I thought it was time to talk about clues again, so today I'm looking at the 'Toys' page in Bessler's so-called Maschinen Tractate (MT).
The Toys page was the last page in my version of the book MT which, by the way, was found as a pile of unbound drawings lying in a box. I believe that subsequently the pages have been re-photographed in a slightly different order resulting in the Toys page not being the last one. In any case it is the last numbered page, having 138, 139, 140 and 141 handwritten in the bottom left corner. I have always imagined that it was inserted by Bessler to replace four pages he removed at the time of his arrest when he wrote on the cover;-
“N.B. 1st May, 1733. Due to the arrest, I burned and buried all papers that prove the possibility. However, I have left all demonstrations and experiments since it would be difficult for anybody to see or learn anything about a perpetual motion from them or to decide whether there was any truth in them because 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.”
This action must have been carried out with the intention of providing some kind of clue in case MT was never published for some reason. If publication had been achieved then the original pages would have been reinserted.
Did he suspect that he might be imprisoned? Possibly, and then his records would be available to the anyone of rank, so he replaced them with something less revealing. My research has shown that he was being subjected to considerable pressure from his in-laws and feared that there was a conspiracy to either force him to reveal his secret or to frame him for some illegal dealings.
I have inserted a clarified version of the Toys page which has the four page numbers omitted on the bottom and also the short piece of text which was written next the the spinning top which reads, “5. Children's game in which there is something
extraordinary for anyone who knows how to apply the game in a different
way.”
The letters run from A through to E, five letters! But there are six drawings including the top, so why does he write 5 in front of the text? Note my red lines which align the separate parts of each drawing, there are five! Could he be telling us - yet again! that there are five mechanisms?
I think the letters are written in anticlockwise order to show which drawing should be interpreted first. Note that A aligns with B but note that the latter is twisted - the small blobs on the left end of each horizontal on A are shown alternately on the left and right of the vertical line labelled B
The pantograph shape of C and D is similar to that part of A. As B is twisted perhaps C and D should likewise be twisted?
Thereare two Cs and two Ds which suggests that there are two items from the each drawing required for the mechanism. A hammer/axe or weight might be one, and the pantograph shape another.
The later addition of the spinning top was probably an attempt to hint that the 'toys' shown, relate to something that spins?
That's enough for today, I think, but I will just say that despite appearances in y opinion the item A has no connection with the Jacob's ladder toy.
JC
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