HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!

I'm not sure if I shall post another blog before Christmas as our house is now bursting at the seams!  My elder daughter, son-in-law and two of my grandchildren are all here and eating and drinking us out of house and home!  Two of them are now six foot four and can eat for the olympics, and we have had to resort to alcohol to de-stress! It was also my younger daughter's birthday, yesterday, and we are having ten for Christmas dinner.  Great fun though and I wouldn't miss it for the world, but getting time to blog when there is so much going on is not so easy, but I do get up early every morning, always have done, and that may be my best time to write.

My long search for the solution to Bessler's wheel..............continues!  I don't know how many times, as each year draws to a close, I've written that I'm sure that next year will be the year somone somewhere succeeds in solving this puzzle.  So what about 2013?  Will it be the year?  I don't know and perhaps it is a good idea not to tempt fate by saying that I have a feeling that it will be the year when Bessler's wheel rolls again!

I'm disappointed that we didn't succeed during this 300th anniversary year but that would have been a mighty coincidence, wouldn't it - to actually solve the problem on the 300th anniversary? So next year will be the 301st since Bessler exhibited his wheel, but of course he probably built his proof of principle wheel the year before so maybe it will be 302 years since he actually discovered the secret.  It simply doesn't matter whether we time the solution to a nice round number of years as long as we do make the discovery - and the sooner the better.

There are lots of discoveries to celebrate every year but mostly only the more famous ones get a centenary.  Somehow I feel that when this one surfaces it will earn the right to have centenary celebration.  So forget the 300th anniversary, next year will do just fine for the discovery of how Johann Bessler built his self-moving wheel.  Good luck to us all and I wish everone a Merry Christmas or a Happy Holiday according to your personal preference.

JC

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A reminder of my position on Bessler's wheel.

It seems clear to me that Bessler's wheel was in a state of continuous imbalance.  The first wheels which only turned one way, had to be tied down or locked to prevent them turning. Witnesses reported that the wheel began to turn spontaneously as soon as the lock was released. Bessler said that his "weights are themselves the PM device, the ‘essential constituent parts’, which must of necessity continue to exercise their motive force indefinitely – so long as theykeep away from the centre of gravity."

It has been suggested elsewhere that perhaps the wheel was tied down at a certain point so that it would begin to turn of its own accord when released.  I think that if you have a wheel which must be continuously out of balance, which is what I believe a gravity-driven wheel would be, then there would be no need to tie it down at a special place; every position of the wheel would be out of balance.

Bessler wrote textual clues in two ways; he said exactly what the clues suggest he meant, as in the above quotation - or he wrote in ambiguous terms so as not to give too much away; but he did not lie.  The sincerity in his words shines through, he was excited about his discovery and, just as we do, he liked to tease us with bits of information. So when he said "weights are themselves the PM device, the ‘essential constituent parts which must of necessity continue to exercise their motive force indefinitely – so long as theykeep away from the centre of gravity," that is what he meant.  You can try to read between the lines and get at some other hidden meaning, but there isn't one; it does what it says it does.

I'm well aware of the facts constantly repeated for my benefit, that gravity is not a source of energy.  Fine!  You believe that if you want to. Bessler's machine worked; he stated that the weights themselves were the PM device; that means that they needed gravity to work, because weights are inseparable from the effects of gravity. Now you may say that gravity cannot provide a force, but falling weights can and do. So the force comes from the weights which respond to the effects of gravity.  A simple weight-driven clock gets its energy from falling weights - if that is not tapping the force of gravity then I don't know what is.  The solution to the apparent problem of returning the weight to its starting point has been described by me in outline elsewhere and I have also solved the problem of leverage issues - which I haven't described elsewhere.

I know there will be a torrent of attempts to correct my misguided beliefs, but I shall continue on my way content in the knowledge that I am right and you are wrong.  I mean those of you who persist in believing that what you have been taught about gravity is the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and insist that gravity can't be used to drive the weights which turned Bessler's wheel. :)  Scientists (some of them) maintain that gravity is one of the four forces in physics, albeit the weakest one. In physics, a force is any influence that causes an object to undergo a certain change, either concerning its movement, direction, or geometrical construction.  Weights fall under the influence of gravity so it must be a force.

There are other arguments which say that it depends on the theory and framework you're using. If you invoke Newton's mechanics in trying to answer why a ball falls down to earth after you throw it upward, then gravity is certainly a force. If, however, you look at the revolution of the earth around the sun in the context of Einstein's general relativity, then it is less of a force and more of the tendency of massive objects to form curves and dents in space-time. 

The answer is much simpler than that - all that matters is that gravity acts like a force here on earth, regardless of how it came about.

JC

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Could scientists solve Bessler's wheel - or will it be an amateur?

Gottfried Leibniz has been described as a polymath.  This word comes from the Greek, and means "having learned much", and it describes a person whose expertise spans a significant number of different subject areas. The term was first used in the seventeenth century.

According to wikipedia, most ancient scientists were polymaths by today's standards - what does that mean?  It means that scientists these days are too specialised. The subjects we are taught are very compartmentalised. To get the best marks we choose those subjects we excel at and not necessarily those we are interested in, because the whole system is based on competition, and we compete, not only against other people but we pit one of our subjects against another.

Many who attend University seek a degree in their best subject because it is the one in which they obtained the highest exam marks.  They study to become expert in that field with the result that they know everything (they think) there is to know about it.  At first sight this makes sense, but it is to the detriment of a wider general knowledge, and unfortunately there is no advantage, career-wise, in learning about allied subjects and certainly nothing about those which have no connection with it.  They are experts within a very narrow field, consequently they know relatively little about matters outside their speciality.

On the other hand, for instance, Leibniz, a member of the Royal Society. invented a calculating machine, wrote an overview of the history of the earth, describing how the planet formed, subterranean fires, and the formation of fossils. He developed an explanation of matter known as Monadology, suggesting that any substances were individually 'programmed' to act in a predetermined way but which could not affect the preservation of free will. He made significant contributions in physics, logic, history, librarianship, and of course philosophy and theology, while also working on ideal languages, mechanical clocks and mining machinery. He also studied numerous aspects of Chinese culture!

Leibniz was of course, the most famous supporter of Johann Bessler. Another supporter, almost as celebrated, was Christian Wolff, a rationalist polymath and an influential leader of the early German Enlightenment. He pioneered socio-economics, and made lasting contributions to international law. He revived ontology as a systematic framework for the empirical sciences. He studied and taught mathematics and researched military architecture, natural history, and natural philosophy. He had a natural aptitude for mechanics according to one correspondent and of course he too, was a member of the commission which examined Bessler's Merseberg wheel- and of the Royal Society.

These men who examined Bessler's machine were not just experts in a particular field but were people whose knowledge spanned a significant number of different subject areas, giving them a wider knowledge base upon which to form an opinion about Bessler's machine.  They were able to make the intellectual connections and accept the evidence of their eyes in a way that today's 'experts' would find challenging. 

To have an in-depth knowledge about one aspect of a particular subject may deprive one of its wider ramifications, not through lack of general knowledge so much as an excess of knowledge about that one aspect. In trying to solve Bessler's wheel, we here, seek answers from a more generalised knowledge base, examining every possibility and excluding nothing, whereas 'experts' know that Bessler's claims are not possible because that is what they have been taught and they are either reluctant or incapable of re-examining their 'knowledge'.  This may be due to peer pressure, fear of ridicule, or simply a feeling of smug moral superiority derived from a sense that their beliefs, actions, or affiliations are of greater virtue than those of the average person. 

But not all 'experts' need to be highly educated scientists. They may have a prolonged or intense experience through practice and education in a particular field. In specific fields, the definition of expert is well established by consensus and therefore it is not necessary for an individual to have a professional or academic qualification for them to be accepted as an expert. In this respect, a shepherd with 50 years of experience tending flocks would be widely recognized as having complete expertise in the use and training of sheep dogs and the care of sheep. I consider myself something off an expert with regard to Bessler and his claims but I have no university degree in either mechanics or history, just the experience of forty years of engineering.  I do not  know that Bessler's wheel was impossible therefore I continue to work at it.

Thanks as ever to wikipedia. :)

JC

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Each Engineer doth protest too much, methinks!

I've been interested in Johann Bessler and his wheel since I was about fifteen years of age, when I read Rupert Gould's account of him in his book 'Oddities'.  At that time I dreamed of the possibility of building a similar machine, however I knew already that science said they were impossible, I dreamed and speculated and drew hundreds of designs, but I said nothing to anybody.

At the age of about 28 I chanced upon a copy of Gould's book, 'Oddities', and I was struck anew by the quality of the narrative and the evidence described and how utterly convincing it was.  I resolved to research the subject as thoroughly as possible even if it took me the rest of my life.  In the intervening years I occasionally told people about him and about my ambition to reconstruct his wheel - and quickly got used to the scorn and laughter which erupted at my articulated aspirations! It seemed to me that Gould himself was sufficiently fascinated by the story to do some research and in my opinion became convinced of the inventor's sincerity.

But Gould was not alone; I've always thought how remarkable it was that Henry Dircks, author of the two compact volumes detailing the history of the seach for Perpetual Motion, should have spent some twenty years researching every single mention of the subject and reproducing them in his books, complete with drawings of numerous failed designs. Then there is Arthur Ord-Hume's book on the subject, another accountof the history of such machines. Like Dircks, Ord-Hume was an engineer, and like Gould wrote extensively on antique clocks and other mechanisms.  Was it simply interest that drove these authors to spend years researching the subject - or was there a discreet longing to believe; to discover the secret apparently found only by Johann Bessler? 

John Rowley was another one.  He was Master of Mechanics to King George 1st and held a reputation as the finest instrument maker in England, and praised as such by none other John Harris, inventor of the Marine Chronometer which eventually won the prize offered by the British Board of Longitude for providing a means for finding a ship's longitudinal position at sea. Rowley spent his remaining years trying to duplicate Bessler's wheel having seen it during a visit to Kassel.

These men, all experts in their fields, seem to have been drawn to studying Perpetual Motion, and even if some of them declared their scepticism publicly, I have a feeling that privately they were not so cynical and perhaps yearned to discover that there was a way to achive the impossible.

My own suspicion that the historical accounts were wrong in assigning Bessler to the ranks of the fraudulent and the criminal, was first roused when I read Gould's account of the reported actions of Bessler's maid.  She stated under oath that she was forced to turn the wheel by means of a secret lever from the adjoining bedroom.  I simply did not believe that it was possible to turn a wheel measuring twelve feet in diameter and eighteen inches thick, by means of a simple system of levers which she said, applied their force to the quarter inch bearings at the ends of  the axle.  As if this wasn't enough she also claimed that she was able to turn the wheel which lifted the 70 poinds weight from the castle yard to the roof several times!

One of the problems we seem to encounter regularly is the intransigence of all those we  ask to reconsider the evidence.  No one will do that because they believe it would counter certain physical laws - it won't, but until the reason is explained and made clear they will continue to dismiss all such claims. 

To repeat myself - only a working model will do it.

JC

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Karl's steam-powered boat and Bessler's wheel.

I've mentioned Karl's involvement with Denis Papins before, but something occurred to me recently and I thought I'd post my thoughts here. Prior to Bessler's arrival Karl had funded the experiments of Denis Papin who was attemting to develop a steam engine.  Papin stayed with the Landgrave for ten years, finally leaving, having been invited to London in 1707, he died there in 1712.

During his stay in Kassel, in 1704, he constructed a ship powered by his steam engine, mechanically linked to paddles. This made him the first to construct a steam-powered boat. How successful it was we don't know, but I suspect that it wasn't the complete solution Papin envisaged.  He left his wife at Kassel when he went to London, possibly thinking he might return in the near future, and I've found a letter written in 1708, referring to Karl's hope that Papin would return to Kassel to continue his experiments.  I suggest that it was perhaps news of Papin's death in 1712 that persuaded Karl to accommodate Bessler in his castle at that time.  Curiously it was also this year that Newcomen exhibited his first Newcoment steam engine at Dudley castle in England.

Fischer von Erlach examined Bessler's wheel and must have been invited to the court by Karl - they couldn't just turn up uninvited. Professor 'sGravesend was also invited and I had always assumed that they were there to examine Bessler's wheel, but taking into account the fact that Papin had carried out experiments on the lake near to the castle, to build a steam-powered boat, I suspect they were there for another purpose. Leibniz had aided Papin in the development of a steam engine based on an invention by Thomas Savery, but this had proved problematic to construct. Details of the engine were published in 1707.

Both 'sGravesende and von Erlach, and indeed Desaguliers, were closely involved in the development of Captain Savery's engine, but this was eventually dropped in favour of the more powerful and reliable Newcomen steam engine.  I suspect that Karl was motivated by thoughts of adapting either Newcomen's or Savery's engine to power the boat.  To this end he sent Captain Weber to England in 1716 to obtain information on the Newcomen steam-engine, and he is also recorded as being the leader of the surveying team for a projected series of canals which were to enable  Karlshafen to become an inland port. He was Karl's chief engineer and was charged with the task of draining the marshes to create canals.  But Captain weber's efforts to try to learn the secrets of the Newcomen engine came to no avail, they were just as secretive as Bessler was.

Steam-powered boats? new canals? Steam engines?  Put them together and knowing that the cascade at Kassel was powered by four man-made lakes above the start of the cascade, and therefore did not require Bessler's wheel to pump water to the top, and you have the beginnings of an attempt to produce steam-powered boats designed to ply the canals bringing goods to and from Karlshafen.  Perhaps Karl had considered the possibility of trying to adapt Bessler's wheel for use in a boat?

JC

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Bessler's Wheel - before and after him?

It has often been remarked that if Bessler had really discovered how to make a wheel turn continuously, someone would have rediscovered the secret by now, therefore because no one has, he must have been faking it.  But I'm more surprised that no-one appears to have discovered the secret previous to Bessler.  

This observation was in my mind when I first wrote my account of Johann Bessler in my first book, "Perpetual Motion; An Ancient Mystery Solved?"  So I did some historical research to try to discover if there was any evidence that anyone had indeed made this discovery before.  I found plenty of accounts of people who had tried to find the solution, but no convincing evidence that they had succeeded.

Following this I  reasoned that perhaps the secret had been found in the ancient past, and it might be that although no written account of it survived, perhaps an image relating to the successful wheel could have survived in some form?  Perhaps as a sacred image or sign or symbol.  The most convincing image that I was able to find was the yin-yang symbol. I have briefly touched on this symbol before on this blog but a recent email I received has persuaded me to discuss it again.

I have used this symbol for many years as an avatar on the Besslerwheel forum because it seems to me to have some resonance with Bessler's wheel, although I don't think the yin-yang symbol bears any similarity to it.

Taijitu is another name for the same image and both originated in China and a rough English translation is “diagram of ultimate power”. The Taijitu is one of the oldest and best-known life symbols in the world. At its heart are the two poles of existence, which are opposite but complementary. The light, white Yang moving up blends into the dark, black Yin moving down. Yin and Yang are dependent opposing forces that flow in a natural cycle, always seeking balance. 

Though they are opposing, they are not in opposition to one another. As part of the Tao, they are merely two aspects of a single reality. Each contains the seed of the other, which is why we see a black spot of Yin in the white Yang and vice versa. They do not merely replace each other but actually become each other through the constant flow of the universe.The image is designed to give the appearance of movement. The pattern is sometimes described as two fish swimming head to tail.

Curiously, patterns similar to the Taijitu also form part of Celtic, Etruscan and Roman iconography, where they are loosely referred to as yin yang symbols by modern scholars, however no relationship between these and the Chinese symbol has been established.

Celtic yin yang motif on an enameled bronze plaque (mid-1st century AD)

Shield pattern of the Western Roman infantry unit armigeri defensores seniores (ca. AD 430), the earliest known classical yin yang 

So by coincidence several different races from divers regions of the world have come up with an identical image and yet no connection has been established between them.  This curious coincidence implies a common beginning but did it originate from some archetypal imagery.  Wikipedia explains that 'an archetype is a universally understood symbol, term, statement, or pattern of behavior, a prototype upon which others are copied, patterned, or emulated. Archetypes are often used in myths and storytelling across different cultures.'  

To my mind the design of the yin yang is so close to the design of the Savonius rotor that it begs the question, did the yin yang symbol derive from the Savonius rotor or vertical-axis wind turbine, and not some Pseudopsychology?  Maybe, but as for an image of the mechanism inside Bessler's wheel being found in some ancient artifact.....there is no evidence that it ever existed before or and definitely not, after his time.......so far.

Thanks a usual to wikipedia for the above information.

JC

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Bessler's Wheel and the Orffyreus Code

This is a little refresher on why we are researching Johann Bessler.  It's aimed more at the casual visitor but hopefully will galvanize my older readers  into renewed activity with the hope of success!

Bessler's original portrait with pentagram added

In 1712 Johann Bessler (aka ORFFYREUS) exhibited a machine which he claimed, drew its energy from gravity. Despite nearly twenty years of the most stringent tests, examinations and public trials, not the slightest sign of deception was ever found. Bessler died 33 years later, in poverty, still maintaining that his machine was genuine and there was no convincing evidence to the contrary.He had a number of supporters as well as enemies, and among his champions were some of the most respected men of the day. These men, included Gottfried Leibniz and Christian Wolff, top scientists of the calibre of Newton.

A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H	I/J	K	L	M
N	O	P	Q	R	S	T	U/V	W	X	Y	Z

Alphabetic substitution gives Orffyre from Bessler

Bessler wanted to sell his machine for the sum of £20,000, a fortune in those days, equivalent to well over a million Pounds today. Despite the apparent stupidity of asking such a large sum of money, it was not unique and in fact Bessler based the sum on the one offered by the British Board of Longitude, which, at the same time, was offering £20,000 to the first person to discover a means of locating the exact position of a ship at sea, longitudinally. John Harrison eventually won the money although it took him and his son many years to get all of it from a reluctant British government.

First drawing of wheel with added pentagram, Grundlicher Bericht

A picture of the remains of Bessler's windmill.

Bessler failed to sell his machine, not for a lack of customers, but because he refused to allow access to his secret until he had the money in his possession. He offered his head to the axe man if he should be found to have deceived his prospective clients. But his determination not to risk being cheated of his reward, defeated all negotiations. He died in harrowing circumstances years later, building Northern Europe's first horizontal windmill to his own design of course. In mid-winter, starving, weak and in debt, he fell to his death. The massive base of the mill still stands, decaying, weatherworn and utterly neglected, in the small town of Fürstenberg in Germany.

Last page of Apologia Poetica with added pentagram

The primary purpose of this blog is to discuss matters pertaining to the successful search for the solution to Bessler's wheel.  There is good evidence that the inventor left behind him sufficient clues to permit someone to reconstruct the wheel.  This information is formed from textual, graphic and encoded clues.  On this page are examples of his hidden pentagrams but there are many more clues offering other hints as to the way his machine worked.

Other clues appearing throughout all of his works, implicate the number five. I have suggested that perhapst five mechanisms are needed to build a successful machine, but it may indicate a phase in deciphering his encoded material.

JC

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Bessler's windmill and his self-moving wheel.

I have spent several hours of computer time arguing that the wind is a conservative force, like gravity, and yet it can be used to drive windmills, therefore gravity can be used to drive gravitywheels. There have been two chief arguments against this idea but both are easily refuted and I'd prefer not to open that can of worms again here. This time I am approaching the subject from another angle in the hope of persuading some of you to my point of view.

When Bessler left Karl's employment he continued to invent new ways of using his gravity-enabled engine, describing ever-lasting fountains, continuously-playing carillons and even a submarine capable of providing continuous fresh air. All of these clearly depended on the driving force of his self-moving wheel. This fact alone supports the view that he was honest.  But his last invention was potentially a winner, if only he had succeeded in finishing it.  He fell to his death from a new kind of windmill which had a vertical axle and presented its sails to the wind regardless of what ever direction it came from.

The earliest recorded windmill of this design was found to be of Persian origin, and was invented around 500–900 AD. This design was called a panemone, with vertical lightweight wooden sails attached by horizontal struts to a central vertical shaft. It was first built to pump water, and subsequently modified to grind grain as well.  Later the Savonius wind turbine was invented by the Finnish engineer Sigurd Johannes Savonius in 1922.  This design bears a  a surprising similarity to the yin-yang symbol familiar to the Japanese and Chinese.  There are some who support the idea that the yin-yang design originated in ancient times in China where it was originally a windmill very similar to a Savonius windmill,  and which was used for pumping water and grinding corn, and whose design gradually became associated with the religious leaders of that era and subsumed within the Taoist belief system. Certainly it can be argued that the attributes belonging to the yin-yang are similar to the associations applicable to a gravity wheel, as for instance this description, "yin and yang,literally meaning heavy and light, and it is used to describe how polar opposites or seemingly contrary forces are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world, and how they give rise to each other in turn in relation to each other. Yin and yang are not opposing forces, but rather complementary ones, that interact to form a greater whole, as part of a dynamic system".   I may say more about this in my next post.

These windmills with their vertical axes present their blades parallel to the wind and reflect the same attitude as gravity does, acting on a gravity-enabled wheel.  It takes but a moment's thought to see that Bessler must have considered the attitude his wheels had to have, in order to take advantage of the downwards force of gravity and he applied the same logic to a windmill to take advantage of the wind.  Unfortunately his desired position on the top of a hill was denied him and it is doubtful if it would have worked where he was forced to build it, lower down in the village of Furstenberg.  It is unclear exactly how his sails were designed although I have posted the only known drawings of it, left to us at my website at http://www.orffyreus.org/  It is possible that drawings exist showing the details of his planned sails and these might give some indication of his design for the gravity-enabled wheels.

Perhaps the design of Johann's gravity wheel gave him the idea of adapting some of its features for use in his new windmill.  This would seem to imply that he also thought of gravity as similar to the force of the wind.  During his years of research we know he studied wind and water mills carefully and must have linked the forces of wind and water to that of gravity and come to the conclusion that they were similarly capable of driving a wheel.

JC

Bessler's Revelation - God or Intuition?

Bessler's belief in God seems to have been a constant theme throughout his life and I wondered at one time if  all his loudly proclaimed faith was genuine, but latter events seem to confirm its validity.

Johann Bessler attributed his success to his own determination to succeed - and more importantly, to God.  This fervent religious belief is something I have tried to understand without success.  I can't help that I'm not a believer, in fact I am an agnostic atheist. One of the  best definitions of such, is that of Robert Flint, in his Croall Lecture of 1887–1888 (published in 1903 under the title Agnosticism).

"The atheist may however be, and not unfrequently is, an agnostic. There is an agnostic atheism or atheistic agnosticism, and the combination of atheism with agnosticism which may be so named is not an uncommon one.

If a man has failed to find any good reason for believing that there is a God, it is perfectly natural and rational that he should not believe that there is a God; and if so, he is an atheist... if he goes farther, and, after an investigation into the nature and reach of human knowledge, ending in the conclusion that the existence of God is incapable of proof, cease to believe in it on the ground that he cannot know it to be true, he is an agnostic and also an atheist – an agnostic-atheist – an atheist because an agnostic... while, then, it is erroneous to identify agnosticism and atheism, it is equally erroneous so to separate them as if the one were exclusive of the other.."

So when Bessler awoke from his strangely invigorating dream which gave him the confidence to carry on to success, he attributed it to God.  He would never have considered that it might have been intuition. Intuition may be defined as "understanding or knowing without conscious recourse to thought, observation or reason. Some see this unmediated process as somehow mystical while others describe intuition as being a response to unconscious cues or implicitly apprehended prior learning."  Dr. Jason Gallate & Ms Shannan Keen BA.

Many, if not all of us, have experienced that moment of revelation in the night or upon waking which seems to provide a light at the end of the tunnel, something which might lead to success or at least progress.  This revelation is, in my opinion, the result of "understanding or knowing without conscious recourse to thought, observation or reason", or to put it another way, the subconscious has continued to worry at the problem and supplied its solution upon waking.  Dreams are often recalled upon waking and yet vanish in the light of a later dawn.  Our subconscious is closer to our waking minds at that moment of transition, when we finally awaken or if we surface momentarily during the night and it is then we can connect, however briefly, with it.

I have no wish to impugn other people's religious convictions, and I have sought to understand them over the years, but in the end one's beliefs are a matter of personal conviction which does not require explanation to anyone else.  To me there is an odd dichotomy between religion and science.  Many top scientists as well as the vast majority of the world's population follow a religion.  But how is it that on the one hand those experts teach us that Bessler's wheel was impossible, because of their rational, objective, non-magical view of the world - and yet on the other hand they state with absolute authority and sincerity their utter belief in the existence of God with no evidence whatsoever other than their subjective experience. Surely two such differing views must be mutually exclusive? How can rational scientists state unequivocally that Bessler's wheel was impossible then go to church on Sunday and 'pray' or talk to a being whose very existence is unknowable.

I read that Science is natural and that:-

• It explains the existence & order of the universe & human consciousness.
• It is rational, fact-based, objective & non-dogmatic.
• It is antithetical to sectarianism, dogmatism, intolerance & violence.
• It does not indulge in magical thinking.
• It deals with human reality, which is the material world.
• It is progressive, evolving as we evolve.
• It is self-correcting, acknowledges its mistakes & moves on.

On the other hand I read that Religion is not only subjective, it’s irrational, and therefore cannot be a source of truth for the following reasons:-

• It was invented by man.
• It misrepresents the origins of man & cosmos and represses human intellect.
• It is irrational, dogmatic, subjective.
• It gives rise to sectarianism, disunity, intolerance, repression & violence.
• It indulges in magical thinking.
• It combines servility & solipsism.
• It represents an anachronistic, Bronze Age philosophy.

And let's not ignore the common man, if he will forgive me for referring to him (or her) thus?  How many believe in ghosts, good luck, superstition, life after death, psychic phenomena etc, etc?  None of these things are proven and yet people would rather believe in some subjective absurdity that they have been persuaded is real than a well documented machine whose only failing was that it appeared to conflict with the laws of science as laid down by those God-fearing men of 300 years ago.

On the other side of the coin, I think there is a strong possibility that those revelations, I mentioned easrlier, that we experience in the night are sometimes proven correct and sometimes turn out to be an example of apophenia.  Remember that definition - the perception of patterns, meanings, or connections where none exists?  Is religion based on seeing patterns where none exist; seeing God's hand in places or events where a more mundane explanation which did not require such divine intervention would suffice.

JC

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Bessler's engine again!

OK this is me day-dreaming again! A while ago I suggested that Bessler's wheel might be used to drive a vehicle of some sort. There was some considerable scoffing at the prospect of a Bessler wheel engine mounted in a vehicle, so I thought I'd better stick my head up above the parapets and risk some more brickbats!

I wonder if Richard Trevithick (1771-1833) who built the first steam engine tramway locomotive, on February 22, 1804, thought that his engine was too big and unwieldy?  It weighed five tons, its boiler was eight foot long and four foot in diameter. It could hit 4 miles an hour BUT it was able to haul a load of 10 tons of iron, 70 men and five extra wagons 9 miles.

In The Guardian Wednesday 26 August 2009

"A century old record has been broken after Inspiration, a twin-finned car that looks like a prop from Thunderbirds, achieved an average speed of 139.84mph on two runs over a measured mile, at Edwards Air Force Base, California. That may not sound fast when a car has already broken the sound barrier, but this was a steam car, and the record for this type of machine was set in 1906, at an average of 127.7mph.

The British car, with British born driver Charles Burnet III at the wheel, reached a maximum of 151.085mph, a speed greater than the 145.6mph recorded in 1985 by Steamin' Demon, a car designed by Jim Crank of California and driven by Richard Barber along the Bonneville Salt Flats."

Coincidentally there is a video of steam-driven vehicles at http://archive.org/details/BeslerCo1932 by the Besler Corporation Promo Film: Steam-Driven Vehicles] (ca. 1932-1933)!

After the 1973 global oil crisis, the Swedish automaker Saab developed an innovative nine-cylinder axial steam-car design that used electronic controls to improve efficiency and reduce the size and weight of the boiler, and added a compressed-air pump to speed up acceleration.  The car used only miniscule amounts of fuel to heat the boiler and generated almost no greenhouse gas emissions. But after the oil market stabilized in the 1980s, the Saab steamer never got off the drawing board. In the 1990s, German researchers came up with a low-emissions engine design, the ZEE, that used ceramic cylinder linings instead of oil as a lubricant. 

The point of the above being that even steam engines can be technologically advanced to compete with the modern petrol engine, so...

OK, I know a steam engine is a more reactive and portable kind of engine than a gravity powered engine seems to be, but don't be so keen to rule out technological advances.  We don't even have a working model of a Besslerwheel yet, and we have no idea of its potential.

I envisage an Besslerwheel engine mounted on gimbals to allow it maintain its vertical axis, what ever direction it is heading and at what ever angle to the horizontal.  Reduce its height and compensate by lengthening it.  In a previous post, I suggested mounting several wheels on one axle, but in fact it might be possible to design it to have one of each weight, whose horizontal length is increased to the length of the wheel's width. So in effect you have squashed down wheel and made it much, much wider.  There may be ways of shaping the weights or altering the levers to gain further mnechanical advantage.

And such an engine might be used to generate electricity to drive the vehicle.

Yes this is pure speculation, but don't dismiss it as a possibility; we won't know what it will be capable of until we have one to develop. 

JC

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Apophenia versus Creativity.

Recently an anonymous commenter used the word 'apophenia', and I had to look it up to learn its meaning.  Thank you for that anon, I am always pleased to learn a new word and 'apophenia' is an excellent example.

'Apophenia' describes the phenomenon of the perception of patterns, meanings, or connections where none exists. It’s like looking at a Rorschach ink blot and telling the analyst what you see.

In the world of statistical analysis, apophenia is known as a "Type 1 error". This is often called the “false positive” and happens when data is interpreted as confirming a hypothesis when in fact it does not. It’s effectively when you see a pattern where there isn’t one.  

The human brain constantly searches for patterns; it's a learned behaviour which developed in response to danger. Patterns are recognised as established order, and breaks in patterns suggest danger.  So although we say we seek patterns what we really do is watch out for breaks in established patterns but the result is the same - we monitor patterns constantly.

We Besslerites are convinced that Johann was genuine, despite what we have been taught and we therefore seek to confirm our belief by reproducing his wheel, not just for that reason but for the benefit of mankind, as we see it. But, as someone put it recently, when you think you might have solved the problem, "the chances are that you are having an apophenic experience and you need to remember to clean your cognitive glasses in a little reality solution."  This sounds rather depressing but actually it isn't.  Looking for the solution involves much trial and error and therefore apophenia is a necessary part of the process.  

We all have our pet theories and each is different to the rest, and we have no way of knowing, so far, if any of them are right, but we seek to prove them by building or simulating the finished wheel, according to whatever hypothesis we are committed to.

Searching for the solution to Bessler's wheel is a bit like connecting the dots to make a recognisable picture.  Sometimes the dots don'tproduce the picture we want.  But have faith, according to Karl Brugger, "The propensity to see connections between seemingly unrelated objects or ideas most closely links psychosis to creativity ... apophenia and creativity may even be seen as two sides of the same coin."  So be creative and let the reality check take care of itself and if the result is attributable to apophenia keep looking for that break in the pattern.

JC

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Update - Frustration leads to innovation!

My wheel project is stationary at the moment for reasons I have explained previously, but things are gradually improving. Unfortunately I am still restricted by lack of space, however this has forced me to concentrate on the most basic requirements for solving this enduring puzzle.  I have built a simple test rig to try to solve the problem currently occupying my mind; how to make the weight fly upwards at the critical moment.

The pictures below give some idea of my working environment!  I'm sharing space with my son-in-law's two bikes, his cross-trainer, his complete tool chest for maintaining his bikes, a fridge-freezer, dishwasher etc etc.  Now they are formally in residence we are trying to make more room, but for now I must just bite the bullet.

I used to have the run of the whole workshop but hopefully things will return to normal at some point earl;y next year!  All my tools and equipment have been crammed into a small corner on the right in the above picture, to allow for the removal of the bikes from time to time.  I can barely turn around in the space left, but I will keep at it because I need the buzz I get from building new mechanisms and testing them to see how they work. 

I had been working with the whole wheel and all its five mechanisms but it is pointless to keep everything in a state of flux when all I need to know is how to get one mechanism to act the way I wish it to.  My test rig is just a simple two foot square of MDF which is painted white and has the critical angles marked out on it.  Certain angles, although apparently necessary to the succesful mechanism have to be omitted from the range of movement for reasons which are clear once you know how the whole thing is meant to work, and they are painted yellow and the critical one to abide by are in red, the rest is as I say, white.  I'm finding this detail  helpful in keeping the design within the limits of my self-imposed strictures which I believe apply to a successful mechanism.

At the moment I'm transferring some parts of the mechanism from the wheel to the test rig and then at every opportunity I return to it and continue my research. I'm certain that once I have achieved the reaction I am looking for I won't need to build the wheel to prove my point because it relates to something I have referred to from time to time and which is secreted in the string of letters I always include after my posts....but of course I will build it!

PS. I know the test rig isn't really an innovation, I just liked the ring of the title!

JC

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The Mystery of the 684 X's in Apologia Poetica

Occasionally I've commented on Bessler's graphic codes, but have generally said little about the non-graphic ones.  But as the subject of the infamous x's scattered throughout Apologia Poetica, came up recently on Besslerwheel forum, I thought I'd update people on my own efforts to extract meaning from them.  I know this is not as interesting as discussing possble mechanical arrangements but there are many people who are still bent on deciphering what Bessler's secret message said.

The mysterious inclusion of 684 x’s scattered in an apparently random fashion at the ends of many of the 7000 plus lines of poetry which compose the Apologia Poetica, has been the subject of some debate.  In fact these x’s are actually abbreviations for the phrase et cetera, and one might think that that is a satisfactory explanation for their presence, but 684 seems an excessive use of the Latin expression and their numbers are reduced to a normal amount, less than ten, in his subsequent book, Das Triumphirende.  The presence of 28 &c's in addition to the et ceteras used, would seem to make the necessity of using the Latin abbreviation redundant, anyway.

The presence of so many et ceteras and the various hints at the existence of a hidden message within the Apologia Poetica lead one inevitably to question the large number of these abbreviations.  In some cases there are as many as seven consecutive lines each ending in the Latin expression.

There are 397 et ceteras in part one of Apologia Poetica, and 287 in part two, totalling 684.  I have omitted the  &c's and the many NB’s and NB’s because I am uncertain about their relevance to a secret message.  But just for the record there are 9 + 19 = 28  &c’s, and 20 + 176 = 196 NB’s. Anyway in preparation for devising his code, Bessler must have written his text and then looked for a way to hide it within his existing work.  I assumed that he then circled or underlined the letters or words he sought for his text and then used some method to identify the line containing that letter or word.  I suggest that he marked this line by placing the et cetera sign at the end of it. There is no mileage, in my opinion, in trying to read something in the positioniong of these abbreviations, either from the front or the back of the page; their positioning is too similar to each other for any one to detect any subtle differences.

The next step was to leave some means of guiding us to the correct letter or word on that line. I tried various ways of identifying a letter or word, but came to the conclusion that a letter was too time consuming and as he had a plethora of suitable words to pick from, why make his job more difficult if he could use full words and still hide them.  If one assumes an average of five letters per word then from a total of 684 ‘et ceteras’, he had about 137 words to complete his secret message, whereas if each et cetera indicated a whole word he would have potentially 684!  I suspect the answer lies somewhere between those two figures.

The method he used to hide his words had to be very strong.  This becomes even more obvious when you consider such passages as this one on page 27 of the Apologia Poetica, which has no fewer than six consecutive lines with the et cetera 'X' at the end.

If each lines contained a word from his text in the order in which it naturally ocurred, it would not take long to find the identifier and hence the whole coded message could be read. And that is not the only page containing six or more consecutive lines with  et ceteras at their ends.  An additional clue may be found in the presence of double et ceteras which appear in part two of Apologia Poetica. Here are a couple below:-

Note the second one is positioned just after two blanks.  The missing word is ‘Schelmen’ meaning ‘rogue’ or ‘rascall’.  For further information on the use of the blanks visit my web site at www.theorffyreuscode.com

I then wondered if the meaning and even the position of the et ceteras themselves were irrelevant.  Maybe the secret lay in the number of them per page.  If there was just one et cetera on a page, maybe that meant 'line one' held the missing word.  As a check I looked at the title page which has one et cetera on it and assumed ‘one’ et cetera meant line ‘one’.  The first word is ORFFYREI  which looks promising, but then it all goes wrong again.  In the subsequent page with et ceteras on it, nothing else supports this idea.  I tried various alternatives such as counting lines from the top on odd pages and from the bottom on even ones, but no dice.

But consider this, if each page which has one or more et ceteras on it, is meant to hide one complete word, there are potentially 226 words.  That is the number of pages which have et ceteras on them.  I feel that this way lies the solution.  It is too tempting to be drawn into considering the line with the et cetera on it rather than just counting how may X's there are and using that number to find the word.

One more thing might be worth taking into account.  The whole book is written in rhyming couplets except for part of Chapter 55, which I have discussed at www.orffyreus.net - maybe there is some way to assign the number of et ceteras to a couplet?

Good luck to those who are persuing this line of enquiry, and I know there are several, from my email correspondence.

JC

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I was contacted recently by a English journalist, Eve Pearce, who offered to write some content for my websites. I thought it was a good idea but as I am so busy at the moment, I had decided to leave my websites as they are for the time being,  so I offered her a guest spot on my blog to see what comments an 'outsider' would generate. I use the word, 'outsider', not in any pejorative sense, indeed I was delighted with her article, but in the sense that she is not part of our somewhat closed community and she can provide a fresh viewpoint to our research.

Her website is at  http://www.andalemono.com/  and here are some samples of her other work:-

http://www.antarcticconnection.com/blogs/Fiennes/

http://www.greenweddingconsortium.com/green-weddings/how-big-is-your-weddings-carbon-footprint/

http://www.oyetimes.com/lifestyle/homes/29907-is-the-canadian-housing-bubble-about-to

Her article follws:-

Perpetual Motion Machines in Use Today

Critics of Bessler´s Wheel would argue that perpetual motion in such instance would be impossible as it contravenes both the first and second law of thermodynamics; while energy is conserved, the energy of a closed system changes due to the transfer of heat and work between it and its environment and secondly isolated systems move towards thermal equilibrium, where entropy is at its greatest, so thermal energy is unable to be transferred for work. However, while they use their theories as evidence, they forget about the best evidence that we could possibly have for perpetual motion machines - those that are in use around the world today. A number of devices have already been invented that allow us to harness the motion in the environment that can go on indefinitely without any further human input; after all everything everywhere is moving - the Earth, its rivers and seas and the very atoms that everything on the planet is made up from. While the Cox Clock - which uses changes in barometric pressure to keep on running - may only be a relic in a museum, we consider another three devices that are examples of perpetual motion machines and are in use today.

 Atmos clock

 This clock produced in Switzerland by Jaeger-LeCoultre is mechanical, but does not need to be wound. Instead it obtains the energy that it requires to run from changes in temperature and atmospheric pressure in its surrounding environment. The clock contains a mixture of ethyl chloride gas and liquid in an airtight capsule. With a rise in temperature and pressure the mixture expands into a chamber, causing a spring to be compressed; the converse occurs when the temperature or pressure falls. The temperature only needs to change by a very achievable 1C or the pressure by 3mmHg every two days for the clock to continue running. The clock is however helped by an internal environment that is almost friction-free and a torsion pendulum that uses less energy than a standard pendulum would.

 Tidal power generator

 Our high energy usage in our homes and businesses requires the use of vast amounts of gas and electricity. Consequently there has been much development in the renewable energy sector in recent decades, one area of which has been tidal power; the energy from the movement of tides is converted into electricity. Tidal forces are the consequence of changes in gravitational attraction exerted by the Moon as it orbits the Earth; in short its attraction to the seas causes their level to rise and water from the middle of the seas is forced towards the shore. Tides occur consistently as the moon has an unchanging orbit around our planet; this makes tidal power more reliable than sources such as solar or wind power, which can fluctuate significantly. Tidal power can be generated through use of a tidal stream generator, which uses the energy of moving water to drive turbines and then generators. Alternatively a tidal barrage uses the difference between the height of a high and low tide; a dam is used to hold back the water at high tide, allowing its energy to build up, and when released at low tide the energy is used to drive turbines.  There is also potential for the use of dynamic tidal power, which could use the interaction between the kinetic and potential energy in a tide.

 Geothermal power generator

 This renewable energy source relies on the energy released when matter is condensed by gravity. Geothermal power plants use the steam produced by geothermal sources to generate electricity. In dry steam power plants - the original method to harness geothermal energy - the hydrothermal fluids are largely steam, which drives a turbine directly; the knock on effect of which is to drive generators and produce electricity. Flash steam power plants are what are most commonly found today; high temperature fluid is pumped under pressure into a tank at surface level, where it is held at a lower pressure, causing some of the fluid to vaporize, which drives the turbines. In a binary cycle power plant the geothermal water or steam is never in contact with the turbines; instead the geothermal fluid passes with a cooler fluid through a heat exchanger, with the transfer of heat causing the second fluid to evaporate and then drive turbines and a generator Having considered these three devices that are driven by nature, could Bessler's Wheel have worked in a similar way through interaction with its surroundings? This theory was pondered by the mathematician Jean Bernoulli, who proposed that the motion seen in nature could support perpetual motion; rather than labelling machines such as Bessler's Wheel as working under artificial perpetual motion, they could move under combined perpetual motion with the help of nature.

Update on my reconstruction of Johann Bessler's Wheel.

Although I am unable to do any work on my wheel currently, I thought I'd update you on the situation as it is.  I'm still working with five mechanisms for reasons I have explained on my web site at http://www.besslerswheel.com/

You will also see that I am committed to the parametric oscillation theory in which a weight passes downwards in an outer position, relative to the axle, and then at six o'clock flies upwards in just the same way that a 'kiiking ' rider straightens his legs at that point in order to raise his centre of gravity towards the axle.

I am currently striving to get the weights to operate in the way Bessler described, shooting upwards at that point.  I completely understand why they must perform this part quickly and I can make each one ascend gently, but not actually shoot upwards and the result is that the lift is a too late.  

The idea is that once the wheel has completed a fifth of a turn, the next mechanisms acts in the same way to continue the rotation, however without a quick lift, the next mechanism doesn't arrive at the position in which it has to rise!  I believe I know how to improve the speed of the lift and make it shoot upwards and once I've constructed it and proved to myself that that part of the mechanism works, I should in theory be able to move on to the next bit which is constructing a fully working wheel.

The chief problem I have encountered over the last couple of years is getting the mechanism adjusted correctly.  I know that is an excuse everyone uses, but in truth, copying a working wheel might have seemed easy to Karl, who suggested it was so simple a carpenter's boy could make one if he was allowed to st udy it for a short while, but trying to get it right from scratch with nothing to guide you except some misleading clues is another matter.  In my case I have had to fall back on trial and error and it is a lengthy process but I remain confident that I shall get there eventually.  As before, once I know imy work is not going to result in a working model, I will release all my designs for public consumption.

By the way, the delay in wheel work is due to members of my family moving in to our house for a few months, but hopefully once the move is completed in the next couple of weeks, I can get back to work on my wheel.

JC

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The law of energy conservation proves that a single weight can't drive a gravitywheel.

Time to turn my thoughts to gravity again. Today's blog is a two parter but each is connected with the other.

Firstly, some say that Bessler never used the word 'gravity' in his writings, therefore he did not ascribe his energy source to gravity.  But the reason for its non-appearance is because he used such words as 'preponderance' and 'weight' instead.  Preponderance simply means 'a superiority in weight', in other words, heavier than something else.  

The apparently missing word, 'gravity', comes from the Latin word, 'gravitas'.  In Newton's time, Latin was the language used by the learned, and books on academic and scientific subjects were written in Latin so that they could be read by people in all the European countries regardless of the reader's native language.  Newton's use of the word, 'Gravitas', meant 'heaviness' or 'weight'.  But he suggested that 'weight' should no longer be regarded as simply a property possessed by a 'heavy body', but that a body that seems to be heavy is being attracted by another body with mass, in this case, the earth.  Thus the force of gravity was born.

The word for gravity in German today is 'Schwerkraft' but that did not come into common use for many years after Bessler's death.  So just because the particular word 'gravity' isn't there doesn't mean that Bessler wasn't referring to it in his writings and the circumstantial evidence is clear enough that that is what he meant.  If he could do it, then it can be done

Secondly, we've been taught that gravity is a conservative force and therefore it cannot be used as a source of energy.  I have repeatedly pointed out that the forces of wind and water are also conservative forces and they provide excellent sources of energy.  You can't have it both ways; either a conservative force cannot be used as an energy source.... or it can! 

In relation to our research, the law of conservation of energy only defines what happens for a single weight mounted on a wheel and driving a gravity-enabled wheel.  Picture Bessler's horizontal windmill, the one he was building at the time of his death; the wind acted on both sides of the vertical axle and with a number of sails or scoops, it was designed to rotate in the wind. if there had been just one sail or vane or scoop, it  would have made half a turn and stopped - it needed several of them to work with each side on either scooping up the wind or deflecting it, to make a full rotation.  

The same goes for an overshot water wheel for example.  If it had just one bucket it would stop after half a turn.  It needs a succession of buckets to make a full and continuous rotation. 

A Savonius windmill still requires a miniumum of two blades or scoops to allow it to rotate and there are designs using three or more blades.  My point is that even though gravity is a conservative force that does not rule it out as an energy source - as long as there are sufficient weights in complementary action.  

None of the above wind or water driven designs will work with just one blade, unless of course, as in the case of the former one, it is designed to operate face-on to the wind. The different designs mean that the wind and water wheels use surface-changes to their vanes, scoops or sails to interact with their relevant forces to gain mechanical advantage, whereas gravity-enabled wheels use position-changes of their weights to interact with gravity for a mechanical advantage.  

Horizontal windmills, or Savonius windmills present a larger surface area on one side of their axles than the other, which gives one side more leverage and makes them turn.  It's just the same with gravitywheels, they present the weight on one side further from the axle which gives one side more leverage and makes them turn

The whole argument against gravitywheels is based on the calculation of one weight operating the wheel and not several.

I've said all this before, on my other web sites and on the forum but I will repeat it and repeat it until someone listens and makes the required paradigm shift.

JC

Johann Bessler's graphic clues to the mechanisms in the Orffyreus wheel.

Someone grumbled that I haven't posted any interesting clues lately, well I can't give out any hard and fast clues yet, but here are some pointers to how I interpreted some perceived clues and got their meaning 

As I've said before, the most useful of Bessler's clues are those which show the actual mechanism.  They are contained in a few illustrations. That being so, how come no-one has been able to build a working model based on those clues?  The answer is, because Bessler deliberately confused the simple interpretation of the drawings by omitting some features, adding unecessary pieces and moving others into the wrong position, and pointing out what he had done, in other drawings.  

One particular example can be interpreted by re-orientating the drawing to the position in which the mechanism would naturally respond to gravity.  If you study the drawing, one part of the mechanism is semi-detached, and consequently by re-orientating the drawing, and allowing gravity to act as if it was a real mechanism and not just an illustration, thus changing the position, the item then shows itself in its correct position.  Reversing the orientation of the drawing again does not mean that the item discussed should return to its former position as this would then be incorrect for the functioning of the mechanism.

It is this kind of encoding that permeates Bessler's clues and requires a certain amount of lateral thinking.

One drawing is, as I have mentioned before, not showing the wheel in its true dimensions, but this advice was dismissed as wrong or irrelevant, which is of course the reader's prerogative.

Another one shows the two positions of the mechanism and how they vary in their connections with other parts of the same mechanism, during their range of movement - the connectedness principle.

Yet another drawing provides corrective information about a particular item in a different drawing and this can be established with a fair degree of certainty once you know what to look for.

There is one drawing which also hides the principle which I have described, but encoded, at the end of each post on this blog. I even described the clue on my website, www.theorffyreuscode.com, although I did not understand what it meant at the time. I stumbled on the principle by chance and then had it confirmed by the clue in question. This principle is the one which Bessler says he found where everyone else looked.  It is the one thing you need in order to build Bessler's wheel.

I can't put it better than Bessler did, "no illustration by itself contains a description of the motion; however, taking various illustrations together and combining them with a discerning mind, it will indeed be possible to look for a movement and, finally to find one in them."

I apologise if people do not find this helpful, but I wish to retain what I know for my own build.  Of course I might be completely wrong and I wouldn't want to lead anyone else up the wrong path.  There is much more to be learned from Bessler's drawings and they would not have been so carefully drawn and included for our consumption unless they were there to aid reconstruction, but, to the casual eye, they offer nothing of use to anyone seeking the answer. 

JC

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A sawmill such as Bessler's wheel would have powered.

Bessler probably acquired his timber from a sawmill and yesterday I came across this amazing saw mill built in 1673 at the Willermershof farmstead in Schwarzenbach, this 'Knocking' Saw was in use until 1963 when it was moved to Vogtsbauernhof in south-eastern Germany. 

You can see from the video that it is driven by a waterwheel which uses precisely the same 'three tusked cams', or lifting arms, fixed with tenons, that are evident in one of Bessler's drawings.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0teYGke_Lc

From the above video, "farmsteads operated their own saws when the property had a considerable amount of forest area. They cut their own timber for private use as well as to sell commercially. Contracting the saws out to other farmers was also an additional source of income. There was a widespread use of 'knocking' saws in the Black Forest starting in the 16th century. The technique originated in the 13th century.

The 'knocking' saws is driven by a middle-shot water wheel. This turns a shaft axis that has three tusked cams, or lifting arms, fixed with tenons. When rotated, these cams knock against the overhead saw frame, thereby lifting it. With each turn of the water wheel, the saw frame is hit upwards three times. 

This hitting motion creates a knocking sound that can be heard from quite a distance away. When the frame has reached its highest point, it drops down suddenly. Upon falling, the saw blade cuts the trunk. The trunk is fastened down to a sled. By dropping, the saw frame sets a mechanism into motion shoving the sled towards the blade of the saw.

Trunks measuring up to 20 ft in length could be cut. Sawing a 20 ft board or plank takes about 45 minutes. Generally, boards and planks of a thickness from 3/4 to 3" were cut. Squared timber, such as used to build houses, had to be clouted with an ax. Boards and planks were needed to build houses, furniture, and wagons."

Boards of 3/4 of an inch  still sound a little on the thick side for Besslers' wheel but I guess they could be trimmed down some more - or even sliced in half.  Teuber described the Merseburg wheel as being covered by thin deals which I presume would have been thinner than 3/4 of an inch

It seems clear that a similar mechanical arrangement could have powered other kinds of mills.

NB More clues to come in next post.

JC

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Petrol from Air!

This morning's news reveals that a British company is making petrol from fresh air!  There are a number of articles about it, for instance this one http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/fuel/9619269/British-engineers-produce-amazing-petrol-from-air-technology.html

'The “petrol from air” technology involves taking sodium hydroxide and mixing it with carbon dioxide before "electrolysing" the sodium carbonate that it produces to form pure carbon dioxide.

Hydrogen is then produced by electrolysing water vapour captured with a dehumidifier. The company, Air Fuel Syndication, then uses the carbon dioxide and hydrogen to produce methanol which in turn is passed through a gasoline fuel reactor, creating petrol.

Company officials say they had produced five litres of petrol in less than three months from a small refinery in Stockton-on-Tees, Teesside.

The fuel that is produced can be used in any regular petrol tank and, if renewable energy is used to provide the electricity it could become “completely carbon neutral”.

The £1.1m project, in development for the past two years, is being funded by a group of unnamed philanthropists who believe the technology could prove to be a lucrative way of creating renewable energy.'

At first sight this looks as though it might spell doom for Bessler's wheel, however, the process has to be a viable commercial operation to succeed and to produce just 5 litres in 2 months does not seem too awe inspiring, but then this is just a test facility and something much larger looms on the horizon.

Can they produce petrol at a better rate than the current rate for a barrel of oil (42 US gallons and about 35 UK gallons) which is currently between $92 and $112 per barrel?  Possibly, but the governments will still tax it to death.  Of course the same goes for Bessler's wheel but it is the greener option, despite the claims that this new process is greener than anything so far produced.  The carbon-neutral aspect of it could be supplied by Bessler's wheel and an electricity generator.

We must await developments meanwhile, on with the build!

JC