Having spent the last 50 years or so trying to discover Bessler's secret I realised some time back, that the solution must be something really simple, but not at all intuitive - not intuitive until you know but then instantly obvious. It took Bessler about ten years to find the beginnings of an answer and even then, some very intense work to finally get a movement which proved to himself that he had found the correct principle.
The brief motion he discovered was so convincing that he dropped everything and went out into the world to earn some much needed funds to finance the building of a demonstration wheel and a place to show it. He also persuaded a town mayor and physician of somewhat dubious political standing to allow him to take his daughter in marriage and accept her dowry. This action sounds like a plan he had devised if and when the wheel worked. To me this adds support to the idea that simply finding that basic principle and then deducing how to use it provides enough evidence that full test rigs and lengthy runs loaded and unloaded are unnecessary to prove the point, to ones self. But I realise of course, that such tests are a vital ingredient for anyone in the enviable position of having got to that penultimate stage that Bessler achieved prior to his search for funding. You can only actually prove your wheel works by demonstrating it in action.
So first we have to find that simple concept which was so obvious that when Bessler discovered it he was encouraged to attack the problem with renewed enthusiasm. I think that this concept was unarguably a vital part of the wheel's design. But Bessler admits that it took immense effort to find a way of making use of this principle, which suggests that even though the answer is perfectly logical it requires some considerable mechanical arranging to discover a way of utilising said principle. In my opinion this kind of trial and error method is an ideal way to hit upon the correct mechanical arrangement once you have the principle that allows the wheel to be driven in the presence of gravity.
This principle which I believe Bessler discovered must obviously be the light at the end of an extremely long tunnel, and yet even once discovered would take lengthy experimentation to find the correct mechanical arrangement to make it work. Such a principle rules out the simple over-balancing wheel, according to Bessler, and yet an over-balancing ingredient seems to be implied in Bessler's description, although couched in the most ambiguous of terms. It seems that action due to the operation of the prime principle leads to an overbalancing situation but the latter is more of a side effect than the primary cause of continuous rotation. It is as though we have omitted a step in trying to generate continuous rotation through seeking to cause over-balancing, when we should be looking for some additional feature which then leads to overbalancing.
JC
This principle which I believe Bessler discovered must obviously be the light at the end of an extremely long tunnel, and yet even once discovered would take lengthy experimentation to find the correct mechanical arrangement to make it work. Such a principle rules out the simple over-balancing wheel, according to Bessler, and yet an over-balancing ingredient seems to be implied in Bessler's description, although couched in the most ambiguous of terms. It seems that action due to the operation of the prime principle leads to an overbalancing situation but the latter is more of a side effect than the primary cause of continuous rotation. It is as though we have omitted a step in trying to generate continuous rotation through seeking to cause over-balancing, when we should be looking for some additional feature which then leads to overbalancing.
JC
