Thursday 15 November 2012

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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31 comments:

  1. Your garage or "workshop" looks like an abandoned building compared to mine! LOL! That's the beauty of being a "sim only" mobilist. My "workshop" is portable and located wherever my PC or laptop happens to be.

    I assume that the tan colored disc at the center of the lower half of the second photo is your "whole" wheel and has been discretely turned facing away from the camera so that we can not see the five "perpetual motion structures" attached to it. I do not see anything that looks like a "test rig", however.

    You wrote:

    "...when all I need to know is how to get one mechanism to act the way I wish it to."

    I am troubled by this statement because it seems that, by concentrating on the action of ONLY one mechanism, you are ignoring the effects of the OTHER four mechanisms in the wheel. You may find, at the end of the line, that those other four mechanisms are keeping your wheel from running no matter how well a single mechanism performs. I am, of course, hoping I'm wrong about this, but I've seen analogous situations like this with various types of permanent magnet motors. Based on the interactions of just two magnets in the design, the mobilist [and I was once one of them!] joyfully leaps to the conclusion that the ENTIRE assemblage of magnets MUST work only to eventually find out that it does not. In such designs, the whole seems to be LESS than the sum of the parts!

    When you finally obtain your best design and post it, then, assuming that it still does not run, perhaps I or others can take a crack at modeling it to see what the problem is and suggest a possible remedy.

    I think you will find that in order to achieve the reaction you are looking for [sudden rising of the 6:00 weight], you will have to begin to incorporate SPRINGS into the design. It took YEARS for me to realize this necessity with my own "right track" design and now I realize that it would have NO HOPE of EVER working if it was not for the springs it contains! And, that, of course, is EXACTLY why the Master used them in his wheels!

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  2. My workshop is as you see temporarily not user-friendly! However I think a builder will get there well before you simulators, but we will see.

    That's an old disc you can see, it has no parts attached, just a million holes!

    Don't trouble your self TG, If I can get this part right the rest will follow according to my theory. I am not just trying out an idea, this whole design is based on a complete design plan which includes all actions ans reactions.

    Yes indeed if it doesn't work, full details will be posted so you can show me where I went wrong. I may have to resort to springs but not yet.

    JC

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  3. Bessler said you will need springs? :) Jon

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    1. "Bessler said you will need springs?"

      Not in so many words, but this becomes VERY obvious when one tries to reverse engineer his secret OB PM gravity wheel mechanism (I won't go into all of the spring symbols that there are in the DT protraits except to say that they are VERY numerous!).

      Bessler only grudgingly admitted that his wheels used springs. I think he generally avoided even mentioning the word because he knew that the skeptics of his day (I call them "no trackers" because they don't think that there is ANY path that will lead to PM!) would immediately twist what he was saying and then try to use that to prove that his wheels were merely wind up machines containing huge, tightly wound spiral mainsprings that were their internal power sources.

      This is exactly the approach that Wagner used when he tried to duplicate Bessler's wheels with his own crude version. Strange, though, how Wagner seems to have gone silent AFTER the successful duration testing of the Weissenstein wheel (which, perhaps, I should refer to as the "Kassel Wheel" since Bessler's other wheels are named after the towns that they were built and displayed in). After he heard about that nearly two MONTH long test, Wagner would have realized that Bessler's giant two-directional wheel was outputting FAR more energy / mass than could be stored within its drum even if its ENTIRE interior volume was filled with wound up mainsprings!

      I think another of Bessler's detractors, Gartner, IIRC, even refused to accept the results of the Weissenstein Castle test as valid and continued after it was completed to suggest that Bessler had rigged the room that the wheel was running in so that when the door to the room was closed and locked, it would remotely activate a braking mechanism that would stop the wheel from rotating and thereby using up its limited supply of mainspring stored energy / mass. Then, after weeks of remaining stationary, when the door was again unlocked to inspect the wheel, its cleverly hidden braking mechanism would release its axle and it would immediately start up and then be at full speed just before the witnesses could fully open the door and enter the room. This way, he claimed, the wheel only gave the illusion that it had been running continuously during the intervening time. Such a trick might be workable, but I seriously doubt if any braking mechanism strong enough to stop the wheel through the pivots of its axle would have gone undetected by those who examined the axle's support bearings.

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  4. Where did you find the information about Gärtner's suggested means of operating the Weissenstein wheel, TG?

    JC

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    1. To tell you the truth, John, I can't remember. It may have been mentioned by Wagner in one of this "Criticisms" of Bessler's wheels. It certainly sounds like something that Gartner would have come up with.

      I must dismiss this method of hoaxing the Weissenstein Castle wheel because of the massive masonry that surrounded the door to the room containing the wheel. Bessler would have had to have bored shafts through solid rock to be able to install a mechanical mechanism leading from the door's lock to one of the upright supports on his wheel. Without the use of modern power tools, such an installation would have required more work by Bessler than did the actual construction of his wheel itself!

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    2. Wagner only commented on the wheels prior to the Weissenstein wheel, because Karl issued a proclmation in 1716, that Bessler was under his protection and no more slanderous tracts could be published.

      Gärtner, Wagner and Borlach said nothing more. Perhaps you remembered the information from one of the more imaginative commentaries on Bessler.

      JC

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    3. I just checked the material about Bessler's wheels over at the simanek site on perpetual motion machines because I thought I might have read it there. He does suggest that the Weissenstein wheel was rigged to stop when the door was closed, but does not go into the details of how that would be done.

      I still can not remember the source, but I distinctly remember it mentioning something about the door's edge that was attached by hinges to the door frame pushing in on an unnoticed pin installed in the frame when the door was closed. This action was then supposed to apply pressure to a hidden rod that would be transmitted through the 1 foot thick masonry via mechanical linkages to one of the wheel's upright supports. There, some sort of tiny brake shoe would be activated that would come down and apply pressure to the upper surface of one of the axle's steel end pivots to produce enough drag to slow the giant wheel to a stop. When the door was again opened, the pin in the door frame would be allowed to emerge again and the brake shoe resting on the axle pivot would quickly retract out of sight into the upright support. The wheel, of course, would immediately accelerate to its maximum terminal rotation rate.

      I have to consider this scenario HIGHLY unlikely...but NOT completely physically impossible. I would question whether the wheel would be able to accelerate fast enough during the few seconds it would take to open the door and enter the room to convince witnesses that it had been continuously running at full speed. The possibility of this scenario, however, could easily have been eliminated if there had been a tiny obervation window in the sealed door so that outsiders could look in occasionally to verify that the giant wheel was in continuous motion. I also have a theory that Bessler was able to satisfy Karl that the wheel was in continuous motion by showing him, by using a small telescope directed at the room's courtyard window during the day, that, indeed, the great wheel continuously rotated.

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    4. Hmmm...there's another very obvious reason why this door activated wheel braking system is unlikely. IF Bessler had used something like that to stop the Weissenstein Castle wheel, then how did the wheel restart again when the door was opened? That wheel was TWO-directional and it had to have a push to start it up from a standstill. What provided the push which, in order to minimize the force required, needed to be applied to the rim of the drum?

      I guess there's the possibility that the brake did not completely stop the wheel, but only greatly slowed it so that it would be able to recover its full rotation rate when the brake was released as the door was opened. But, then we have a scenario where the brake on the axle pivot was DRAGGING for MONTHS during the duration test. THAT really seems improbable to me.

      No...Bessler's Weissenstein wheel and its duration test were NOT hoaxed! They were for real!

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    5. JC said:
      "Perhaps you remembered the information from one of the more imaginative commentaries on Bessler".

      What he should have said is
      "Perhaps you remembered the information from one of your more imaginative commentaries on Bessler".

      Good god man, stop your incessant blathering.

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    6. @ Mr. Anonymous

      It is quite true that I have, at times, proposed various theories to fill in the missing gaps in the Bessler story. They are not intended to be "blatherings", but, rather, thought provoking speculations which I've tried to make as conservative as possible and consistent with known mechanical principles. As far as the door activated braking mechanism is concerned, I honestly do not remember the source and do not think that it is anything I've proposed in the past, but forgotten.

      In any event, I look eagerly forward to seeing you Anons begin to likewise contribute some relevant and thought provoking content to this blog. Something tells me that hell will freeze over first before that ever happens!

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    7. Shut up and build something ! Lol . ( meant in a kind way )

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  5. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    1. Bessler admits the use of springs , but not of the watch-spring type . He is just making the point that contrary to what is being said about the device there is not anything even vaguely resembling a turn-spit contained within .

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  6. John,..Your workshop looks just like mine at the moment.I have been so frantic in my building,there is no time to clean up.Fortunately I'm nearing the end which should yield a working wheel,then I will be able to chuck out the off cuts.

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    1. I'm delighted to know there are others who work in a similar state of utter chaos. My grandson said it looked as if Tsunami had swept through it!

      JC

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  7. PART I:

    Above I wrote:

    "IF Bessler had used something like that [the door activated brake shoe in one of the wheel's upright supports] to stop the Weissenstein Castle wheel, then how did the wheel restart again when the door was opened? That wheel was TWO-directional and it had to have a push to start it up from a standstill. What provided the push which, in order to minimize the force required, needed to be applied to the rim of the drum?"

    Upon further consideration, I realized that there would NOT have been a need to push the two-directional Weissenstein wheel (or the two-directional Merseburg wheel for that matter) to restart it in the event that it had been completely stopped by a hidden retractable brake shoe built into one of its upright support column. Why?

    The reason is that, being two-directional, when the Weissenstein wheel was initially given a push to start it rotating, the OTHER, NON-driving sub wheel it contained would, after it had completed a single retrograde rotation, have had all of its 8 weighted levers' weights locked up against their rim stops as their CoM was retracted to the center of the axle where it could then provide no torque to the axle. IF the door activated brake trick was used to stop the great wheel after the door was closed and locked, then the wheel would have stopped, BUT STILL have been imbalanced! Stopping one of Bessler's two-directional wheels drums did NOT automatically make it balanced again. IF these wheels used two opposed sub wheels, then, when a formerly running drum was manually stopped, it would STILL be necessary to counter rotate it through one complete rotation to UNlock its previously retrograde rotating sub wheel's 8 weighted levers so that their projected CoM would again balance the other formerly driving sub wheel's 8 weights' CoM so that the drum would REMAIN stationary when released.

    This means that the door activated braking system could have brought the great wheel to a complete stop and, since it would still be imbalanced in that state, opening the door again WOULD allow the drum to start up again WITHOUT the need to push it! Thus, such a braking system would not, as I previously suggested, require that the brake shoe drag for months to just reduce the rotation rate of the wheel so that the total energy / mass outputted would not exceed what would have been previously stored in a set of tightly wound mainsprings within its drum.

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  8. PART II:

    It has been noted that there is no mention of the Weissenstein wheel having been required to continuously perform work during its almost two month long duration test and some consider this as evidence that, indeed, the wheel only carried a limited supply of mechanicallly stored energy / mass in order to impressively rotate only when the door was open and the examiners had entered the room. In light of the way Bessler's two-directional wheels worked, however, it would really have made NO difference if the Weissenstein wheel was made to continuously operate something like, say, the Archimedean screw water pump during the test. IF the door activated brake stopped the wheel after the door was closed and locked, then the drum would have completely stopped, still have been imbalanced, and then, when the door was opened again, it would have just started up again "under load". This scenario would apply to ANY load attached to its axle just so long as it did not produce so much counter torque on the axle that the still imbalanced driving sub wheel's driving torque was not able to overcome it.

    The bottom line of all of this is that it WAS physically possible to have faked the Weissenstein wheel's duration test whether it was running freely OR under load. One, however, must ask himself if it would have been possible for Bessler to have set up the conditions necessary for perpetrating such a hoax. That is, would he have been able to install a mechanism within the door's frame and routed its mechanical linkages through a foot or more of solid stone AND the CEILING to one of the wheel's upright supports in order to then activate the hidden brake shoe that would have applied enough drag to an axle pivot (which would have been coated with a lubricant!) in order to slow the wheel to a stop when the door was closed and locked and the room was empty?

    I am remain HIGHLY confident that such a hoax would have been FAR too complicated to produce and that any attempt by Bessler to seriously modify the construction of the walls surrounding the room containing the wheel for such a hoax would NOT have gone unnoticed and unquestioned.

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  9. Yes, how very uninteresting... stop blathering on, stop making up rubbish and then disproving it, what was the point of anything you've written in the past week? You don't have the solution, nobody has the solution, so shut up and come back when you've got a working wheel.

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    1. You are wrong ... I have the solution and also I AM building the device .

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    2. You are wrong also,I am buiding the device!

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    3. Anon., I have been tough on TG also but I don't mind these posts. I just hate his daily updates about his wheel and springs. These posts were somewhat interesting. TG, what would be the purpose of the hoax? So Bessler and probably Karl would have their heads removed? Point 2. If the wheel started when the door opened, it would have easily been noticed due to it needing three revolutions the get up to speed. Signed : justsomeone

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    4. PART I:

      For the sake of "Anonymous 17 November 2012 11:50" and other bored (and boring!) Anons, I may begin placing the following warning at the beginning of my future comments:

      "CAUTION: Anyone with an attention span of LESS than 10 seconds should avoid reading the following comment lest they run the risk of straining and thereby damaging their limited supply of functioning brain cells by actually having to do some thinking with them! The author will bear no resposibility if that person proceeds to read the comment and actual brain damage results."


      @ justsomeone

      Sorry if you find this matter of analyzing a possible hoaxing of the Weissenstein wheel not to your liking. BUT, I've found that this analysis is helping to crystalize my own thoughts on the subject and IS leading to new insights (at least for me!).

      To be clear, I am NOT saying that Bessler hoaxed the nearly two month long duration test of his last known two-directional wheel, but, rather, was just trying to understand what basis, if any, those "no track" skeptics claiming he did might have. I HAVE to agree with them that such a hoax WOULD, indeed, be technically possible. BUT, I consider the sheer amount of extra work involved in perpetrating such hoax to make it VERY highly unlikely.

      You wrote: "If the wheel started when the door opened, it would have easily been noticed due to it needing three revolutions the get up to speed."

      Not necessarily. You assume that the door could be opened immediately and an examiner would then immediately enter the room and, viewing the great wheel full face, have been able to visually and accurately determine its rotation rate. It's possible that the door was massive and only opened slowly with great effort. It's also possible that, upon entering the room, the wheel was first observed on edge and, by the time someone walked around the the side to view it full face, it would then have reached its maximum terminal rotation rate.


      At this point, I have to correct something I stated in the first part of my last two-part comment which was:

      "Stopping one of Bessler's two-directional wheels drums did NOT automatically make it balanced again. IF these wheels used two opposed sub wheels, then, when a formerly running drum was manually stopped, it would STILL be necessary to counter rotate it through one complete rotation to UNlock its previously retrograde rotating sub wheel's 8 weighted levers so that their projected CoM would again balance the other formerly driving sub wheel's 8 weights' CoM so that the drum would REMAIN stationary when released."

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    5. PART II:

      Here's how that needs to be corrected.

      It's true that when a two-directional wheel was stopped, it would still be imbalanced and, upon being released, it would again accelerate in the direction it had previously turned in. However, if, upon being stopped, one then manually rotated the wheel through a COMPLETE rotation in the OPPOSITE direction that it had previously rotated toward, then the wheel, upon being released would still NOT be stationary! Rather, it would begin to spontaneously rotate in the NEW direction. This is because, when the then stationary drum was given a full counter rotation, ALL of the 8 weights in the sub wheel which had previously driven the drum in one direction would then be locked up against their rim stops while ALL of the 8 weights of the inactive sub wheel that had previously been locked up against their rim stops would be released and THEIR projected CoM would then serve to drive the drum in the new direction.

      From this, is seems that when a two-directional wheel was manually stopped, one of several scenarios could take place:

      1.) The drum could be released and would then spontaneously begin accelerating in the direction that it had previously turned in.

      2.) The drum could be manually counter rotated through a COMPLETE rotation and then released whereupon it would spontaneously begin accelerating in the new direction.

      3.) If one desired the drum to remain stationary, he would have to counter rotate it through one HALF of a complete rotation. This would then lock up HALF of the weights of the sub wheel that had previously driven the drum while simultaneously UNlocking half of the weights in the previously inactive sub wheel. The result would be two opposed sub wheels that offset their individual CoM's onto OPPOSITE sides of the axle. This configuration would then produce NO net torque and the drum would remain stationary.

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  10. The wheel was reported to be noisy - about eight weights landing etc - I believe the noise generated by the wheel when turning would have been clearly heard outside the room. Karl sealed the lock with his personal seal and placed guards on the door. I'm sure that he would have been listening for the sound while he was inspecting the lock prior to opening the door. I'm equally sure the guards would have heard it too.

    JC

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    1. Yes, yes...but how much trouble would it have been for Bessler, a skilled carpenter, to have bored a nice little 1/2 inch diameter observation hole through the wood of the door so that outside withnesses could, from time to time, peek it to verify that, indeed, the great wheel WAS continuously rotating?

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  11. TG,

    I have relied on builds to prove or disprove ideas. I would like to try a program to simulate a new idea I have. It involves a wheel with swinging weights and springs (what an idea!). What program do you use or which would you recommend? Thanks in advance.

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    1. If one has never used a modeling / simulation program before, then the one I always recommend is "Working Model 2D" because of its extreme ease of use. It can be downloaded for free and they'll even send you a copy on a CD if you request it. The problem with the free version is that you can not SAVE your progress with it. That requires inputting a serial number (which they supply you with IF you purchase it) that then unlocks the Save feature. Still, even without being able to save your models, you can do a lot to verify if a simple design works or not. If you look around, however, you may find someone with a copy to sell that includes the serial number to unlock it.

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  12. PART I:

    Out of curiosity, I decided to see if I could determine how long it would have taken the Weissenstein wheel to "get up to speed" or, from a complete standstill, have its drum reach a rotation rate of 26 rpm's. With WM2D it's rather easy to determine this.

    First, I needed a good estimate for the Weissenstein wheel's mass. Since its axle was a big larger in diameter than the Merseburg wheel, I assigned a mass of 100 lbs to the Weissenstein wheel. I then assumed that the drum frame and its various NON-lead weight components (wooden levers, cords, springs, steel lever pivots, brass bearings, etc.) weighed in at another 100 lbs. That then left the weights in the giant two-directional wheel's two sub wheels to consider. I am of the opinion that Bessler, in order to impress Karl by constructing a wheel for him that was twice as powerful as the Merseburg wheel, simply doubled the mass of the lead weights that he used in the Weissenstein wheel to 8 lbs each. Then, for its 16 weights contained in its two opposed sub wheels, the total mass was 128 lbs. Adding it all up gives a total wheel mass of 328 lbs.

    Next, assuming that the location of the horizontal component of the descending side projected CoM of the single active sub wheel's 8 weights which drove the drum in either direction was, like that of the Merseburg wheel, located 1 inch from the center of the axle (which would be the case if Bessler used the same "magic" lever in both wheels which I think he did), that would mean that the drum was driven by a torque of (8 wts) x (8 lbs/wt) x (1 in) = 64 lb-in.

    In the quick WM2D model I made, I applied a torque of 64 lb-in to a 328 lb wheel and then tracked how long it took the wheel to reach its maximum terminal rotation rate of 26 rpm's and how many complete drum rotations had to take place before this happened. The results were a bit surprising to me.

    It took my model Weisseinstein wheel 93 seconds or over a minute and a half to reach a rotation rate of 26 rpm's and a total of about 20 full complete rotations to do so!

    On the surface this might seem to absolutely preclude the possibility of Bessler having faked the Weissenstein wheel's duration test by using a door activated braking system to stop the wheel after the door was closed and locked in order to conserve its limited "onboard" supply of wound up mainspring power. Surely, one would reason that, when the door was again opened to inspect the wheel, the examiners would enter the room in less than a minute and a half and notice that the wheel was not turning at its maximum terminal rotation rate of 26 rpm's.

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  13. PART II:

    BUT, not so fast! From watching my model wheel accelerate from a standstill to 26 rpm's several times, I noticed a rather interesting optical illusion. I noticed that it took the wheel 20.8 seconds to complete its FIRST single rotation at which point it was rotating at the rate of about 6 rpm. Incredibly, as I continued to watch the drum accelerate, I found that it was difficult to visually notice the increase in drum rotation rate after the drum had completed its first single rotation and was moving at about 6 rpm!

    Thus, IF it had taken the witnesses to the Weissenstein wheel's duration test about 20 seconds to fully open a massive door and then enter the room and view the great wheel full face from its side and IF Bessler had been using the door activated braking system to perpetrate a hoax, then it IS definitely possible that the further acceleration of the drum from about 6 rpm's to its full rate of 26 rpm's could well have gone UNNOTICED by the witnesses!

    However, despite this news that might encourage the "no track" skeptics out there, I STILL remain HIGHLY confident that the Weissenstein wheel duration test was NOT hoaxed and that Bessler's wheels were the "real thing". Perpetrating such a hoax would have required a major modification in the walls and ceiling of the room that contained the wheel and Bessler would not have been able to get away with something like that without the count finding out about it.

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The True Story of Bessler’s Perpetual Motion Machine.

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