It's funny how you can think you know everything there is to know about your design and how it will act and react when in a particular configuration. My latest design did not react as I had designed it to, but instead of causing me extreme chagrin, it surprised me by acting in an unexpected way. I knew from the start of this configuration that there were potential variables to the way I finished the design, and I was prepared to substitute those alternatives that would still comply with the initial concept.
Imagine my surprise therefore to discover that the reaction which I had designed to occur within my planned configuration was not only prevented from happening but actually reversed itself and I realised subsequently, it turned out to be the right one! The correct path of the movement of the weights within my wheel was not intuitively obvious, but actually it makes perfect sense. How on earth Bessler was able to design them to work as I have now think that they should work, is just amazing. I have very briefly imagined that configuration in the past but have dismissed it with scarcely a thought, as being impossible to achieve in a simple mechanical arrangement.
My task now is to remake the wheel with those actions repeated ad infinitum. I am very doubtful if I can make it with five mechanisms as I have always assumed, so will have to try it with maybe just two. I'm 'fairly' confident that this is the right path, but haven't we all been here before - too many times to dwell on!
Bessler said that when he first tested his wheel it could scarcely turn with just one cross. This word 'cross' has been a bit of a thorn in my side for many years. Beside describing a cross as in an X or a plus sign, it can also be used to describe the crossing of a road for example or a level-crossing, as long as the word can also be 'crossing' anything related may apply.
So the phrase seems to imply that the wheel did turn with only one crossing, albeit very slowly and/or unevenly. In which case one crossing will do, but what does a single crossing consist of? I am unconvinced that one mechanism could achieve a full turn so I am suggesting a minimum of two were needed. Bessler said that his weight worked in pairs so two mechanisms might comprise one crossing.
I thought that the obsession with the number five suggested five mechanisms and that this number represented the total number of mechanisms possible on one side of the wheel and he had already hinted that more than a single cross was better. So I'm going to make two--mechanism wheel, one on each side, and include my new configuration and hope for success. I should add that my original principle, encoded below, is still the mainstay of my design as without I am certain no success will follow.
One more bit of news; I received an email from a literary agent with the news that a German publisher wishes to translate my book into German and publish it before the end of this year. Fingers crossed that this time the book appears. I had a similar experience several years ago but nothing was published then so I am less inclined to get excited about these occasional flurries of interest from the media.
There was the Italian film which was made about Bessler which seems to have sunk without trace after one broadcast; and I'm still waiting to hear about the English documentary promised for this year too. It looks as if I'm just going to have wait for somebody to invent Bessler's wheel again before anyone really gets excited about the subject.
JC
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