of their weight's mass into kinetic energy during each rotation of the wheel and made it available to do work outside of the wheel.

    The problem in developing an overbalanced wheel that will do this, as always, remains in finding the same design that Bessler found. We know it used weights, levers, cords, and springs. Most likely, there were eight weighted levers inside each one directional wheel. Somehow, they were carefully coordinated with each other so as to keep the center of mass of the eight weights always on a wheel's descending side during rotation.

    I think the best clue we have is the one Bessler gave in the notes for MT 9. There he said that Jacob Leupold had presented a design for an overbalanced wheel using weights on the ends of levers that could be made to work if Bessler's "Connectedness Principle" was used on it.

    I'm still searching for an image of that wheel Leupold presented. I think it is the key to solving the Bessler mystery. That and, of course, knowing what the Connectedness Principle is.

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  25. Couple of interesting discussions going on.

    Techno, Theatrum Machinarum Generale, Leipzig, 1724. p. 31-33 for Leopold's stuff. There are several designs he came up with. And although he realized that machines need to be measured and calculated precisely on paper before even trying to build one, he did not dismiss the possibility or claim that he had disproven it. He even refers to Bessler and seems to accept it:

    "Notwithstanding we hold that perpetual motion is not an impossibility, as been shown to all the world by Councillor Orffyreus, and attested by the princely word of the Landgrave of Hesse Cassel, a prince himself well grounded in the science of mechanics, and who so minutely scrutinised and observed this wonderful motion, which was with him on trial during two months; all of which time he kept the machine in a sealed chamber."

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  26. Yeah, right.

    I can just picture it now, Bessler sitting at his computer analysing the sub-atomic particles (which were discovered around 200 years after he built and demonstrated his wheels), and worrying about fusion in the sun. Guys, we don't yet even know how gravity works! Yes, it's a force that we observe that makes things fall downwards, but no one has any idea what does this, or even if it's an attractive or repulsive force! Current theory assumes the exchange of a pair of gravitons, which to the elucidated man is a bit of nonsense, but at the moment it's the best we've got.

    Bessler didn't do things like this. He found a practical way of harnessing gravity to do work. I can't see how he would have worried about gravimetric waves etc. Even now, gravitational radiation has not been directly detected, there is only indirect evidence for its existence.

    So before we get to the next stage where someone starts suggesting he was abducted by aliens, taken to the planet Zog where he was educated in astrophysics, and then built matter-antimatter reactors to power his wheels, let's take a step back. It's simple enough to see that the wind is usually a one directional force e.g. it blows say from the West towards the East, but that doesn't stop boats sailing against it to the west. Bessler knew about carpentry and mechanics, and these were sufficient for him to build his wheel.

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  27. Getting back to the three pendulums in the Merseburg Wheel Illustration that started this thread, I have always maintained that they are a complete spoof; that Bessler never used them: hence they never appeared in any eye-witness accounts.

    What they are is a pictorial clue and this is underlined by the fact that the same Swinging ‘T’ motif appears in so many of his other images.

    I think of it as a key shape; the basic outline of a principle element of the wheel.

    John

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  28. Techno, momentum is conserved in a closed system such as a wheel( no external forces). The sun is an open system.
    That's why nature dictates overbalancing wheels won't work as you've described.
    Unless they are open to external torque, they may overbalance for a bit, but they eventually stop from irreversible loss of momentum to friction in its various forms, even if they aren't doing any work other than turning. bessler said, in so many words, his wheels didn't work that way. And they couldn't have.

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  29. NAILED IT!!! (Thanks to Andre and the Cornell University Library)

    http://digital.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=kmoddl&cc=kmoddl&idno=kmod022&node=kmod022:39&view=image&seq=275&size=400

    Note the wheel design in the lower right hand corner of the illustration. This is the one that prompted Bessler to write that it would work if the Connectedness Principle was applied to it.

    @Great Bear

    Of course, Bessler did not have a computer or know anything about subatomic particles. That knowledge, although nice to have, is not required to build a working gravity wheel. All one needs is a design that continously shifts about during drum rotation so as to keep the center of gravity of its weights on the wheel's descending side. EVERY failed gravity wheel design I've ever seen was NOT able to do this. Bessler's design did do it.

    No we don't know that much about gravity (or the other field effects for that matter), but we do know what happens to the mass of an object when we put energy into it (it increases).

    For example, if an astronaut on our Moon throws a rock upward, it might rise up to 100 feet or more. At the top of its rise it will, for an instant, come to a complete standstill. Now, what happens at that instant to the original kinetic energy the astronaut's arm supplied to the rock? (Answer: It is converted into an increase, albeit small, of the rock's mass.)

    @Doug

    Sounds like you don't believe that Bessler actually had a genuine, self-contained gravity wheel!

    I also believe that in a "closed" system momentum, whether linear or angular, must be conserved. If we consider both a Bessler's wheel and our planet as forming a single closed system together, then angular momentum would be conserved as the wheel rotated. The wheel would rotate in one direction and the Earth would, in response, counter rotate in the opposite direction. Obviously the reactional motion of the Earth would be insignificant due to its far greater mass than that of the wheel, but the sum of the wheel's and Earth's angular momenta would always be zero. Thus, angular momentum within the wheel / Earth system would always be conserved.

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  30. If you believe momentum is conserved , then you can't believe bessler had a gravity wheel!
    Techno's analysis of overbalancing wheels doesn't mention it.
    If you want to design a gravity wheel, C of M is one of those rudimentary laws that a design has to break.

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  31. Some (i think) interesting observations about the wheel Techno indicated in Leopold's TMG:

    1). Note how the levers on the left side are closer to the circumference of the wheel.

    2). As depicted, the wheel is nearly symmetrical (but not quite) with 5 (sic!) levers on each side (ignoring the vertical ones on 12 and 6 o'clock). However the lever on the 12 o'clock position is tilted to the right side.

    3). Therefore the top and bottom levers do not cancel each other out.

    4). The "negative overhang" of the lever in the 2 o'clock position (to the left of its pivot) seems to be slightly shorter than the others. Could be a inaccuracy in the drawing, but all the other ones are depicted quite accurately.

    5). As to observation (1), assuming a clockwise rotation (more torque on right side, 175 vs. 163), it's a bit odd that the levers on the left side are actually closer to the circumference of the wheel.

    6). If one studies the levers on the 11, 12 and 1 o'clock positions, one notes that the ones on the right side seems slightly shifted both vertically and horizontally. Did Bessler indicate with the "connectedness principle" that the whole lever system can shift horizontally within the wheel i.e. that the two vertical halves (along the a-b line, and c-d line) could be shifted? Note also that the C is not on the same line as the D.

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  32. @Andre

    Thanks for checking out Leupold's third gravity wheel.

    You are wrong about its direction of rotation, however. The wheel is intended to turn COUNTER clockwise. It has weights farther from the axle on the left side than they are from the axle on the right side in an attempt to achieve this ccw rotation.

    The problem with the design is that one only has five horizontally farther weights on the left side producing ccw torque while there are six horizontally closer weights on the right side whose torque precisely opposes this. Thus, the wheel has zero torque and can not turn.

    If one computes the average horizontal displacement for all twelve weights, it is seen to be located exactly on the vertical line passing through the axle.

    Yet, Bessler says his "Connectedness Principle" will turn this failed design into a "runner".

    To me, it would seem that, like MT 13, this design could work if the right side levers approaching the top of the wheel could be made to quickly lift up toward their descending side (that is, left side) stops. This action would then significantly reduce the opposing torque of the right side weights and permit the ccw torque of the left side weights to drive the wheel ccw.

    If this can be done, then the center of gravity of the design's twelve weights should remain on the left side of the axle at all times during wheel rotation.

    Now, all that remains to figure out is HOW the Bessler's Connectedness Principle would achieve this feat.

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  33. Techno, my pleasure - it's an interesting drawing - a bit intriguing actually as there are some anomalies.

    Are you sure it's meant to run CCW? If one adds up the measurements as indicated, the right side has not only more levers (i.e. top 12 o'clock one tilting to the right) but also more distance (175 total as opposed to the left side 163).

    Indeed, I find it odd too that the left side levers are more close to the circumference, so maybe you're right. It doesn't make sense to me, unless the horizontal plane (with levers) can shift, or maybe the pins are can shift?

    As to your observation of MT 13, I always thought of the "connectedness principle" as some kind of clutch. Suppose that the pins are able to shift (by a clutch?). That would/could be one way to flip levers quickly, or adjust things while running.

    Just my two cents...

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  34. Actually, Techno, MT 13 is interesting in other ways as well. Surely it's a way to flip ('reset") levers, but it introduces a lot of friction. Instead, if one would use the pendulum (similar to the one in MT13) in a 2-stage oscillator, the up-and-down gyrations of the output beam can easily and powerfully drive a cam with notches (like on a musicbox drum) that catches and flips levers. I imagine this would introduce less friction, and, significantly, since there's a almost complete absence of a "equal and opposite reaction" in such devices, the pendulum swing (system clock) is not influenced by the load.

    So basically it would do the same as depicted in MT13, but with less friction, more force, and no impediment on the swing.

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  35. "If you believe momentum is conserved , then you can't believe bessler had a gravity wheel!"

    Let's not also forget that in the past it's been "PROVED" that: the Kangaroo will die of exhaustion after a short journey, the bumble bee can't fly, that metal ships can't float, wooden or metallic aircraft will never get off the ground, and anyone travelling in a carriage that moves faster than 30 M.P.H will die of suffocation as all the air is sucked out! And don't forget that it was accepted that the swing of a pendulum slows down as the amplitude diminishes!

    I think it was Niels Bohr who said that after hypothesizing and then performing an experiment to verify your results, if things turn out as expected you've made a measurement, if they don't, you've made a discovery.

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  36. @Andre

    I'm sure that the Leupold Lever Wheel is supposed to turn ccw. It always has six lever pivots on each side of the axle, but, when at equilibrium, will always have five WEIGHTS on the left side and six on the right side (with one weight hanging directly below the axle). The wheel shown is supposed to be in an equilibrium orientation. You might want to recheck your calculation of the horizontal displacement of the center of gravity of the twelve weights. It should be zero.

    Somehow Bessler figured out a way to make levers approaching the "zenith" of a wheel rise up ahead of schedule. No, I don't think that, like MT 13 there was a massive axle hung pendulum weight involved nor were the axle or lever stops sliding around.

    Bessler mentions that his wheels contained ropes or cords and this is, most likely, how he did it. They must have interconnected the levers in such a way that the levers approaching the top of the wheel would SWING up toward their descending side stops as other levers (on both sides of the axle) SWUNG toward or away from their stops. This action would serve to continously maintain the center of gravity of all the wheel's eight weights on the descending side of axle. This fits in nicely with his writing that "weights gained force (that is, torque) from their own swinging."

    What exactly were the cord connections that he used in his wheels? That, dear net friends, will be a matter of a great deal of experimentation to determine. Obviously, there must have been a large number of interconnecting cords involved because during each wheel rotation, each rising weight on the ascending side of the axle would probably have been connected to several sinking weights which would have shared the work of lifting it. For example, if each weight was lifted by three other weights, then, since there were eight weights in one of his one directional wheels, there would need to be a total of 8 x 3 = 24 cords.
    And all of these cords would have to be arranged within the drum so that they did not rub against each other and begin to fray as a wheel rotated.


    @Great Bear

    I like your quote by Niels Bohr. I've always been fascinanted with his discovery of the structure of the atom. He made his discovery while doodling on a paper towel at a cookout on his summer vacation! Now that is what I call great science!

    It's been my experience, however, that when my numbers don't add up, then the only discovery I make is that I've made a dumb math mistake!

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  37. Hello!..Is anybody home.

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  38. Techno, you might want to recheck your calculation of how many cords would be in your wheel.

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  39. @Hi, Trevor


    @Doug

    There are two wheels being discussed, Leupold's that had 12 weights and Bessler's that had 8 weights. My calculation of 24 cords is for Bessler's wheels. For the Leupold wheel one would have 12 weights x 3 cords / weight = 36 cords.

    That's alot of cords, but if more weights are "recruited" for each weight lifted and the total number of weights in a wheel goes beyond twelve, then the number of cords can become truly staggering.

    I think there is a wheel, MT 14 I believe, that had 24 weights. Bessler even suggests that this wheel could be made to work, presumerably, by application of the Connectedness Principle. Again, assuming at least three weights recruited to lift each weight as it approaches the wheel's zenith, we are talking about 24 weights x 3 cords / weight = 72 cords!

    Bessler would have used the least number of cords to do the job for his wheels. But, once again, finding that number will require a great deal of experimentation.

    Sooner or later, using the "Build, baby, build!" approach, someone is going to find the magic arrangement of levers and cords that will make these wheels work. The matter will not be done by "armchair" philosophizing on any blogs or forums, it will be a "lone wolf" discovery and it will change the field of free energy research forever.

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  40. Update for Andre:

    http://usersguidetotheuniverse.com/?p=2169

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  41. @ Andre

    I just reviewed your previous post and took another look at Leupold's Lever Wheel. I now am in agreement with your observation. That wheel (Fig. XI as well as the other one shown on the page (Figs. IX and X) are BOTH supposed to turn clockwise. As you noted for the lever wheel, the center of gravity is (175 right units - 163 left units)/12 = 12 right units/12 = 1 right unit which is slightly to the RIGHT of the axle and should cause cw motion. Of course, the wheel will not turn much before it achieves equilibrium.

    This now changes the way Bessler's "Connectedness Principle" would allow this wheel to become a "runner".

    For cw rotation, weights passing the zenith of the wheel and on the upper quadrant of the right side would have to help pull up left side levers as they approached the zenith of the wheel. In this scenario, ALL of the weights recruited to shift the ascending left side levers will be on the wheel's right side.

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  42. @ Andre

    On third thought, I've decided to return to my original statement that the Leupold Lever Wheel as shown in TMG was meant to turn CCW despite its right sided center of gravity.

    I think that Leupold purposely drew this lever wheel with its center of gravity on the right side in order to show the reader that it would not continue to rotate ccw.

    There, now I can finally go to sleep!

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  43. Despite being mediocre modeller, indications are (but still with some uncertainty) that I may have just become a great craftsman.

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  44. Doug: The OPERA collaboration seminar in which they explained how they measured the location is very interesting. It certainly bolsters the claim. But if true, a speed for neutrinos faster than c is possible. It could simply mean that neutrinos have less mass than photons, so that the true c should be the speed of neutrinos, not photons. Nevertheless its known that neutrinos (all three flavors) behave differently in matter than in a vacuum. Whatever it turns out to be, it's a very interesting discovery.

    @Techno: I hope you sleep well :-) It's an interesting design; I keep thinking of the (deliberate?) anomalies in the drawing. Leupold wasn't a sloppy guy.

    @John Worton: interesting observation about the T-motif i.e. pendula.

    @Great Bear: I would love you to elaborate on that statement.

    @Trevor: How are you doing? Did you not see your post?

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  45. Hi guys,..Funny you should ask!Ive been battling for a week to post on my computer using the cellphone.All of a sudden every time I post it wipes out my comment...Any suggestions?
    I managed to sneek a post on a relatives computer.
    At first I thought John had blocked me or there was some conspiracy because I was so close to the solution of the wheel.
    But now I think its a problem of authentication of my computer.I really don't know.
    I am desperate!

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  46. I have the same problem as Bessler. Everyone wants to know the secret for free. As we don't have any non-disclosure agreements in place, and there has been no response from anyone wishing to join forces, I feel that one mans secrets are likely to remain as one mans secrets.

    I will say that after a promising start on this particular idea, It has opened lots of avenues I'd previously never even considered. As I've already stated, I'm not the worlds greatest modeller, so building things to a reasonable standard takes a lot of time, and I have other things to do as well. I'm very happy at what has just happened, though there are some engineering problems to get around before I can produce any actual metrics (and I could be wrong after all). I will add that I haven't got a working wheel, probably not even close to it yet, but I reckon I may have found something of paramount importance. But then again, how many times have you heard that before?

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  47. @ Andre

    More commentary (on the mass of photons vs. neutrinos):

    http://usersguidetotheuniverse.com/?p=2181

    These calculations that bring into account observations of electromagnetism and different wavelength frequencies of light (Problem 2,3 and 4) show photons can't be more massive than neutrinos. The world would be different.

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  48. @ Great Bear

    Nice to read you've become a "great craftsman". I assume by this that you're playing around with counter balancing weights so that a small weight dropping can make a bigger weight fly up. Good luck with it.

    Actually, I'm not convinced that this idea was original with Bessler. Shortly before Bessler found the secret of a working PM wheel, there was an Italian inventor who developed the mechanism used in the piano keyboard. It also uses counter balancing so that a light touch on a key can send a far more massive hammer flying upward toward a streched wire to produce a note. Bessler would, most likely, have heard about his mechanism and studied it in detail.

    Yes, one can often get a few weights to jump about nicely, but the trick is to get enough of them working together inside of a wheel to maintain its imbalance. That, unfortunately, is a far more difficult task to accomplish.


    Neutrinos moving faster than light?

    It could be an experimental measurement error or, perhaps, there are certain conditions where this is possible.

    I remember decades ago it was being hypothesized that another particle, the tachyon, always had to move FASTER than light! I don't hear much about them nowadays, though.

    It's somewhat messy that modern particle physics has resulted in such a zoo-like collection of subatomic particles. Wouldn't it be an irritating surprise if we eventually find out that most of these particles don't actually exist in Nature, but are only produced accidentally by the various accelerators used to study them! If that ever happened, it would call into question all of the theories concerning the birth of our universe.

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  49. The reason I'm posting the links to the neutrino story is because Andre, back in the last blog, declared "@Doug: One of the hallowed laws seems to have bitten the dust, very recently. A pillar of physics — that nothing can go faster than the speed of light — appears to be smashed by an oddball subatomic particle that has apparently made a giant end run around Albert Einstein's theories."

    On a side note, relativity allows for galaxies to recede from ours at >c.

    Isn't that interesting how his equations have accurately predicted things he had no way of measuring? What an imagination.

    His equations, or Newtons's, aren't the laws of nature that bite the dust. They are interpretations of nature, equations borne out of observation. The law of nature hasn't changed, rather , technology is improving, allowing us to observe nature either at a smaller scale in this case, or a bigger scale in the case of receding galaxies, and improve the equations.
    One of the reasons given for anything >c is multidimensional space. Just as Einstein refined the views of physics with his idea that space and time are inseparable, the theory that we live in a universe that can fold back on itself as well as warp, will further refine our understanding.
    One other theory says that everything in the universe is interconnected, one giant organism, communicating against a backdrop of a zero point field of energy. Seeing how we are made from stardust, that makes a lot of sense.

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  50. Guys, a nice new site: http://www.pendulum-lever.com/

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  51. Andre,..I think I've solved my posting problem.I am working from my notebook computer using somebodies wireless network.

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  52. Doug, I never said that nature's laws would/are changing. I believe that *our interpretations* of those laws change, based on new observations, new ideas, new theory, new experimental proof. Or just plain "anomalies". Just as science is supposed to do. But instead we often say "that's impossible because..." while instead we should be more honest, and admit that it (whatever "it" is) doesn't fit the model *as we currently understand it". That's all I am saying - Nature doesn't change, our understanding of it changes and changed. Many, many times over.

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  53. Trevor, I know how that feels. We had a typhoon last week, and that knocked out power (and with it, the web) and I was using a connection to somebodies wireless network in the office tower across the street :-)

    Good luck getting everything back to normal.

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The True Story of Bessler’s Perpetual Motion Machine.

On  6th June, 1712, in Germany, Johann Bessler (also known by his pseudonym, Orffyreus) announced that after many years of failure, he had s...