When our old friend Herman Helmholtz presented the original formulation of what is now known as the First Law of Thermodynamics, beginning with the axiomatic statement that a Perpetual Motion Machine is impossible, he was referring to the idea that a machine that had no external source of energy would run out fuel very quickly and stop. Such a concept was and is obviously impossible. We, on the other hand, often, mistakenly in my opinion, use the words Perpetual Motion when referring to Bessler's machine, despite the very strong evidence that it acquired sufficient energy to run continuously as long as it was operating within a gravitational field - an external energy source and therefore not a Perpetual Motion machine as such as was discussed by Helmholtz. He was describing a closed system.
This habit of calling Bessler's machine a perpetual motion machine is like putting our collective heads into the lion's mouth. We are asking for our ideas to be shot down in flames, because as Helmholtz said, no one had ever invented such a machine therefore they must be impossible. (Sorry about the mixed metaphors!)
That idea, that Perpetual Motion machines are against the laws of physics, has stayed with us, and it is a seemingly insurmountable wall that has included the Bessler type of machine. For the purposes of this blog I shall refer to Helmholtz's Perpetual Motion as PM and Bessler's as PM+G. In other words 'Perpetual Motion with the aid of Gravity'. I came to this conclusion while trying to understand why everyone else on the planet knew with utter certainty that Bessler was a fraud.
Since Bessler's day people from all over the world have strived to duplicate his wheel, so far without success; and yet there are still only two reasons given why the claims must be false; one is that such machines break the laws of physics, and secondly, that if such a device were possible someone would have invented it. To put it another way, PM machines must be impossible otherwise someone would have invented one already. Both points originated from Herman Helmholtz, almost 200 years ago. This reasoning is irrelevant if you accept that Bessler did indeed invent a PM+G machine. That one fact destroys the second point, but only if you are talking about Helmholtz's PM machine. The fact that Bessler succeeded obviously means that his machine did not break any physical laws.
Space prevents me from rehearsing the reasons why many people now believe that Bessler's claims were genuine and that he did invent a machine which ran continuously with no obvious external supply of energy. If people wish I can briefly go through them in a future blog, but all the information is out there especially on the besslerwheel forum, which you can find at http://www.besslerwheel.com/forum/index.php There is more than enough evidence to show that he discovered a way of using falling weights in his wheel, therefore he used the force of gravity to drive his machine.
We are all aware of the many experiment carried out over the last 300 years to try to find the source of energy he used, on the assumption that there must have been some external energy supply, and yet not one single source has been found which would supply enough energy to duplicate the output of his machines. It is quite clear that it was gravity and not one of the other more unconvincing sources suggested. In which case if we assume that Bessler was honest it must be possible to make use of gravity without breaking the laws of physics.
There is no good reason why gravity may not be so used, and the idea - the premise - that gravity cannot be so used is wrong, It is said that 'if the premise is true, then the conclusion must be true', but the reverse is also true, if the premise is wrong then the conclusion must be wrong. When Helmholtz stated that PM machines were impossible, he was right, but he was not suggesting gravity driven machines were impossible, he wasn't even discussing them.
The whole house of cards was started, even before Bessler's time, because no-one understood the force of gravity, and any and everything which suggested that something was a perpetual motion machine was lumped together with the PM+G machines as well as the more obvious PM machines whose secret of construction were still being sought despite the obvious fallacy in their design concept. Despite my many attempts to reprogram people's thinking, the impossibility of PM+G is still lumped to together with PM and, as Mike Wech wrote,'Some things in life become ingrained in your psyche. You can't shake them no matter how hard you try. They're tattooed inside your skull, lying dormant, 'til the moment you need to draw from them.'
Knowing this I am absolutely certain that the sceptics will not accept this possibility until someone produces a working model demonstrating the use of gravity as a fuel and probably not even then.
However I don't see why we should do nothing about their demands - we are doing our best to prove Bessler's claim - so I say, if they are so sure that Bessler was a fraud, why don't they duplicate his wheels and the tests they underwent, but using only the materials and technology that was available then? They cannot use gravity because they say its impossible, but surely someone could have managed to build a fraudulent version in the last 300 years, if his was a fake - and if it was possible?
However I don't see why we should do nothing about their demands - we are doing our best to prove Bessler's claim - so I say, if they are so sure that Bessler was a fraud, why don't they duplicate his wheels and the tests they underwent, but using only the materials and technology that was available then? They cannot use gravity because they say its impossible, but surely someone could have managed to build a fraudulent version in the last 300 years, if his was a fake - and if it was possible?
JC
10a2c5d26e15f6g7h10ik12l3m6n14o14r5s17tu6v5w4y4-3,’.
10a2c5d26e15f6g7h10ik12l3m6n14o14r5s17tu6v5w4y4-3,’.
I, the greatest inventor in all of zhe whole entire universe, did really invent gravity powered machines during the early part of the eighteenth century, today I still believe that perpetual motion is possible and am still trying to invent an actual perpetual motion machine.
ReplyDeleteGravity is only possible as a fuel for a 'perpetuum mobile', which is what he called his wheels, if you eliminate friction. There is almost no friction in space, which is what some people like to use as an example of PM, the planets gaining and losing height in orbit without loss. We know he didn't eliminate friction, surely you agree to that.
ReplyDeleteThe evidence shows the demonstrations of short duration could have been done with shifting weights, but that only shows they were cleverly engineered flywheels. The long test evidence is incomplete, the only load was its own friction, it could have been engineered as a clock for all we know. We don't have to assume he was honest or not, the Helmholtz circular argument is irrelevant, there have been other proofs that PM is impossible since then, surely you agree to that too.
What proves he was a fraud is mainly the fact that he destroyed his work. I know he says he left the answer in his writings, but it's not really there unless you accept that gravity isn't a prime mover.
If one's definition of a perpetual motion machine is one that somehow creates energy out of nothing then, clearly, such a machine is impossible. I believe that Bessler's wheels were not such machines. They did have an energy supply within them and it was not gravity although gravity was used to release that energy. The energy came from the lead weights themselves. As a wheel rotated and delivered energy to its environment to do work, its weights would continuously loose very minute amounts of mass and it was the energy equivalent of that lost mass that was delivered by his wheels as they operated machines attached to their axles. I am not bothered by the fact that only Bessler was able to produce a machine that would do this. He had done much thinking about the problem and studied the failed efforts of many others. He was a very skilled craftsman and unusually stubborn. He had the time and was motivated by the dream of the huge amount of money he could sell such a machine for. The tragedy of his story is that while he had much success with one part of it, he had only failure with the other part. He finally produced a genuine working pm wheel, but could not find anyone willing to pay him what he thought his decade of effort to achieve it was worth. Of course, I'm certainly not convinced that the secret of his wheels is completely lost. I have found enough evidence to convince me that it is not, but I won't reveal it all until and unless I finally find the solution. If I do not find it in my next 100 wm2d models then I will have to call it quits and, at that time, I will decide whether or not to reveal what I've found so far. Maybe it could help others in the future who might undertake to find a solution. I will have to give the matter much thought.
ReplyDeleteI respect your opinion Ken, but I think you're complicating things unnecessarily. I say gravity supplied the energy, you say the falling weights did, which in my opinion is the same thing, but I don't accept your view that the weights had to lose minute amounts of energy. I am satisfied that the weights themselves provided the energy by falling (to paraphrase Bessler) and I know how and why. Gravity
DeleteGravity is a force and it forced the weights downwards - and to recall my old analogies - it is like the force of the wind which causes air molecules to impact on windmill blades and turn them; or a stream of water.molecules impacting on a boat forcing it downstream. It's like a river, things get carried along unless they're fixed.
Gravity is a force, maybe of attraction, maybe not, which acts on mass, the denser the stronger the pull. Wind and water act on molecules of air and water, gravity acts on molecules in leadm brass and iron. It also acts on water and even air.
Gravity is the driving force in Bessler's wheel.
JC
What skeptics would point out though is that fluid dynamics are energised - usually by heat exchange, or alternatively, pressure or density gradients. Hence the fluid is merely the medium through which the energy source is applied, and the objection would be, what is the energy exchange that powers the gravity the machine is harnessing?
DeleteWe know gravity isn't a fluid flow - in classical physics it's spacetime curvature, and as such completely inert. Closed loop trajectories through static fields yield zero net energy - this is axiomatic - and classical physics simply doesn't acknowledge any changing component of the field that might constitute an energy gradient.
But quantum mechanics DOES offer us a viable candidate source. While classical physics only concerns itself with describing the properties of fields and their forces, quantum physics deals explicitly with the 'stuff' of them. In QM, the fundamental forces are mediated by carier particles called 'gauge bosons'. These are virtual particles - so called precisely because they violate the law of conservation of energy. A consequence of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, they briefly borrow energy from time for their spontaneous creation, before repaying the debt by instantaneously disappearing again.
Ken's theory can be eliminated for a number of reasons, but a central one is that the Higgs boson, which endows matter with mass, has uniform consistency throughout space. Its density does not vary, and neither does the strength of its interaction with matter. This is why rest mass is invariant. As mentioned previously, if it COULD vary in either respect, the consequences would be very profound - the universe as we know it simply could not exist.
Gravity however IS field-density dependent. The closer two masses become, the more gravitons are exchanged between them. If the masses don't move closer despite this force (say, if they're orbiting each other) then no work has been done, and thus no energy has been drawn from the vacuum that is manifesting these virtual particles.
If however we drop a mass to the floor, then this output work (displacement) has drawn energy from the vacuum. If we then pick up the mass again, returning it to its original height, then this input work repays the vacuum with an equal amount of chemical energy spent by our muscles.
So, in a situation where the mass is instead returned to its starting height by the output work of gravity alone, then the source of our resulting net energy gain is the vacuum.
In this sense, gravity effectively becomes equivalent to the inert fluids driving an impeller like a windmill or water wheel - whose energy comes not from the fluid itself, but rather the forces driving the fluid, which are most commonly solar in origin. Similarly, gravity is the medium through which we'd be harnessing the vacuum's energy.
Gravitons are like cheques for the currency they actually convey, which is ambient angular momentum. This is the form the vacuum's energy takes, and rather than reducing the value of individual virtual particles' momentum, drawing upon the vacuum's energy this way causes a deflation of the global value of this currency. So the value written on each cheque remains the same - this momentum is quanised in units of 'h-bar', and particles can only have integer or half-integer denominations of it - however the value of the total vacuum potential underwriting these figures has been reduced.
Bosons like gravitons all have integer spin - they're kind of like the pennies and tuppence pieces of the vacuum's currency. Fermions, like electrons and protons, have half-integer sums - like halfpennies, one and a half pence, tuppence ha'penny etc. It's a slightly ropey analogy but gets the thrust of the concept across.
Where photons have a spin of 1, gravitons have a spin of 2. This 'spin' isn't the same as mechanical spin in three dimensions, but a higher-dimensional property - a full rotation of an electron for example has 720°. What really matters - the most important property of this system of division - is the Pauli exclusion principle. This states that integer-spin particles (bosons) can be in superpositions of states, where a collection of them all interact together to adopt the same states at the same time. An example of this is the coherent wavelengths and phases of photons in a laser beam. Conversely, half-spin particles (fermions) are subject to superposition exclusion - no two of them can occupy the same states at the same time. An example of this is the mechanical properties of matter, that hold everything together and stop us from falling through the floor.
DeleteSo, 'spending' ambient angular momentum as mechanical energy (and ultimately, heat) isn't going to change these denominations; Pauli exclusion will persist, bosons will remain integer spin and fermions half-integer.
But the vacuum potential underwriting these numbers (if you like, the 'gold standard') will have depreciated. Unless there's some further mechanism making more 'gold', somewhere, somehow... the energy available for manifesting more particles has been reduced. In effect, the value of the coinage cannot change, but the amount of coinage in circulation MUST, unless the universe somehow has some means of printing more money.
TL;DR - if asymmetric gravitational interactions are possible (as most of us here believe) then this does not automatically equate to free energy, unless there's some kind of quantitative easing going on at some other place or lower level in the universe. And while such a possibility is well outside the scope of current physics, even if it were probable, it's likely to have conditions attached, with unforseeable consequences...
"Free energy" really is a contradiction in terms. It's oxymoronic. Something's got to give...
Thanks Mr. V. You have put considerable effort into your response and I appreciate it. I have to confess I don't understand all of it but I shall read it a few times to try to get a grip on it.
DeleteFurther to my last comment I understand more of your post Mr.V. I still feel that we are digging to deep in trying to understand gravity. Johann Bessler could not have known any of this and all he was interested in doing was finding a way to use falling weights to rotate his wheel continuously. He discovered a way to configure his mechanisms and I think I have also found what he discovered. Its more an observation than a discovery but it is critical to success. I'm currently building a model which incorporates what I know, but there are elements to its construction which require adjustments of a trial and error kind. Its not as much guess work as it sounds and I am confident it will work in the end.
DeleteJC
LOL i'm really crossing all digits for you. Obviously he couldn't have known QM and understanding the source isn't a requirement for replication.
DeleteMy effort here is to outline to a skeptical mindset how an asymmetric gravitational interaction can be thermodynamically open, rather than how to actually generate the asymmetry in the first place - which of course completely eludes me..
I'm trying to counter the a priori assumptions about what's possible from the other end of the stick - arguing that conservation of energy is already temporarily violated by the existence of gravity (and all fundamental forces), via the vacuum's expression of the virtual particles manifesting the fields. Acknowledging the old chesnut that "gravity is a conservative field" but putting it in its place as a classical description, superceded by the QM interpretation, which does provide a built-in explanation of where the energy would be coming from in a working PM device.
However it also provides an implicit warning that can't be ignored if one believes, as i do, that conservation is immutable. So i agree that Bessler's wheels worked because of the laws of physics, not in spite of them, however for the same reasons i can't conclude that the gain is free. Unless it's very precisely reimbursed, the cost to the vacuum is a tax on all the fundamental forces the vacuum's activity is responsible for mediating..
If there is going to be a cost, won't it seem infinitely small compared to tax on all the fundamental forces the vacuum's activity is responsible for? I can't imagine that we will detect any change in the gravitational effects in the local vicinity of earth, unless you think it could be Ken's weights continuously losing very minute amounts of mass?
DeleteI wonder what kind of effect you might have in mind should there prove to be, after all, some detectable loss or cost in the fundamental forces to which we are subject?
JC
Excellent question. Calculated from Lambda (the rate of acceleration of the universe's expansion) the vacuum potential is a measly 10 nanoJoules per cubic meter. However Lambda remains a notoriously mysterious constant (if it even IS a true constant) - for which we currently invoke dark energy as an explanation. In other words, cosmologists only need to account for a fairly fleeting vacuum energy, when trying to describe its effects at the largest scales of the universe, and its origins are tentative and mysterious at best.
DeleteAt the smallest scales however, quantum physics needs to invoke much, much higher energies in order to account for the virtual particle densities of the fundamental forces. QED - the most accurate theory we have, which predicts the value of the EM constant 'alpha' to within 10 parts in a billion - requires that the vacuum density is 10^113 Joules per cubic meter.
Slight discrepancy, eh..
When we consider that the total thermodynamic energy of the universe is a mere 10^69 Joules (not per cubic meter, but PER THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE), the suggestion that one cubic meter of its volume contains almost twice that value in the form of vacuum energy is a bit of a head scratcher, to put it mildly. The mind simply boggles... If this bizarre prediction is correct, then the vacuum energy is over a hundred orders of magnitude greater than the net total of all possible displacements of all physical matter against all four forces throughout the universe. Compared to this classical 'thermodynamic' energy (that the universe was born with, and which is slowly bleeding away due to the second law and will eventually culminate in the universe's heat death when all the possible work has been done), the vacuum's energy is effectively infinite.
This strange-but-true factoid is generally considered to be the greatest unresolved error in modern physics. Known as the "vacuum catastrophe" - it currently remains intractable; the theories which lead to it are, of themselves, perfectly consistent: they make accurate predictions and describe the observable universe better than any other candidate theories. They're the lynchpins and keystones of the standard models - of cosmology, and of particle physics. Yet on the one hand they invoke a vacuum potential barely sufficient to explain the measured strengths of the Casimir effect, while on the other implying such stupendous energy density that trying to imagine it in practical terms would curl your toenails.
Consider also the popular description of the universe's net energy as being effectively zero - that all the energies we see are deviations around an effective zero point, and that it came from nothing, and will end up with zero energy when al the dust finally settles.
Yet this thermodynamic energy is merely the thinnest crust floating atop an unfathomably larger pool of potential, upon which it depends. The current beliefs are that although this fantastical ocean of energy sustains us and animates us by way of mediating the fundamental forces, the amount of exchange between the two realms is effectively negligible. The unanimous dismissal of PM / ZPE machines, and total faith in conservation at all scales simply doesn't leave any room for established physics to regard the possibility of significant crossover exchanges with anything other than withering derision. This, despite known examples of classical symmetry breaks (non-conservative forces of EM per Rutherford), and effects like the twin-plate Casimir effect. Such sideshows are outlier phenomenon, exceptions that prove the rule, and there's far bigger fish to be fried - not to mention bills to be paid, reputations to nurture and protect, etc. etc.
So we're talking about something SO FAR off the radar it might as well be angels and pinheads.
DeleteThat said, we might console ourselves in the view that there's plenty of energy to be had from 'free' energy techs, and the well's not gonna dry up anytime soon no matter how much we draw or how far and wide into space and time it takes us.
And most theorists are content to lay to rest any further concerns there. Perhaps there'll be some degree of short-term economic turmoil, a little restructuring, but it's all good in the long run. Energy panacea, hurrah!
What's only struck me in the last few years or so however is that all our previous energy panaceas had a nasty sting in the tail. So what would sod's law say about 'free' energy?
We have the interdependence of the various constants of nature to thank for the universe's stability in a hospitable state. But what if it's actually a delicate homeostasis, and all the more delicate, rather than robust, for the huge energies we're talking about? A massively stressed system, rather than a massively redundant one. What if it's not so much the total thermodynamic energy of the universe that's constant, but rather its throughput from the the vacuum's realm?
I've implied and restated the potential risks enough times already, so i'll stop here. I will say again though, that if our endeavors are ever successful, the very first thing we should do is get worldwide academia in the loop with regards to addressing these issues and guaranteeing its long-term safety. With today's techs, once the genie's out of the bottle she ain't going back in. If we're at the tail end of the universe's star formation period and life is abundant thoughout the universe, where are all the other ZPE-powered interstellar civilisations? Add the anthropic principle to the Drake equation and Fermi paradox, and there's your answer...
Hello all.
ReplyDeleteAll the talk about Bessler being a fraud or not will never really be known. Apparently there is so much evidence, but no wheel. The evidence is so clear to everyone, yet everyone has a different opinion of how it works. The physics teacher will only become interested when something turns, and then he will want to see it with he's own eyes.
Go back to the days of Bessler and see the wheel turn, Hand on heart Would you believe that it's turning all on it's own.
We are now in the year 2015 and I have a wheel that turns all by itself, who believes me? If you see it rotate, will you believe me. I will tell you your answer. NO-- you will want to see inside the wheel, and even then you will think it's a trick of some sort. Who knows if Bessler's wheel did turn and he was so annoyed with the way people treated him that he made a promise to himself that if ever people in the future realized that he could have been telling the truth that he left many clues that left people frustrated, annoyed, short tempered at times etc etc. because he's wheel might have worked , but he's clues were clueless, and if he was that clever Who knows.
I think you guys are Fantastic, but I myself can prove that some of the evidence that's talked about is wrong.
Good post John Collins, right ‘on topic’
ReplyDeleteIt reminds me forcibly why I decided some years ago to adopt The Gravity Wheel as the description of the work I am engaged in, and also to avoid using the dreaded words perpetual motion wherever possible. This intellectual abstraction has only ever muddied the waters, and is very likely to be the prime reason for Herr Bessler’s mechanism’s non-rediscovery for the past three centuries.
Yes John, I agree, gravity wheel is the name of the game.
DeleteJC
Bessler's wheel was not a fraud,
ReplyDeleteHis clues are hidden in plain sight, but not where you think.
In my opinion, John has seen the same thing I have.
When you see how the wheel works, and where the clues really are, you will kick yourselves !
I think so Stevo, I hope so!
DeleteJC
Where the clues really are is in Maschinen Tractate. It was John Collins publication in 2007 of Bessler’s unpublished work ‘Further demonstrations regarding the possibility and impossibility of perpetual motion’ that but brought me seriously into ‘the game’. MT contains the main hoard of clues, although many other useful clues exist in other places. Bessler makes this absolutely clear on page two of John’s publication. He says,” 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”
DeleteI am not kicking myself!
MT shows the components, other drawings show the assembly of said components, when you see the whole picture, the coded passages make sense.
DeleteYes, MT shows the components, you've got that right Stevo
DeleteWell, there's, literally, a ton of technical verbiage here that involves discussions of subatomic particles, the hypothetical Higgs field, and wind-like analogies for how gravity works. All of this, of course, is due to the reality that we still don't know how Bessler's wheels worked in exact detail! I like to talk about the energy his wheel's outputted coming from the mass of their weights, John C. thinks the energy was provided by gravity, and I'm sure that there are several other candidates for where their energies came from.
ReplyDeleteFrom studying Bessler's writings, it's apparent to me that his "explanations" of how his wheels worked involved the concept of torques. His wheels would turn because they managed to maintain a net torque on their axles and this was only possible if they were able to keep their center of mass always on the descending side of the wheel so that, for example, a clockwise torque was created by the descending side weights which was always larger than the counter clockwise torque produced by the ascending side weights. I see the creation of this excess torque as being a matter of the carefully coordinated shifting taking place among the wheel's levers which had lead weights attached to their ends. The coordination was provided by a collection of ropes of various lengths that interconnected adjacent levers. However, I now have a design which whose levers are perfectly coordinated and, if they would just shift fast enough, would keep the weights' center of gravity always located on the wheel's descending side. My problem is that they do not shift fast enough and it all seems to me to be a matter of attaching springs to the levers that serve to lighten the weights on a wheel's ascending side. I just reached model #1100 and still have not found the correct way to attach a single spring to the levers to make my design work. I'll, of course, keep trying because I would hate to quit the quest when I'm as close to success as I believe that I now am. I had to take a break today because I spent most of the day in bed nursing a mild case of the flu. Tomorrow, if I'm up to it, I'll be back to work on the problem. I'm now very determined to make sure that I have this solved before I hit model #1200. If I fail, however, I hope my example will demonstrate to others just how perplexing Bessler's "simple" mechanism can be to reverse engineer. He wanted 100,000 deutschthalers for his secret. I often wonder what the value of the time expended over the last three centuries by God knows how many inventors trying to find out how he did would be. 100,000 pieces of silver? I bet the value of all of that work collectively would have been enough to build something the size of the Great Pyramid out of blocks of silver!
I agree with your interpretation of Bessler's writings Ken. The wheel definitely kept their centre of mass on the descending side of the wheel. I also agree with your description of a number of weighted levers whose positions were guided by ropes. I'm not convinced of the necessity for springs although I can see how they might be helpful, but not vital.
DeleteSorry to hear of your dose of flu, just recovered myself from a lengthy bout, but think I'm over it now.
Yes I think your right, all those hours spent working on this perpetual puzzle. It's good thing we don't expect payment for all the hours we've collectively worked on our models not to mention ten times that amount spent in thinking about it.
JC
Hi all,
ReplyDeleteCan anyone tell me who Frank Edwards is or was.
Frank Edwards (August 4, 1908 – June 23, 1967) was an American writer and broadcaster, and one of the pioneers in radio. Late in his life, he became well known for a series of popular books about UFOs and other paranormal phenomena.
ReplyDeleteSome of the most widespread myths and misconceptions about the Bessler mystery can be attributed to Frank Edwards. In his 1956 article entitled "Bessler's Wonderful Wheel," Edwards used poetic license to add detail to his account.
Frank Edwards description of the inner workings of Bessler's wheel is not supported by any historical document. This obviously makes the accuracy of the information very suspect at best. This evidence, or lack thereof, suggests that Frank Edwards wheel mechanism description has either been derived from highly speculative sources or that he added these details to 'spice up' his story. It would not be the first time that historical accuracy has taken a back seat to 'artistic license'.
The available historical evidence suggests Karl never betrayed his agreement with Bessler and he never described what he saw - beyond his general statements about the secret being very simple.
JC
Like Frank Edwards, I've had a nearly lifelong interest in the subject of UFOs and I do remember reading his excellent book on the topic titled "Flying Saucers-Serious Business!" wherein he stated his belief that these objects were interplanetary or interstellar and coming from outside our atmosphere and that the US military knew that as a fact. He was brave enough to advance this view at a time when the US government was telling people that all of their sightings were optical illusions or hallucinations. His chapter on Bessler in his book, Stranger Than Science, was, how should I put it, "accentuated" a bit in order to make it more interesting to read and, obviously, he added some details that possibly could have happened, but which he could not strictly prove. I'm sure you know feeling too, John, because I do recall some people criticizing the accuracy of some of the translations of Bessler's original works that you provided.
DeleteIn any event, I do not malign Edwards because, despite the imperfections of his writings, he was an early pioneer in the subjects of the paranormal and ufos. His mentioning of Bessler along with Gould's probably did much to rekindle interest in the subject of pm wheels and launched many a reader on a lifelong journey to duplicate Bessler's work. I particularly remember at the end of Edward's chapter that he said something to the effect that the same scientists who said that Bessler's wheels were impossible were like the ones who said that the bumble bee could not fly because its body weight was too great for the lift produced by its tiny wings. Fortunately, the bumble bees were unaware of what those "learned" scientists were saying about them and they continued to fly merrily along. Back in the early 18th century, Bessler's wheels also continued to spin merrily along despite all of the "experts" saying that they could not possibly be genuine and had to be clever hoaxes concocted by a madman.
Here is a link to a photo of the late Frank Edwards during one of his radio broadcasts:
http://the-wanderling.com/edwards.jpg
Mr.V, you write eloquently and knowledgeably about the realms of theoretical and observational physics and I'm guessing your a physicist of some kind - care to elaborate?
ReplyDeleteJC
You're very kind, but no, only in the most amatuerish sense. 25 years of private study, the last decade with a singular focus on classical asymmetries. I've followed every breakthrough discovery in mainstream physics during that time, which has meant becoming au fait with their contexts in the current states of knowledge. I think anyone pursuing conservation to its ultimate conclusion would reach similar conclusions wrt the vacuum being the source / sink for asymmetric interactions - it's only a minority view insofar as most folks simply refuse to believe such asymmetries are possible in the first place. Once over that hurdle, quantisation leaves only the vacuum potential as a viable reservoir. Not least because, as i say, vacuum fluctuations are the very medium responsible for manifesting the forces, and are themselves conservation violations.
DeleteIf we're gonna be burning gravitons - particles that haven't even been experimentally verified yet - it would be akin to private citizens completing the Manhattan project before the risks of atmospheric runaway had been eliminated... in the event, no such risk was present (there aren't enough neutrons to be liberated from stable atmospheric isotopes to sustain a chain reaction). But none of us are in any position to weigh the potential fallout from a significant vacuum perturbation. It might take worldwide academia a decade or more to reach such a consensus. The earlier they're in the loop, the easier we'll all be able to sleep at night in our free energy nirvana...
Thankyou John and Ken for your replies.
ReplyDeleteJust in case you or anybody else here has not yet read Edwards chapter on Bessler in his book "Stranger Than Science", you can find the full text here:
Deletehttp://www.keelynet.com/energy/bessler.htm
It's obvious that Edwards was confused about the performance capabilities of Bessler's wheels and even some of the names of the personages involved in the story. But, I credit him with bringing the name of Bessler to the attention of the public and, hopefully, triggering some of them to delve deeper into the history of the man and his works.
It was an interesting read
DeleteHi,
ReplyDeleteAccording to Edwards the wheel had to pushed to start.
The first two wheels were permanently out of balance, and started spontaneously, but they could only turn one way. The second two could turn in either direction but had to be started with a light push. Really, Uneqk, you should read my book 'Perpetual motion , An Ancient Mystery Solved?', every thing you need to know about Bessler is in there. It is all derived from historical document and as far as I know there are no errors, nor any artistic license.
DeleteJC
Donald Śimanek na stronie "The Museum of Unworkkable Devices-Perpetual Futility" pisze "Johann Ernst Elias Bessler (Councillor) Orffyreus (1680-1745),A GERMAN POLE had been Councillor to the Prince of Hessen-sel (Germany)" . .Skąd pochodzi ta informacja?
ReplyDeleteBył niemieckim dzienny bardzo blisko polskiej granicy , jak to było wtedy. Jest to powszechnie wiadomo . Przeczytaj moją książkę " Perpetual Motion ;Starożytna Tajemnica rozwiązana ? " Będzie ci powiedzieć wszystko, co chcesz wiedzieć o Bessler .
DeleteJC
Thank you very much.-:)
ReplyDeleteWagner the mathematics professor was so shook up by Bessler's wheels that he actually did build a fake version and illustrates it in one of his "Criticisms" on Bessler. From studying his diagram for his bogus wheel, it is obvious that it works by using a clockwork-like movement and double wound mainsprings to lift and then hold the movement so that its center of mass remains stationary on one side of the wheel as it rotates. Wagner's wheel could be made to run in two directions and would, unlike Bessler's two directional wheel's, have been self starting in either direction. The problem, of course, was that Wagner's wheel had to have its main springs periodically manually wound up in order for it to keep running. However, for a short duration test, it certainly would have been impressive. It might even have been able to do a little external work as it rotated such as working opposite swinging pendulums or raising a small weight to a considerable height. I think that Wagner's design demonstrates that an imbalance wheel must work and that Bessler's wheels used that principle. However, of course, Bessler's wheels did not use wound up main springs in order to keep the center of mass of their weights and levers on the wheel's descending side during its rotation. That was done automatically by a very carefully balanced arrangement of weights and levers. In my efforts to find it, I've finally passed wm2d model #1100 and, so far, no success. However, I have something new I'll be trying later today. I have no problem suspending my levers with springs. But, whenever I do, it immediately causes my 7:30 lever to leave the position it must remain in in order for the imbalance to exist. If I can solve this annoying problem, I think I might finally have "it". More on all this later.
ReplyDeleteThis is the liveliest post i have seen from you in a while .
ReplyDeleteYou think this is lively, In about 2 Months its going to explode. And the main question will be ! How Simple !
ReplyDeleteChris, I'm not sure if you were commenting on my last post about Wagner's fake pm wheel or on one of Uneqk's posts above. If you're post was directed to me, then I'm not sure what you mean by "liveliest", but I assume it's meant as a compliment of some sort. If so, then thanks. I brought up Wagner because the title of this blog was "Bessler A Fraud? Prove It" and I'm sure that Wagner did prove it at least to his own satisfaction. I've often wondered what his reaction was when he found out about the Kassel wheel turning for two months in a sealed room. No doubt he would have dismissed it as a clever illusion created by the wheel somehow being stopped to conserve the stored energy in its multiple main springs when the door to the chamber was closed and sealed. Then months later, when the door was opened again, the wheel would have immediately started up again and given the impression that it was running continuously when, in reality, it had not been. There is a way this could be arranged, but it would require cutting holes through solid stone and wooden flooring to use. I also dismiss the statements of the former maid of Bessler about there being a metal rod with a barbed end on it that was used, through the wooden vertical supports, to turn the wheel's axle. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, if one studies the diagram of this wheel given in DT, he will notice that the vertical supports for its axle are not attached directly to the floor and ceiling in the castle, but are actually attached to thick metal brackets that separate them via air gaps from the floor and ceiling. Any sort of metal rod or cord that passed down the inside of one of the wooden vertical supports would have been immediately visible to the examiners of the wheel because it would have had to have passed through the air gaps.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I'm still working on my newest attempt to stabilize my wm2d model's 7:30 lever and believe I have something that will work. It still needs to be tested though and I will probably have to make several adjustments in the spring constants of the springs attached to my levers. My goal is to have a wheel where the lever moving between the drum's 9 o'clock and 10:30 positions rises immediately and smoothly as the drum rotates through 45 degrees. If that can be done, then the center of mass of the wheel's eight levers and their attached weight must stay fixed in location on the drum's descending side. Then, at the end of each 45 degree segment of drum rotation, all of levers will again that the same orientations in space that they had at the beginning of the segment of rotation. At that point the next segment of drum rotation will begin and the process will continue eight times for each complete drum rotation. Because of the coordination created by the ropes interconnecting the levers, the center of mass of the levers and weights will, during the entire rotation, always be located on the drum's descending side and be providing torque to accelerate the wheel. Well, that's the way it's supposed to work, but as anybody in active pm wheel research quickly learns, what one expects to happen and what actually happens has an annoying tendency to always not be the same thing. I should know in another day or so if I've finally found an exception to this rule.
I think Chris was referring to JC.
ReplyDelete