Only 5 days to go - 6th Clue. It seems that my suggestion that the pendulums are more than mere decorations is considered highly doubtful, so I shall have to try to convince the sceptics with some more clues. I would like to convince most people that the secret lies in "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," - Bessler's words, but I couldn't have put it better myself.
He published the Merseberg drawing in its original state in 1715, in Grundlicher Bericht, and the MT was not completed with the Toys page until about 1723 and yet in Apologia Poetica, also published in 1715, he had already hinted in quite strong terms that he had left a number of clues behind in case he died before the secret was out.
I'm surprised that I'm having to say this but perhaps I should point out here that the pendulums, as shown in his illustrations, are not to be taken literally, in other words they are not what they appear to be.- that would have been far too obvious For instance, it's no good calculating their period of swing. They weren't there as speed limiters or modifiers, but they were inside the wheel, but not in their current form. If you think about it for a moment you realise that it would have been crazy for Bessler to put anything which was easily read and understood correctly as a clue; it had to be opaque, even to the serious researcher.
I am not going to add any drawings here, but if you are interested, take a look at the Merseberg wheel illustration in Das Triumphirende. Two hints here, firstly you all know the main wheel includes a pentagon aligned on the rope that passes behind the wheel, the sloping hatch marks are to help fill in the missing parts for one of the pentagons, of which there are two. Why is the pentagon important?
The second hint is that there is clear evidence that the wheel facing you should be drawn larger than it is shown. Check out the tops of the two right hand pendulum pillars numbered 12, they're higher than the others for a reason, but the two wheels in the picture are the same height. The enlarged circle includes the outer end of the left side of the horizontal weight and also coincides with the right edge of the picture. I leave it to you to decide how one might make use of this.
More clues in other drawings to follow.
JC
