Update - and musings on the word 'pairs'.

The test rig did not perform as I had hoped.  I completed the construction of the single mechanism and oriented it so that when one weight fell, the other weight was lifted in a certain way, but there was insufficient mechanical advantage available to achieve the full lift.  I would like to show the details so that you can see why I was optimistic that this would work, but I'm not ready to show that yet.  The concept hidden below my initials at the end of each blog, is still the key to success in my opinion, and I have another design to work through before I can discuss this openly.

My theory that parametric oscillation was the key to understanding Bessler's wheel has kind of dropped in importance. I still think it has a part to play, but only in the way that moving weights within the wheel, back and forth, within the period of one rotation, will overbalance the wheel. "A parametric oscillator is a harmonic oscillator whose parameters oscillate in time. For example, a well known parametric oscillator is a child pumping a swing by periodically standing and squatting to increase the size of the swing's oscillation" (from wikipedia).  So the parameters of the weight's positions alter during the time of one rotation.  In other words I have discarded the notion that replicating the actions of a swing might be the answer, but I still believe the correct movement of the weights will lead to success.

One of the strange features of this research is that one can become completely convinced that a particular design concept is the answer. No other method can even be considered - that is, until you have proved to yourself that you were wrong.  Now another plan has slipped into my mind and is supported by another revelation about Bessler's words!  How cunning that man was, to present us with ambiguity upon ambiguity! One of the things I've learned about what Bessler wrote - and I guess it's fairly obvious when you think about it - he describes things in an ambiguous way, yes, and his words are accurate, but only in hindsight.  His intention was, in my opinion, to write comments which could be understood in more than one way, but even the alternative way was not right because only after his wheel had been built and sold could he then point to the many clues he had left and with a certain amount of glee, and say "that is what I meant when I said, blahdeblah!"  The words were written in such a way that no-one could doubt their actual meaning once it was explained.

Take this translation of one famous comment, "He shall be called a great craftsman who can easily/lightly throw up a heavy thing, and when one pound falls a quarter,it shoots up four pounds four quarters. &c." Apologia Poetica

There is an abundance of clues wrapped up in this ironic comment.  I found seven separate pieces of information in it, and the clever thing about it is that if is misinterpreted, or should I say, alternatively interpreted, it reveals another double meaning one of which is also valid. Plus of course it is also tongue-in-cheek by suggesting that it would indeed take a great craftsman to achieve something that appears, on the face of it, to be impossible - when another interpretation reveals what he really meant.

I will discuss the designs I have been working on upon my return from Spain, but for now I shall just comment on the following passage from Apologia Poetica.

" So then, a work of this kind of craftsmanship has, as its basis of motion, many separate pieces of lead . These come in pairs, such that, as one of them takes up an outer position, the other takes up a position nearer the axle. Later, they swap places, and so they go on and on changing places all the time."

Later translations suggest that the literal reading of the text goes, "a work of art must be driving many pieces lead; they are now always two and two;"  I did not see this apparent mistranslation when my friend Mike Senior first showed it to me.  Later he admitted that he took the meaning as 'pairs' simply because that is what he thought Bessler meant.  

But the word for pairs is variously, 'PAIRS = paarweise {adv}; in Paaren; PAIR of twins = Zwillingspaare; paar = twos; paarweise = in pairs; in twos; by pairs'.  Why didn't Bessler use that well-known word paars?  I have a theory....

If you had two weights working together as a pair you would use the word 'paar'; but if you had three weights, A B and C, working together, first you might have weight 'A' move weight 'B' and then upon weight 'A's return under gravity, again, it moves weight 'C', 'B' having already returned under gravity.  So out of three weights you are using two and two = AB and AC, alternately.  In confirmation of this possibility  note that there are two drawings in Das Triumphirende, which show wheels with three weights to each mechanism.

JC

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