I think that discussions about the bearings on the forum have become too convoluted. There is nothing complex about them, in my opinion. If you have a load-bearing shaft rotating in a bearing shell, you have two components. The journal which is the end of the shaft, made of steel, iron or brass - and it rests in a bearing shell of a similar metal which, in Bessler's day, was filled with a thick grease, pig or goose fat or even bear grease. It is usually covered by the other half of the shell to protect it from ingress of dirt, which if it wasn't included, might add friction and thus wear to the moving parts. Bessler routinely removed the upper shell so that the spectators could examine and see that there was no possible external connection. The bearings (journals) were slightly tapered to control the axle's lateral movement and keep it centred within the shell.This, from an account of the history of watermills. "Watermills utilised wooden axles and these generally had metal gudgeons held in place on the ends of the shafts using wedges and steel hoops, which allowed the wood axle to have a small metal tip on the end. These metal tips or 'journals' would then ride on an iron half-shell liberally greased with animal fat."
Finally this from wikipedia, "A plain bearing, or a friction bearing is the simplest type of bearing, comprising just a bearing surface and no rolling elements. Therefore the journal (i.e., the part of the shaft in contact with the bearing) slides over the bearing surface. The simplest example of a plain bearing is a shaft rotating in a hole."
There is only one place where the so-called 'curved' pieces which were said to extend outwards from the bearings on the end of the axle, are reported,and at is in Das Triumphirende - as per Stewart's translation which follows, 'They rest in their motion on two almost 1 inch thick, {am Ort} somewhat tapered steel pivots horizontal in the two sockets or bearings, [the pivots are] equipped with two curves, about which the rotary motion of the whole vertically suspended wheel can be somewhat modified by applying pendula on both sides, as the attached figures at the end of this treatise clearly show'. In other words there are no witness descriptions of these strange curved pieces because they never existed outside Bessler's imagination. He introduced them into Das Triumphirende for good reasons that I shall explain at a later date.
JC
@ JC
ReplyDeleteI agree that the amount of sheer nonsense concerning the two axle bearings on Bessler's wheels is astonishing. But, then again, it was right from the start when his critics started suggesting that the wheels were actually pulse driven through their axle pivots by "barbed" steel rods hidden in their upright supports...totally ridiculous!
"Open" bearings are certainly nice for inspection purposes, but they can be dangerous in certain situations. For example, if a wheel was being tested by having it suddenly lift a load off of the ground that was attached by a rope wound around the axle, then there was the risk that the sudden tension in the lifting rope could actually lift the end of the wheel's axle pivot off of its brass bearing plate and then cause the drum to crash to the floor and self destruct. That is, IMO, why Bessler always placed the first axle rope pulleys under the axles in his wheel illustrations. That location caused the jerk on the axle from the tension suddenly produced on he rope by a load being lifted outside of a nearby window to pull the axle pivot down tighter into the bearing so as to prevent dislocation. (BTW, EVERYTHING shown in a Bessler illustration has a precise purpose and his illustrations should be studied intently.)
You claim that the pendula shown in the illustrations are solely the product of Bessler's imagination. I disagree. Just because you have not found any correspondence references to them does not necessarily mean they never existed.
The curved metal pieces attached to the ends of an axle's steel pivots were probably attached as was the minute hand on a clock dial to one of its movement's extended pivots. Thus, the end of that pivot was squared off by grinding and the minute hand had a square hole filed into it so it could be snuggly fitted onto the end of the pivot afterwhich it was secured in place by a screw. This arrangement allowed the clock's time to be set by manually rotating the minute hand around the dial. The square hole prevented the minute hand from slipping on the end of the extended movement pivot and messing up its synchronization with the dial's hour hand.
PART II
ReplyDeleteBessler, being a clockmaker, would have used this same method to attach those curved pieces to the ends of a wheel's axle pivots. This meant that a curved piece could be quickly and easily detached from an axle's end by simply removing the screw which secured it to the squared off end of the axle's pivot.
I suspect that he always removed the pendula when giving a demonstration to potential buyers in order to impress them with how simple his wheels where and also to show them that their motion was not being assisted by anything outside of the drum. This would also have been the case for official tests of wheels. Indeed, he knew examiners would insist on lifting the pivots off of their bearing plates and not having the curved pieces attached to their ends would have made this much easier to do.
Most likely, the drive rods leading from the curved pieces to the pendula cross beams were secured to the ends of the curved pieces via a bolt that served as a pivot. It would have been well lubricated and Bessler would not have wanted to undo it. Whenever he removed the pendula from a wheel prior to a private demonstration or offical test, he would also have removed their drive rods and the curved pieces attacted to the lower ends of the drive rods along with them as a single unit.
For public demonstrations, however, he probablly would have used the pendula to dazzle his paid visitors. They had come to see something spectacular and, one must admit, that seeing a giant wheel rotating smoothly between two counter swinging pendula certainly would do nicely. (Note that the presence of the pendula would NOT have interferred with any of the other tasks a wheel might be made to perform.) Visitors would then rush off to their respective villages and towns and tell friends and neighbors what they had seen. That "word of mouth" advertising would then generate more visitors and, of course, thalers for Bessler in the long run. We can expect there to have been far less written descriptions generated by these common people than by the more highly educated ones who arranged private demonstrations and this could easily account for the complete lack (so far) of witness tesitmony about the pendula.
In dircks book, he says bessler published a tract in Nov. 1717 about the sealed room trial, and in the tract, bessler describes that sealed room version as having a pendulum fixed on each side.
ReplyDeleteLink for dircks book:
http://www.archive.org/stream/perpetuummobile00dircgoog#page/n132/mode/2up
From the bottom of page 98-99.
I've got two of Dircks books on PM, vol.1 and 2.
ReplyDeleteYes this was an abbreviated version of what went into Das Triumphirende. Written by Bessler and yet no-one ever described the pendulums.
JC
It is strange that he would publish a tract describing the last wheel as having the pendulums fixed to each side during the sealed room test, but no one else mentions the pendulums in their descriptions. Is this a misprint do you think? Or when the certificates were written and signed, the pendulums were overlooked in the wording, and no one thought it mattered when they signed?
ReplyDeleteMaybe the pendulums were necessary for a long term test. To slow the wheel down ('equally regulate the movement' could imply that), and cut down on wear and tear. But not necessary for half hour demonstrations, the bearings could be re-greased if that was a problem.
It isn't a misprint Doug, and no the pendulums were not overlooked in the wording. I have knowledge of the situation but I'm not in a position to discuss it at the moment.
ReplyDeleteJC
Why not?
ReplyDelete@ JC
ReplyDeleteI can't accept that those pendula shown in the DT illustrations are "imaginary". The lower pendula bob weights attached to the Weissenstein wheel are shaped like oversized foot balls made of lead. Bessler obviously chose this shape to reduce the aerodynamic drag acting on them as they swung back and forth. Why bother to draw this shape unless he actually tried other shapes and realized that they were not allowing the pendula to achieve their full natural resonance frequency because of the aerodynamic drag they experienced?
I wouldn't get too hung up over a lack of eye witness reports to the existence of these pendula. Despite your efforts, John, I doubt if we even have 10% of all of the material that was written about Bessler and his wheels at the time. Thus, we certainly do not have a "representative" sample upon which to draw conclusions. I think that we should just accept what Bessler shows in the illustrations which can serve no real purpose unless they actually existed.
Amazing how we've drifted from bearings to pendula so quickly!
John, can you tell us a little bit more about those pendula?
ReplyDeleteMerry Christmas everybody and a Happy and Healthy New Year!
That's strange...May be Bessler tried to show that there was a pendulum inside the wheel.
ReplyDeleteOf course there were pendulums inside the wheel!
ReplyDeleteWhat did Bessler say?,'Lively children and movement for the sake of movement.'
the shape of the weight (football, sphere, or square) would make very very little difference to operation at the speeds known. They do not have a big enough surface area relative to the whole pendulum mass to make any measurable difference. My humble opinion.
ReplyDeleteregards
Jon
@ Anon aka "Jon"
ReplyDeleteShaping the mass of the main Weissenstein bob weights into proloidal spheroids or footballs as opposed to spheres would have reduced their leading circular cross sectional areas by about 50%. That and their pointier leading surface profiles made a BIG difference in the amount of aerodynamic drag they experienced as they swung back and forth. This is one of the reasons artillery shells have pointed noses instead of spherically rounded ones. It makes the shell travel farther because it is more aerodynamically streamlined (it could travel even farther if BOTH of its ends were the same shape, but that would then reduce the volume of explosive that could be packed into the shell).
@ Trevor
If by "pendulums inside the wheel" you mean weighted levers near the periphery which, because of the Connecedness Principle, could only undergo a limited range of motion, then I certainly agree with you. If, however, you are suggesting there were pendulums anywhere else inside of the drum or on its axle section, then I must disagree with you.
Jon's point is still valid, the pendulums wouldn't be producing that much drag at those speeds. Artillery shells go much faster; that's not a good comparison. The arms of the pendulum have a lot more surface area to drag than the weights anyway, but they don't appear to be aerodynamically designed.
ReplyDeleteThere is a contradiction between what bessler wrote and what was demonstrated.
Why would bessler say the pendulums were there? To say they were there when they weren't, makes him appear either very absentminded, and didn't realize what he'd done; or guilty of false advertising; when he realized his mistake, he let it go.
I have no comment on the bearings.I don't think they were unusual for their time.
The curved crank on the axle pins might have been there only when the pendulums were attached, or, they served as a convenient handle for unscrewing the pins and rolling the wheel to new bearings; and he just left them on for that porpoise.
@ Doug
ReplyDeleteI just did a rough calculation that indicates that, at the botom of its swing, the football shaped Weissenstein wheel's pendulum bob was traveling at a maximum speed of about ten feet per second or about 6.8 miles per hour. I think this was fast enough to make a significant difference if a spherical weight was used as opposed to a football shaped one. As for the other support structures in the pendula, the long central piece was probably flat wood with sharp edges to reduce wind resistance and the oblique supports were probably thin metal rods or stretched rope with very low air resistance. The volume of the main football shaped bob weights and the fact that they were moving so rapidly makes their shape seem necessary if the pendula are to have a frequency as close to 26 rpms as possible.
I don't think Bessler needed to use the curved pieces as cranks to unscrew the pivots from a wheel's axle during translocation. That was unnecessary and undesirable (might loosen them up over time). He could have had a temporary scaffold that he set up that placed two parallel tracks on each side of the drum. Using two block and tackles, he would have raised the axle out of the upright supports and then used the tracks to roll it over to another set of upright supports. The blocks and tackles would then have been moved and used to position the axle onto the new set of upright's bearing plates.
Yes TG they were around the periphery of the wheel.How else could they have maximum off CG effect to over balance the wheel.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to have to ask: if he didn't unscrew the pins, how would they have gotten the axle out of the support posts?
ReplyDeleteThe wheel wasn't moved more than a few times, I'm sure the pins would be fine with being unscrewed. If the demonstrations didn't loosen them, then a few times for the new bearings test wouldn't matter. It would have been much easier to slide a ramp up to the wheel, unscrew the pins, and roll it down and over and up the ramp to the new supports.
Any debate about the construction of, or the reason for the pendulums is academic if they were never seen. It doesn't matter what he said they were for or how they were drawn, they were never used anyway. Unless they are the secret.
I stand by what I said on 6 October, that the period for the Weissenstein wheel's pendulum, as drawn on p156 of "Das Triumphirende..." is about 3.82 seconds, whereas at 26 rpm the wheel's period of revolution is 2.308 seconds. That is too big a discrepancy. If the pendulum was forcing the wheel to rotate at the pendulum's natural period, its rotational speed would have dropped to about 15.7 rpm.
ReplyDeleteFor a nice illustration of forced oscillations/resonance, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Resonance.PNG
@ Trevor
ReplyDeleteSome designs place the lever pivots on one side of the drum and the attached weight nearly a diameter away on the other side of the drum. Some designs have the lever pivots near the axle or even attached to it in an effort to maximize the displacent of the CG of the weights.
In Bessler's wheels the weights were mounted on short levers an very close to the periphery of the wheel. This was necessary to keep the levers from colliding with each other as they automatically shifted during wheel rotation. My calculations indicate that in the Weissenstein wheel the CG of a sub wheel's weights was only displaced horizontally about one INCH from a vertical line passing through the axle! This is one of the reasons for the low constant power output of the wheel.
@ Doug
Although it is not shown in Bessler's wheel illustrations, there were notches in the upright supports that allowed examiners to SEE the pivots sitting on their "half moon" brass plates. They were also able to LIFT the axle and its end pivots UP off of the brass plates in order to examine them more closely. They did not need to unscrew the pivots by their curved pieces to do this.
In the "little book" section of AP, Bessler has a line that mentions "children play among the broken columns...". The broken columns refers to the upright axle supports which where notched to make removal of a wheel's axle as easy as possible.
@ Arktos
In your calculations did you use the distance from the Weissenstein wheel's pendulum's pivot to the center of the large football shaped weight (about 9 feet) OR did you use the shorter distance from the pivot to the CoM of the THREE weights in the compound pendulum (also known as the "center of gyration")? If you use that latter distance, you should get a much higher frequency for the pendulum.
The notches would need to have been fairly long to allow the axle enough clearance at one end to make it out of the post; and he left that sizable, important detail out?
ReplyDeleteMy theory is more plausible.
@ technoguy
ReplyDeleteFor my silux model, I scaled from the drawing mentioned above, using a scale of 1mm (drawing) to 2 inches (real world). That gave me 122 inches from the pivot to the bottom weight, which I made 56 kg. I made the two upper weights 37.33 kg each, at 38 inches each from the pivot.
You are right to claim a much higher frequency if the three weights are combined to a single weight at their center of mass (which I calculate would be 1.328m down from the pivot on my model). I ran that case today, and got a periodic time of 2.459 seconds. But such a model is a completely incorrect representation of the actual pendulum.
technoguy whaT is a sub wheel? Where do you get your power output figures from?
ReplyDeleteAnon 101
That's what he calls one side of a bidirectional wheel.
ReplyDeleteThe power of a wheel is the torque times the angular velocity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_(physics)#Mechanical_power
Doug, I know how to calculate power. I'm asking technoguy where he is getting his output power figures for Bessler's wheel.
ReplyDelete@ Doug
ReplyDeleteActually, the notches would not have to be that high because it was only the extended steel pivots that had to be lifted up and out of the uprights. A notch that rose only a few inches would have been sufficient. The presence of a notch in each upright would not have compromised its ability to support the axle and wheel although it would definitely have reduced their ability to resist thrusting forces parallel to the axle. Fortunately, forces were not applied in this direction.
@ Arktos
Your calculation of a period of 2.459 seconds for the Weissenstein pendula corresponds to a wheel rotation rate of 24.4 rpm which is only 6.2% less than the actual value of 26 rpm. That just too close, IMO, to be chance.
@ Anon 101
Doug is right. By "sub wheel" I mean one of the two opposed, parallel, one directional wheels that made up a single two directional wheel. It is the presence of two separate sub wheels within a two directional wheel that rationalizes why Bessler's wheels suddenly almost doubled in thickness when the introduced the two directional wheel design. This design, however, is somewhat wasteful because, during rotation, only one of the wheels is providing torque.
To determine the constant power output of the Weissenstein wheel, one can use my estimate of the horizontal displacement of the CoM of its sub wheel's 8 weights which was only one inch or so (assume 1.33 in) onto the descending side. I believe Bessler actually doubled the mass of the weights used in this wheel in an effort to double power output and used weights of 8 lbs each. That means the torque at a distance of 1.33 in from the center of the axle was:
8 wts x (8 lb / wt) x 1.33 in = 85.12 lb-in.
At the axle surface which had a radius of 3,5 in the torque drops to only 32.3 lb-in. To get the constant power output, we then multiply this torque times the velocity of the surface of the axle (when it was turning the Archmedean screw and only moving at 20 rpm) which was:
2 x pi x 3.5 in x 0.333 rps = 7.33 in / sec.
The constant power output is then given by:
32.3 lb-in x 7.33 in/sec = 236.8 lb-in / sec
236.8 lb-in / sec = 26.7 watts
which provides a previously estimated power consumption for the Archimedean screw of 25 watts and also an extra 1.7 watts to overcome air resistance and various bearing frictions within the wheel and its rope attached to the screw's square pulley.
Technoguy, and this is my point; you have no idea if the wheel was giving out a power output of 25 watts or not. That figure is only guessed upon by current people reading secondary accounts, several of which ( secondary accounts ) conflict with each other. Not to mention, that just because it pulled certain loads under tests does not mean it was pulling maximum loads. In fact, Karl was concerned about the length of time the locked room test would run because he feared a breakdown of the parts. How do you know or not if there was a greater load/power output the wheel was capable of? And they decided not to max it out for fear of that reason? There are alo current people who have run different figures and have decided the wheel was outputing over 100 watts.
ReplyDelete@ Anon 101
ReplyDeleteI trust the power estimates using the Archimedean screw and the measured rotation rate of the Weissenstein wheel when it was operating the screw (only 20 rpm). They seem precise enough for me to feel "comfortable" that the wheel's maximum power output was in the 25 to 30 watt range.
I'm also confident that Bessler tried to pump as much water as the wheel could pump because he knew potential buyers were considering using it to pump water out of coal mines. He would have set up the pump so it used the maximum power output of the wheel.
One must be wary of any power estimates done on a wheel that is rapidly hoisting up a heavy weights. Such tests give an inflated estimate of the wheel's actual constant power because they utilize the kinetic energy that had already built up over time in the wheel (the so-called "fly wheel effect") to lift a weight. In such a demonstration, which is actually only a braking test, the weight will seem to rise without deceleration for tens of feet, but would come to halt if the wheel was required to lift it more than one hundred feet. These tests do not reliably measure constant power output at low rotation rates, only brief bursts of stored power at higher rotation rates.
Techno the tests involved were not to sell to potential buyers, they were to try and prove he had a working machine. He also said he could multiply the wheels effects up to fourfold ( this is not where he was talking about increasing the wheels power through combination or size), that he could make the wheels run faster and give more power ( his had other wheels that ran faster ) that the wheel he was showing was only a model, that there was a concern of internal breakage as well as shove to the wheel would cause it to come to a grinding halt. Therefore you cannot really give an adequate prediction on the power output. Also to mention as well a small axle diameter on a wheel with a low rpm ( which all of this was ) would not rapidly hoist a heavy weight. So your flywheel example is incorrect because if a heavy weight were to rise for tens of feet ( by the way how heavy and just how many is tens of feet? ) and if this was mostly done because of a flywheel effect, then it would have taken the wheel a lot longer to get up to initial startup speed. And it didn't take long it was reported it came to speed quite fast and within 2-3 rotations. So either it's flywheel mass was relatively light or it had a lot of torque. Also what is a heavy weight to you because one final item of note was when a grown man tried to stop it it lifted him off his feet. Definately not 100 feet.
ReplyDelete@ technoguy
ReplyDeleteAs I said above, the concept you seem to suggest of combining all weights at their center of mass, and treating that as the same as the real pendulum, is just completely incorrect, and so will be any answer for a periodic time based on that concept. Here is a simple counter-example:
Imagine a large pendulum somewhat like the Weissenstein one, but with three equal weights at the corners of an equilateral triangle. The pivot is placed at the center of the triangle. If the weights were combined using a center-of-mass approach, the combined mass would be at the central pivot, which is obviously wrong!
The radius of gyration approach is a bit better - in the above example, to get the original rotational inertia, the combined mass could be at any one of the three corners. But just getting the same rotational inertia isn't the end of the story - there will be a difference in how the combined mass performs under gravity, compared with the original case.
I'll stick my neck out here: I still maintain that any correct computer model for the Weissenstein pendulum, as drawn, will give a period of 3.82 seconds, let's say to within no more than ±5%.
I'm sorry I don't believe the bi-directional wheel was two wheel configurarions in one.
ReplyDeleteFirstly,there would not be space and secondly,there's no point because a symetrical design would be able to work backwards anyway.
All my previous models worked both ways even though they eventually slowed to a stop.
Bessler wrote that everything revolved around the axle, so the pendulum arrangment described in the figure couldn't be the solution.
ReplyDeleteMaybe we should work on established facts alone. My calculation for the power of the wheel, (detailed in previous postings) was approximately 50 watts, based on the figures quoted. Since then the figure has jumped about a lot, with some claiming various blocks and tackles were used (though I can see no references to these by Bessler himself), and these have been used to downgrade the performance of the wheel. They seem to be pure assertions, and now there are many other assertions about the bearings and other areas again.
ReplyDeleteIt would be prudent for the wise to remember that these are mere assertions and conjectures and NOT facts.
If anyone knew that actual systems Bessler had used, the wheel would have been reinvented by now.
@ Anon 101
ReplyDeletePractically all of the devices attached to Bessler's wheels have an industrial application and I think that was their real purpose: to sell the wheel to business people who would see these various gadgets and begin imagining Bessler's wheels doing something similar in their mills and mines.
My previous calculations suggest that the Merseberg wheel could raise a load outside the window at the rate of about 10 in / sec. That works out to 50 ft / min. That is certainly "fast" compared to the wheel's ability to lift the same load (60 lbs) at the rate of only about 2 in / sec when it was hardly turning and a block and tackle had to be employed.
Yes, his wheels accelerated fairly rapidly, BUT they only did this when they were running freely. Only AFTER a wheel had reached its maximum terminal rotation rate would the looped end of a rope be suddenly attached to a peg on the axle in order to do a "fast" lift of a load suspended from a pulley outside of a nearby window.
A man suddenly applying his full body weight to a wheel to stop it is definitely a braking type test. To get an approximate idea of how much kinetic energy the wheel had stored up during its free running acceleration and while turning at its maximum rotation rate, compute the amount of energy needed to, say, lift a 200 lb man a height of 6 feet. Next, compute how high this amount of energy would lift, say, a 60 lb load. I'll do the math for you. It works out to about 20 feet which is about the same distance that the Weissenstein wheel lifted load weights up to the second floor window pulley of the castle before the weight and the wheel stopped moving.
As has been noted previously, Bessler's wheels certainly gave impressive demonstrations, but their actual power outputs were meager. Could he have made much more powerful wheels? Yes, with increased size and combination that is possible. But, potential buyers wanted something that was both powerful AND compact. Only the emerging steam engine technology of the time allowed for that.
PART II (So much for my attempts to keep my comments short!)
ReplyDelete@ Arktos
Your equilateral triangle example is NOT a pendulum. Try putting its fulcrum in the middle of one of its sides and see what happens. Does the resulting oscillation frequency correspond to a pendulum with its mass at the lowest point of the triangle or to one with a mass equal to the total of the three weights located at the center of the triangle? I think you will see that the latter is the case.
I think for the Weissenstein wheel, Bessler arranged the masses of the three pendulum weights so that their CoM would be exactly located at the location of the wheel's axle. I still don't know why he would have done this, but it must serve some purpose. Maybe he considered this to somehow be balanced or symmetrical.
@ Trevor
Considering that Bessler managed to fit a one directional wheel into a space only about 3 INCHES wide with the Gera wheel, I don't have any problem imagining him doing the same with a two directional wheel that provided several times that width for each sub wheel.
@ yellowson
I agree that little can be learned about the internal mechanisms of his wheels by studying the external pendula connected to them. However, their presence does indicate that Bessler was an expert at connecting a rotating lever (the curved pieces at the axle ends) to an oscillating pendulum. These skills would have come in handy when it came time to find a method for interconnecting the weighted levers within a wheel so that their CoM always remained on a wheel's descending side during rotation.
Find the Connectedness Principle he used and you will find the solution to the Bessler mystery!
(Oh, you lurking newbie mobilists reading all of this say that your designs do not need interconnecting ropes between their internal weighted levers in order to work and that you don't believe Bessler ever used them? Trust me...five or ten years from now, IF you are still pursuing a solution (there's only a 1 in a 1000 chance of that!), then you WILL definitely believe he used them and any models you are building then will ALL contain them!)
@ Great Bear
Yes, there is and will be wide variations in the results of various calculations made concerning Bessler's wheels. I always try to determine if the assumptions that go into a computation seem plausible to me before I consider accepting the results of the computation as being valid. That's why I generally only trust my OWN calculations. LOL!
Ahem,excuse me,..The pendulums were not about direction they were about height.Once you've got that the wheel will fall either way.
ReplyDeleteIt's all about timing ya see!
@ technoguy, you wrote;
ReplyDelete"Practically all of the devices attached to Bessler's wheels have an industrial application and I think that was their real purpose: to sell the wheel to business people who would see these various gadgets and begin imagining Bessler's wheels doing something similar in their mills and mines."
You haven't really read the history then have you? Or Bessler's books. If you had you wouldn't be making that dumb statement. He wanted to sell his invention for a very large sum as a perpetual motion machine, preferably to the rich scientific community of England. Read the texts before commenting. You'll see all I said was right. By the way, with the amount you write are you sure you're not Ken?
@ Trevor
ReplyDeleteYes, pendulum frequency is important. But, many forget that each of Bessler's wheels were attached to TWO COUNTERPOISED pendula through the reversed curved pieces at the ends of the pivots. I sometimes wonder if, in such a combination, they would behave the same as they would independently.
For example, if the drum and its internal mechanics were removed and only the axle and its attached pendula remained, one could manually rotate the axle in either direction and cause the pendula to rise up to the same height on both lateral sides of the axle. Paradoxically, if the axle was then released, the pendula and axle would remain stationary!
I suspect that the pendula actually functioned as an inertial governor system on the wheels. When they were swinging below their natural frequency, they had no effect on a wheel. But, as the wheel began to accelerate to a rotation rate that forced the pendula to oscillate at a frequency above their natural rate, they would then begin to place an increasing inertial drag on the wheel's axle.
Why limit the top speed of a wheel? Obviously, to slow down the rate of wear of its various metallic bearings, but also to keep it ready to output its maximum power without the wheel having to suddenly undergo a big decrease in rotation rate when a load was suddenly applied to its axle. And, of course, there is the theatrical aspect of using the pendula which was previously discussed.
Perhaps such sudden drops in rotation rate over stressed the wheel's internal components or could cause the interconnecting ropes to break and thereby make the wheel "go out of balance"? We probably won't have a definite explanation for this until we can successfully duplicate his wheels.
Technoguy, you wrote
ReplyDelete" Yes, his wheels accelerated fairly rapidly, BUT they only did this when they were running freely. Only AFTER a wheel had reached its maximum terminal rotation rate would the looped end of a rope be suddenly attached to a peg on the axle in order to do a "fast" lift of a load suspended from a pulley outside of a nearby window."
That's not the point, is it? Please keep focused and don't reply out of context. It all has to do with the wheel acting as a flywheel. No flywheel that can store any adequate amount of energy, enough to lift a heavy weight tens of feet, will get up to speed that fast UNLESS there was a large amount of torque to the wheel. That's one choice. The other is there was very little flywheel mass. Either way it tosses your flywheel theory out the window. Your really starting to irritate me with your half answers and inadequate analysis. DO THE WORK!
Technoguy, I've been around for quite a while. You're just parroting things you've seen by others. You won't admit to it but you are. READ the actual works. It don't cost that much.
ReplyDeleteTechnoguy wrote -" Oh, you lurking newbie mobilists reading all of this say that your designs do not need interconnecting ropes between their internal weighted levers in order to work and that you don't believe Bessler ever used them? Trust me...five or ten years from now, IF you are still pursuing a solution (there's only a 1 in a 1000 chance of that!), then you WILL definitely believe he used them and any models you are building then will ALL contain them!"
ReplyDeleteJesus you are full of yourself. One little quote from MT and you act like you have it all figured out. Build it yourself then or quit acting like a troll.
I can't believe you guys are forming opinions on what you have seen in the drawings.There's nothing in there that resembles the actual successful wheel.
ReplyDeleteThere's more to be gained from his words than anything else.
It's quite clear that all his drawings were made of the wheels that failed.
Do you really think he would give it away so easily.
You have to think about what he says,believe it and take it to heart.
His reward is to the astute person who can think out the box using all his statements to put the puzzle toghether.
@ Anon "101"?
ReplyDeleteYou only know that the Weissenstein wheel reached its maximum terminal rotation rate after one or two rotations. You do NOT know HOW LONG it took the wheel to complete those INITIAL one or two rotations. Like most others I think you are ASSUMING it must have taken (60 sec / min) / (26 rpm) = 2.3 sec per wheel revolution so that the time needed to reach full speed was somewhere between 2.3 and 4.6 seconds. That is total NONSENSE! Even if Bessler had an electric motor attached to the Weissenstein wheel, he would not have been able to accelerate it and its 128 lbs of weight mass near the rim that fast! The actual time needed to reach its full terminal rotation after completing one or two full rotations was probably more like 15 seconds.
The torque of this giant wheel was low, only about 85 lb-in or 7 lb-ft and there is NO way it would have lifted a 60 lb load a distance of 20 feet in only 24 seconds unless it was taking full advantage of the flywheel effect created by the sixteen 8 lb weights it contained.
I'm "parroting" what others have said in the past? Not really. About 90% of what I post here will be found nowhere else on the web. I only follow and contribute to this blog because it, unlike other sites, deals exclusively with Bessler and his inventions.
Maybe YOU should get YOUR facts straight and stop accusing others of being trolls just because YOU can not follow their reasoning or do not like their conclusions? (However, if others here also feel I am a troll or behaving like one, then I will be more than happy to take a vacation for awhile so that my opinions on the subject will not unduly interfer with their own beliefs and their expression.)
@ technoguy
ReplyDeleteI suppose I oversimplified with my equilateral triangle pendulum. Of course the pivot really has to be shifted slightly (is 1mm enough?) above the triangle's center for it to work as a pendulum.
The point I was trying to make is that in general it is wrong (and unnecessary) to combine masses in analysing a distributed-mass pendulum. As you suggested, I analysed an equilateral-triangle pendulum with the pivot in the middle of its top side. I used 200mm sides and 4kg masses, over an angle of about ±0.4 radians. Results for periodic time:
i) Three separate masses, one at each corner: T = 1.0894s.
ii) All masses combined at bottom corner: T = 0.8433s.
iii) All masses combined at center of triangle: T = 0.5954s.
So the results are all quite different.
@ Arktos
ReplyDeleteGood work and surprising results. I would have expected i) and iii) to be the same, but they obviously are not. I guess the two masses at the upper corners of the equilateral triangle do not act like they are part of the pendulum formed by the weight at the bottom corner afterall. The two top corner weights just act like sluggish inertial mass that modifies the period and frequency of the lower corner weight.
Maybe the weights mounted on the top bars of the pendula attached to Bessler's wheels were only there to "fine tune" the natural frequency of the main lower bob weights? They look like they might have been made to slide back and forth on their upper support bars which, of course, would alter their polar moments of inertia. Sliding the upper masses toward the ends of their support bar would result in the frequency of the lower pendulum bob weight being decreased as its period was increased.
I think you might be onto something important here.
techn0 said...
ReplyDelete@ Doug
"Actually, the notches would not have to be that high because it was only the extended steel pivots that had to be lifted up and out of the uprights. A notch that rose only a few inches would have been sufficient."
Only one end of the axle could be lifted using this method. The notch would have to be much longer than a few inches for the pin to clear the notch. A 6+ foot long axle lifted at one end is going to make a wide arc. Just guessing I'd say the notch would need to be at least a foot long. Imagine the stress you would put on the other parts of the structure this way, and trying to balance it to get the other pin out of its bearing and then lift it onto your scaffolds.
Why go to that trouble if the wheel(s) was only moved once for proof of bearings' innocence? The pins could have been removed for this without the oak axle plug suffering any harm.
Occam's razor - "simpler explanations are, other things being equal, generally better than more complex ones." - would apply to this situation, and, to our little mystery in general, wouldn't you agree?
Why all the pendulum talk? You'd think somebody mentioned they could be the secret.
Technoguy said "About 90% of what I post here will be found nowhere else on the web"
ReplyDeleteLie. It's all on Besslerwheel. The 26 watts is a very old figure, before Besslerwheel. I'm done, I won't talk with someone who parrots others and acts like he knows how it's done when he doesn't.
@ Doug
ReplyDeleteOkay, let's split the difference and just say the unillustrated notches were 8 inches high. Afterall, 8 is an important number in the Bessler story (8 weights, 1717 = 1+7 and 1+7 = 8 + 8, etc.). As a numerologist Bessler would have probably made it 8 inches!
Yes, it's too bad that we only have fragments of the full Bessler story. I bet if we had more details that it would truly amaze us! For example, maybe Bessler did not use a blocks and tackles to lift the axle and its pivots out of the bearing "nests" and onto the parallel tracks used for translocation. Maybe, with his assistant, he just used simple lever bars to lift the axle onto the tracks so the wheel could be rolled to the next set of uprights where its pivots would then just fall into place on their bearing plates.
Damned if I know why we're so preoccupied with pendula. This discussion does nothing to further our understanding of a wheel's internal mechanics except maybe to suggest the pendula served as inertial governors to keep a wheel operating near its peak output rotation rate and thereby prevent a rapid slowdown when a load was suddenly applied to the axle that might damage the cords that interconnected the weighted levers.
We need more info about the structures INSIDE of the wheel.
Come to think of it, didn't JC mention once that he found a figure in AP or DT that showed the SHAPE of the levers used inside of the wheels? Am I remembering this correctly, John? Any hints were we can find that "magic" lever shape?
Techno, the number is 5. Or are we all wrong about that , too?
ReplyDeleteThe levers were in the shape of long sticks.
I remember writing something along those lines, technoguy. I believe that I know the whole system of levers and weights and how they work. A bold claim, I know, but I'm busy building it at the moment and I'd prefer not to say anything about them until I've finished and it's proved or not. With Christmas approaching and all that goes with it I suspect I won't get too much time in the workshop so it may be next year before I know for sure.
ReplyDeleteJC
@Arktos
ReplyDelete@techno
Bessler wrote the pendula are for regulation. That means they regulated the wheel to a maximum swing period which can be set by the length of the pendulum and the attached weight to it. So nothing is so secret there...
Ok I read my comment again I think I was not clear :) If Bessler did say the truth in his writings then the speed of the wheel must have been regulated to a value which was related to the period of the swing. You won't get any "secrets" more than that...
ReplyDelete@ Doug
ReplyDeleteOkay, 5 it is!
I'm wondering if Bessler left the notches and their contained bearings and pivots "open" at all times. If I was mounting an axle like that between two upright boards, I would have the pieces of wood I cut out of the uprights attached to them with hinges so that, after I placed the pivots on their bearing plates, I would be able to swing the cut out pieces back up into position and secure them in place with small latches. This would then enclose the pivots and, should the axle start to bounce around during rotation for some reason, the closed upright cut out pieces would then be better able to keep the pivots on their bearing plates and thereby prevent a catatrophic dislocation of the axle.
@ JC
Okay, you've found something of value and are not yet ready to share it. I can understand that. We are all like squirrels jealously guarding a tasty little nut that we've found. I just hope you are right and that you have actually found a valid clue about the levers AND have correctly interpreted it.
My best guess is that the levers were short and only a small fraction of the radius of a wheel. How small a fraction? Well, since Bessler was obviously obsessed with the number 5, he probably would have used this number in determining the proportions of his wheels' internal parts.
Let's see now. A 12 foot diameter wheel is 6 feet in radius which is 72 inches from the center of the axle to the rim. If we take that distance and divide it by 5 we get 72 / 5 = 14.4 inches. If we allow a 0.4 inch clearance between the lead weight and the inside surface of the drum, then we can determine the length of a lever from its pivot to the outside of the cylindrical weight to have been about 14 inches for both the Merseberg and Weissenstein wheels. This seems to fit in with the eyewitness reports of Bessler struggling with "movable or flexible" arms on the periphery of his wheels when he removed / installed weights during wheel translocations.
Well, that gives the approximate size of the levers, but not their shape. Most likely, they were not just simple straight pieces as depicted in most of the MT lever wheel designs. No, they must have had a far more complex shape that allowed them, via interconnecting cords, to maintain their weights' CoM on the wheel's descending side.
In time the answers will come and I can even imagine the residents of Kassel eventually building a museum in a replica of Weissenstein castle where tourists from all over the globe can visit and view a full sized replica of Bessler's wheel as it runs continuously day and night performing various tasks. Of course, all personnel at this museum will be dressed in period costumes and kids will even be able to visit the museum gift shop and buy a kit that will allow them to construct their own working model Bessler wheel!
The notches wouldn't have been only 5 inches, either.
ReplyDeleteTry it with a 6 foot board or other material. Put one end against a vertical, like a straight table leg. Raise that end, without moving the other end, until you have about a two inch clearance from the vertical. How far the board is from the floor is the length the notch would have to be for a two inch thick support post. If the post was thicker than that, for a wider bearing and wider pivot, the notch would need to be even longer.
It doesn't matter what shape the levers are, the result would be the same for any shape. The law of levers (one of those pesky laws!) applies with equal accuracy to all levers,whether they are straight, bent, or curved.
@ Doug
ReplyDeleteI think you and I are not on the same page when it comes to HOW the axle pivots of Bessler's wheels were placed onto their respective brass plates. Both pivots would have been slipped into their notches simultaneously and then the pivots would both be simultaneously lowered down onto their plates. For a steel pivot that was 3/4" in diameter the notch would only have to be a few inches high in order to allow the pivot to reach its brass plate. At no time does the wood of the axle actually touch either upright support. Only the pivots do that momentarily and the axis of the axle remains perpendicular to both uprights at all times.
I think by "shape" of lever you think I am just talking about the piece that stretches from the lever pivot to the weight. Obviously, it is only the distance between the two which counts and not the shape of the material connecting them. However, by "shape" I am refering to the OTHER parts of the lever to which the cords were connected.
Look at MT 13 and notice that its weighted levers have arms attached to them at right angles that are used to apply lifting forces to the levers when those arms make contact with that wheel mounted on top of the axle hung half moon pendulum. Most likely Bessler's "magic" levers also had multiple arms sticking out from them to which the cords from the arms on other levers were connected.
So, to solve the Bessler mystery, not only does one need to discover the Connectedness Principle, he also needs to find the magic lever shape. Don't expect it to be easy, though. But when (actually if!) you manage to find both, the result will be a set of 8 "coordinated" weighted levers whose static equilibrium places the CoM of their weigjhts onto the wheel's descending side and keeps it there as the wheel begins to rotate so as to maintain the imbalance of the wheel..
As weighted levers approach the 9:00 position of the wheel, they will "gravitate" toward the axle. Upon passing the 9:00 position, the levers will suddenly reverse direction and begin "climbing" again toward their rim stops. They will finally make contact with their rim stops around the wheel's 3:00 position. The rising weighted levers will, via the interconnecting cords, be supplied with sufficient energy / mass from those that are dropping relative to them. Most importantly, the dropping weights will actually release MORE energy / mass than is taken up by the rising weights so that there will be some left over to overcome air drag and pivot friction as well as to operate external equipment attached to the wheel's axle.
The shifting motions of the weighted levers within the wheel's turning drum will be both smooth and automatic. The basic shifting process taking place in each stationary 45° sector of the wheel will be repeated eight times per wheel rotation as each of the eight weighted levers in its turn enters that sector as the one leading it leaves the sector.
Bessler's own drawing shows the wooden axle nearly touching the supports. There would have been no room to simultaneously drop the pivots into the supports' bearings.
ReplyDeleteThe pivots had to reach to the outside of the supports. The fact that the pivots reach the outside of the supports is what makes your method impossible. If the wooden axle wasn't nearly touching the supports, you would have to have some way of preventing the pivots from slipping out of the bearings. You can't have both. Either the wooden axle nearly touched the supports, like bessler shows, or it didn't , and you'd need a cotter pin or something similar to prevent the pivots from creeping out of their bearings.
Levers with arms are just bent levers, there isn't anything magic about them. The rules are the same.
@ Doug
ReplyDeleteThe axles do not touch the upright supports. If they did, there would be constant drag on an axle. Think of the pivots as extending out several inches from the axle ends. There would have been an inch gap between the end of the axle and the inside surface of the upright support. Maybe the upright support was two inches thick. Finally, the end of the pivot would have projected out maybe anoher three inches from the outside surface of the upright support at which point the curved piece was attached to it. That makes the total length of the pivot from the end of the axle to the curved piece 6 inches. But, the other hidden end of the pivot might have been pressed into the end of hte axle to a depth of 6 inches in order to securely attach it to the axle.. Thus, the total length of the axle pivot was probably 12 inches.
There would be no need to use washers / cotter pins to keep the axle centered inside of the upright supports. Both of the pivots were slightly tapered and fit into bearing plates with similarly tapered grooves in them. Thus, the axle was self-centering. If the axle pivots started to slide laterally out of their bearing plates, the mass of the wheel would force them to slide right back in again.
I remember reading somewhere that Bessler used one of his early wheels to run a grinder and he probably used that to taper the ends of the steel pivots before he pressed their other ends into tight holes that he had bored into the ends of the axles. Forget all of that nonsense about him screwing the pivots into and out of the ends of the axles. He would not have done that because, should one of the pivots bind up as it was rotating inside of its brass plate due to a lubrication failure, there would be the danger of the angular momentum of the wheel causing the axle to unscrew itself from the stationary pivot. The result, of course, would have been catastrophic.
I still think you don't understand what I am trying to say about the lever shapes so I'll leave that matter for now.
I'm thankful that the type of bearings is the least of our worries,we have so much more at our disposal than Bessler did.
ReplyDelete@ Trevor
ReplyDeleteBessler simply applied the various techniques used by clock and organ makers in the external and internal construction of his wheels. His "open" bearings are simple to handcraft, fairly reliable, and, most importantly, allow for the quick removal of an axle during wheel translocation. Generally, for any type of rotary device that is massive, sealed roller bearings are preferrable.
Forget that nonsense?
ReplyDeleteThe following is from the description of the copperplate engraving of the Merseburg wheel in "Grundlicher Bericht"
10. Die Corben selbst, oder Stiffte, so in die Welle eingeschraubt,
10. The cranks themselves, or pivots, screwed into the axle,
The longest demonstrations were only for thirty minutes, according to Wagner. The wheels were never left unattended. They would not have suffered lube failure. I work a lot with wood, and I can assure you that a screw fitting is much more secure than a press fitting. A press fitting would be much more susceptible to working itself out of the axle than a screw fitting.
tg said:
"Finally, the end of the pivot would have projected out maybe anoher three inches from the outside surface of the upright support at which point the curved piece was attached to it."
If they projected that far out, he definitely would have to unscrew them to move the wheel; the notches would have needed to have been two feet long, at least.
You're right about the tapers self centering the axle; no need for cotter pins there. But since it self centers, the wooden axle could have been as close as 1 inch or less to the support, without any rubbing.
"Lever shapes" is your misconception of levers. Levers are in 3 classes, depending on the orientation of the effort, load, and fulcrum, not "shapes".
If the lever is attached to, and pivots, at the rim, you have a class 3 lever; the effort (one weight) is in between the fulcrum (the rim attachment) and the load {the other weight(s)}. When the load is farther from the fulcrum than the effort, more effort is required to lift the load. Common sense tells us this design would fail for that reason alone. It would require the most connections, depending on the relative distances between the weights and lever arms and rim connections.
Class 2 levers would place the weights on the same side of the fulcrum. It goes without saying, common sense again tells us that design fails.
That leaves us with a class 1 lever. If the levers are attached to the axle, the fulcrum is in between the load and effort. If the levers are connected by cords, one weight can only help begin to lift another weight when the distance between them and the fulcrum is unequal.
Common sense again tells us the mechanical advantage we so desperately need for this design can never happen, because the designs of the levers, weights, etc. must, by necessity, be symmetrical, equal; if it wasn't symmetrical, it would always keel. If it is symmetrical, we can't gain mechanical advantage, an unequal-ness. Just as the simplest design of an overbalancing wheel( a class 1 lever) can't sustain the unequal distances between the load, fulcrum, and effort, neither can the most complicated design.
@ Doug
ReplyDeleteLet me quickly demolish all of the objections raised in your last comment:
"Die Corben selbst, oder Stiffte, so in die Welle eingeschraubt"
is yet another mistranslation. IMO, of Bessler's writings due, in part, to the presence of the word "oder" which is a tricky and often difficult word to correctly translate from German to English (known as a "particle" word, there are many other examples in German). Here is the correct translation, IMO:
"The cranks themselves on the pivots are screwed onto the wheel"
which was Bessler's way of saying that the cranks were attached to the ends of the pivots with screws.
Wagner himself mentions an incident when the Merseberg wheel unexpectedly slowed to a stop and then acknowledges that it was caused by its lubricants congealing due to the cold air temperature in the room that housed the wheel. Bessler probably used various animal fats for grease on the wheels axles and these substances thicken rapidly with dropping temperatures.
Screwed in pivots would be "more secure" than pressed in ones? Perhaps as far as thrusting / yanking forces applied to a pivot might be concerned. BUT, Bessler had to worry about torsional forces acting on his wheel's pivots. Only tightly pressed in pivots would protect a pivot from being unscrewed from the axle should it bind up in its bearing. If one erroneously assumes that the pivots were screwed into the ends of the wooden axles, then one has to wonder how Bessler formed the treads onto the axle end of the pivot.
Even machines for making small screws were rare in the early 18th century and the special lathe and cutting tool needed to make such a large screw did not exist. Bessler would have had to have hand cut the treads on the ends of the steel pivots and he would have had to have used a grinder for this. No, that would just have been too difficult. He simply bored a nest for the end of the pivot and then hammered it into place hoping he did not split the surrounding axle wood in the process.
Two foot long notches!!! NO! If the axle is kept horizontal as its pivots are being lifted
off of the bearing plates SIMULTANEOUSLY, there is no need for a notch bigger than a few inches! I though we had settled on five inches? There was NO need to unscrew the pivots to take the axle out of its upright supports.
Yes, I know about the three "classes" of levers and I can confidently say that ALL of the weighted levers inside of Bessler's wheels were 1st class levers. Their pivots were neither attached to the rim or to the axle, but rather to the drum's radial supports. While the pivots of these levers were symmetrically located around the axle, the orientations of the levers with respect to the axle were asymmetrical...just as one would expect from a collection of weights whose CoM was always located on a wheel's descending side whether the wheel was stationary or in motion.
Let me quickly annihilate all of your observations in your last comment:
ReplyDeleteOder translates to "or", imo.
Animal fat doesn't congeal to the point that it would stop an 11 foot, several hundred pound wheel at the 1 inch axle pins. That's probably the most absurd thing I've ever heard about this story.
If you won't take my word for it, that the pins would have to be removed, you'll have to set it up yourself. You can do it with anything you have on hand. I promise you, you won't be able to lift the axle part out of the bearing holes unless you shorten the axle by removing the ends.
Your reply about the lever's pivots being symmetrical, and the orientation of the levers being asymmetrical with respect to the axle is what I now like to call a "technoguyism".
@ Doug
ReplyDeleteLet me immediately vaporize your lastest objections:
Translating "Die Corben selbst, oder Stiffte, so in die Welle eingeschraubt" as "The cranks themselves, or pivots, screwed into the wheel" makes no sense at all. It implies that the either the cranks or the pivots could separately be screwed into the wheel. It could also be interpreted as saying that tthe cranks and the pivots were the same thing which is clearly wrong. I stand by my translation / interpretation. The cranks were separate pieces from the pivots and, in order to quickly remove them along with the pendula they drove, they had to be screwed onto the wheel or actually the end of the pivot.
Here's a condensed version of the incident during which the Merseberg wheel stalled out that is mentioned in "Wagner's Criticque 1" on JC's website:
XII
Additionally, I must refer to a case which happened shortly before the Christmas holidays of 1715. At that time a certain person was viewing the machine which had been proceeding constantly and rapidly for a while when it slowed down gradually until it finally came to a standstill. 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." This was a barefaced lie, for not the slightest rubbing had been hitherto noted; rather, as soon as he gave the wheel a push, it was running again.
XIII.
The true cause of the interruption in the movement may well have been that at the time the cold had congealed and thickened the olive oil and grease, thus hindering and halting the internal workings which were otherwise strong enough to drive the wheel.
Wagner suggests the problem was an internal one, but I suspect it was both internal and external at the pivots.
I think the problem we are having with the notches on the uprights is that your definition of a notch and mine are different! The notches I am talking about in Bessler's uprights extend out to the SIDES of the wooden uprights, and are not in the middles of them. This is why I keep saying that the axles did not have to be tilted or their pivots removed in order to ttanslocate the axle. One merely had to lift an axle and slide its pivots out horizontally from the uprights.
"technoguyisms"?! I'm flattered! LOL!
Obviously, if the levers in Bessler's wheels where symmetrical with respect to the axle, then the CoM of their weights would be located at the center of the axle. The fact that the ascending side levers "gravitated" toward the axle while the descending side levers "climbed" back to the rim proves there was considerable asymmetry in the orientations of the various weighted levers with respect to the axle.
My dad used to say, "son, when you find you've dug yourself into a hole, stop digging."
ReplyDeleteAre you not putting the cart before the horse?You guys are so funny,..Here you are worrying about what type of bearings to use and you have not even invented the engine yet.
ReplyDeleteYou must have a lot of faith.
Technogirl wrote;
ReplyDeleteand I can confidently say that ALL of the weighted levers inside of Bessler's wheels were 1st class levers.
How can you confidently say anything little she boy without knowing anything? HHMMMMM?
Let me guess techno, your real name is Richard Fitswell cause your trying to screw everything. At least we now know we can all call you Dick. By the way, are you sure that stuff you'r smoking is safe?
ReplyDeleteThe sooner this Bessler's Wheel monster is put out
ReplyDeleteof its misery (by someone)the better(for everyone).
Where is our ombudsmen?
ReplyDeleteWhere is our moderator?
When the cats away the mice will play!
I'm still here, reading your comments. New post available.
ReplyDeleteJC
Hmmm...let's see now. According to Anon ("101"?) I'm a lying, dope smoking, hypersexual, transsexual troll! And, apparently, all because I dared to give a few opinions around here that I hoped would provide my fellow Besslerophiles with a more accurate general direction to head in during their relentless quest to duplicate Bessler's achievements!
ReplyDeleteAll I can say is that the old saying tends to be true: "If you always do what you've always done, then you'll always get what you always got." Can anybody here honestly claim that ANY of their past efforts to duplicate Bessler's wheels has produced ANY results that even remotely looked like success?
Well, I won't bother waiting for an answer to that one. Maybe it's time to return to basics again and follow BESSLER'S instructions on the matter (which, admittedy, do require a bit of interpretation by those with "discerning eyes").
Work with just eight 1st class levers mounted between the drum's eight pairs of parallel radial supports. Make the levers short (about 1/5 the radius of a wheel) and rest their cylindrical end weights on stops attached to the wheel's inner rim surface. Have the weights in contact with their rim stops between 3:00 and 6:00. From 6:00 to 9:00 let the weights swing in toward the axle. After 9:00 have your weighted levers begin rising back toward their stops to finally make contact with them by 3:00. And, most importantly, be prepared to work your fingers to the bones finding the "magic" lever design (I'll avoid saying "shape" because it confuses some) AND the system of coordinating cords or "Connectedness Principle" that makes this all possible.
If you can do that, then YOU can be the one to finally "put this monster out of its misery"!
And please don't waste precious time dreaming about getting rich and famous because of your success. Look what happened to poor Bessler as an example of what happens. Maybe you'll live a bit more comfortably and rub elbows with the upper classes for awhile, but your REAL reward will be KNOWING that YOU did it. While all others on the quest eventually dropped out from exhaustion, despair, or death you kept on moving until you had that "House of Richter" experience: a tabletop model wheel that completed one, then two, then three FULL rotations. You left the wheel alone for 15 minutes and then peeked back into the room to see it STILL spinning merrily along. An hour later you took another peek and...it was still running! Yes, it took you DECADES of effort, but now it is done!
Next you have to figure out what to do with it. Yes, I know, your boney fingers are killing you, you've spent thousands on parts, everyone thought you were a nut case and used you as a target for insults. Boo hoo. Please don't do what Bessler did and get the same results. Openly publish your discovery. Let others come in and, hopefully, develop it into a USEFUL source of power for you. You've done enough for one lifetime. It's time to just relax and enjoy what recognition it brings you...
A mio parere i pendoli esterni servivano a limitare la velocità della ruota, perchè in mancanza di carico la forza centrifuga bloccava i pesi sulla periferia,ma non erano indispensabili.
ReplyDeleteIt does look like a common wheel bearing you can find anywhere. But it still look useful to me.
ReplyDeletebabbit bearings