Update for April 2016

While I await completion of the purchase of my house, I am unable to do any wheel building, so I'm working on the configuration of the mechanisms to try to improve and simplify the actions.  This can be a good task to undertake as it can lead to new ideas and also the discovery of potential problem areas.   Predictably I have found a weak spot in my design which is easily overcome and my enforced idleness has given me the opportunity to find this before I had continued with my build.  I tend to attack these new designs with too much enthusiasm and haste and then find I've got to go back a couple of steps to correct things.

My publishing intentions are still firm and at least I have the time now to work on the document and make any necessary alterations.

So my plan is to continue to finish and publish all the information I have acquired which I believe Bessler left for us in the hope that we would understand it and replicate his work.  At the same time l'm continuing to look at my design and once I'm back in my workshop, I will try to finish my proof of principle wheel or at least the mechanism, and publish a video of it with accompanying commentary.

For those who may think I'm prevaricating about my hypothesis document I must tell you that it is proving a complex composition.  It currently runs to more than 40 pages with more than 38 illustrations and there are more in the pipeline. If this seems a lot, be assured that it is necessary.  If I am to prove that Johann Bessler left enough instructions to permit the construction of his wheel, exactly in the form that he built his own, then I have to show the clues as he left them and how they reveal the solutions.  Each clue forms part of the whole, but it had to be obscure otherwise it would be too obvious and his secret revealed too soon.

Which ever comes first does not matter to me, I will publish both. In the mean time I will continue to write my blog when I feel that I have something worth saying.  I hope that you will stay with me at least to give me your reactions when publication happens.

JC

http://www.witt-energy.com/ harvesting Motion Energy

I have Andre to thank for informing me about this amazing invention -  the WITT motion energy harvester.  It has been invented by Martin Wickett, a British civil engineer, who has found a way to construct a device which uses motion in any direction to drive a rotating wheel.

Unlike a self-winding watch which uses linear motion to win a watch,, this device harvests all motion whether up, down, round sideways etc. Andre sent me this (now corrected) link to a youtube video:-


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RACH6bFhxKY&feature=youtu.be

Here is another link to the official website.  So many potential uses for this machine!

 http://www.witt-energy.com/

I put it on this blog because I think it is such a logical and useful discovery.

JC

You need a working wheel or enough of the mechanism to show how it works.

When Johann Bessler exhibited his wheel for the first time in Gera, Germany, 6th June 1712, he had worked out in his own mind that all he had to do was provide some evidence that his wheel was genuine and the rest would follow - money, fame etc.

The next few years proved his optimism was seriously undeserved.  No one was sufficiently persuaded of his claims to make an outright payment in full without seeing for himself that the wheel was genuine. 

Gottfired Leibniz tried to guide him by suggesting several tests which would add weight to his claims by being difficult if not impossible to fake.  They included translocation to a different set of wheel supports; lifting as high as possible a heavy load; driving an archimedes screw; a long endurance test under guard, lock and key and seal - and most importantly, if he could bring himself to allow it, the public confirmation by a well-respected person, of the genuiness of his wheel, by revealing the internal workings for his close inspection.

All these requirement were eventually carried out, but still no buyer could be found who was not prepared to pay up without first assuring himself that the device was real by looking inside it.

This sounds depressing and we may feel sorry for Bessler, but there is good reason to suspect that exactly the same response or lack of response would follow similar claims today.  You might think think that a patent would be proof enough, but consider how many hundreds of perpetual motion machine designs have been registered with various patent offices over the last few hundred years and you can see that a patent proves nothing even if it might offer some limited protection against competition.

The only answer, it seems to me, is to reveal the design within a video of a working model; a full explanation will need to accompany the video - or find that reputable person, like Karl the Landgrave, who will verify your wheel. But you still need that working model, I know, I'm in that situation now.

There is one more possibility to my mind and it is this.  There must be a configuration within your wheel which will demonstrate how the mechanism works, without having to complete a whole wheel.  The weights which fall have to be returned to where they started from at least once in each turn of the wheel, and your mechanism must be able to demonstrate how that can be achieved, and that is the route I intend taking once I get my workshop back.

JC

The Legend of Johann Bessler's Wheel.

I have replaced my usual blog with a brief account of the legend of Bessler's wheel.  I'm currently unable to maintain the frequency of my blog due to commitments which are keeping me exceedingly busy!  

Once I have found and bought my house, I shall return to the blog plus I shall have published my interpretation of a large number of Bessler's clues, none of which relate to Bessler's portraits. So there should ample reason for discussion.

4th April 2016

JC

The legend of Bessler’s Wheel began on 6th June 1712, when Johann Bessler announced that he had invented a perpetual motion machine and he would be exhibiting it in the town square in Gera, Germany, on that day.  Everyone was free to come and see the machine running.  It took the form of a wheel mounted between two pillars and ran continuously until it was stopped or its parts wore out. The machine attracted huge crowds.  Although they were allowed to examine its external appearance thoroughly, they could not view the interior, because the inventor wished to sell the secret of its construction for the sum of 10,000 pounds – a sum equal to several millions today.

News of the invention reached the ears of high ranking men, scientists, politicians and members of the aristocracy.  They came and examined the machine, subjected it to numerous tests and concluded that it was genuine. Only one other man, Karl, the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel, was allowed to view the interior and he testified that the machine was genuine. He is a man well-known in history as someone of the greatest integrity, and  the negotiations between Bessler and Karl took place against a background in which Karl acted as honest broker between the warring nations of Europe; a situation which required his absolute rectitude both in appearance and in action.

There were several attempts to buy the wheel, but negotiations always failed when they reached an impasse – the buyer wished to examine the interior before parting with the money, and the inventor fearing that once the secret was known the buyer would simply leave without paying and make his own perpetual motion machine, would not permit it.  Sadly, after some thirty years or more, the machine was lost to us when the inventor fell to his death during construction of another of his inventions, a vertical axle windmill.

However, the discovery of a series of encoded clues has led many to the opinion that the inventor left instructions for reconstructing his wheel, long after his death.  The clues were discovered during the process of investigating the official reports of the time which seemed to rule out any chance of fraud, hence the  interest in discovering the truth about the legend of Bessler’s wheel.

My own curiosity was sparked by the realisation that an earlier highly critical account by Bessler's maid-servant, which explained how the wheel was fraudulently driven, was so obviously flawed and a lie, that I was immediately attracted to do further research. In time I learned that there was no fraud involved, so the wheel was genuine and the claims of the inventor had to be taken seriously.

The tests which the wheel was subjected to involved lifting heavy weights from the castle yard to the roof, driving an Archimedes water pump and an endurance test lasting 56 days under lock and key and armed guard.  Bessler also organised demonstrations involving running the wheel on one set of bearings opened for inspection – and then transferring the device to a second set of open bearings, both sets having been examined to everyone’s satisfaction, both before, after and during the examination.

So the only problem is that modern science denies that Bessler's wheel was possible, but my own research has shown that this conclusion is wrong.  There is no need for a change in the laws of physics, as some  have suggested, we simply haven't covered every possible scenario in the evaluating the number of possible configurations.

I have produced copies of all Bessler's publications, with English translations.  They can be obtained by clicking on the appropriate links on the right.

JC