Owing to the imminent (I hope!) house move, my work on my wheel has been suspended for now. Maybe I will return to it once we have moved. In the mean time, I have at last finished the document I was writing, in which I lay out in detail my hypothesis about how Bessler's wheel worked.
If I had anticipated what would it would take to describe what was in the wheel and how it worked and which bits related to Bessler's clues, and how many drawings I have to make, well, I might have gone with the simpler idea of a video of a working wheel. But that has not materialised to date, possibly because I am wrong but also due to my limited manufacturing skills and equipment. Yes I know, plenty of excuses for not producing the required evidence! So now I have put my money where my mouth is, or something to that effect.
I have sent copies of the document to two people for whom I have the utmost trust and respect, and they are attempting to find something positive in my ramblings. Actually I have tried not to ramble too much about the hypothesis, cutting it down to a minimum and eliminating unecessary verbiage, and yet the result is a document barely contained in 35 pages with 21 illustrations.
This has given me pause for thought, it's amazing that Bessler managed to hide so much information inside two publications? Of course I suppose you could more than halve my document because much of it has to relate to Bessler's clues and my interpretation of them. I suspect that chapter 55 of Apologia Poetica contains the text which describes how his wheel worked and perhaps once his wheel has been proved by someone, work will begin in earnest to wrest the information from Bessler's coded version.
So now I wait, and the longer it takes the better, in my opinion. I don't want to hear that they have dismissed my hypothesis too easily, but I'm open minded about the result. When you have obssessed about something for as long as I have, it's hard to get an objective view of the picture. A fresh pair of eyes will doubtless see through the mass of speculation and find the truth - positive or negative, I don't worry any more. It has actually been something of a relief to at last share what I know and ultimately get some feedback.
I'm 71 next Friday, a good day for good news!
I'm 71 next Friday, a good day for good news!
JC