There is some muddled thinking going on and I'd like to clarify what I believe are facts.
Firstly Bessler's first two wheels began to spin spontaneously as soon as a brake was released. For some reason a few people find this fact hard to accept. For the wheel to do this means that it was in a state of imbalance at all times. This is not hard to understand, in fact I think that it is a prerequisite for a continually spinning wheel. The evidence that his wheels did start without a push is well documented and I am puzzled by the seeming scepticism that is engendered in some people's mind.
There is also a tendency to assume that there were eight weights and/or mechanisms in the wheels - why? The only evidence which includes the suggestion that eight weights were in a wheel, is in Fischer Von Erlach's report on his two hour examination of the Kassel wheel. As I've said many times, the Kassel wheel was different to the two earliest wheels because it could turn in either direction, whereas the earliest ones only turned in one direction, plus it needed a gentle push in one direction or the other before it began to accelerate to its maximum speed. The conclusion is obvious and again is backed up by documentary evidence, the interior design of the Kassel wheel and it's predecessor, the Merseberg wheel were more complex. So why assume there must have been eight weights inside the first two wheels? Or, why try to design a more complex wheel before you've managed to build a successful one direction wheel?
Then there are the energy sources sought for the wheels; the minuscule depletion of mass to drive a twelve foot wheel! Ridiculous! Gravity enabled but not the direct source? Do we pick and choose which comments Bessler made and discard those we find hard to accept? If we think Bessler's claims were genuine then the solution lies, as he said, within the weights themselves Manipulation of falling weights is the only possible scenario which ties in with Bessler's description and it must be possible even if no design has been discovered so far. It's not using gravity directly but using the result of gravity acting on a weight and making it fall. Some say what's the difference? Well for those who are particular about such things, the fine detail must be examined, if we continue to believe Bessler, but at the same time accept that gravity itself cannot be used as a form of energy, that leaves, as Bessler, put it, the weights themselves. The only energy available is that which results in the weights moving under the influence of gravity.
It's a bit like the official view on heavier-than-air machines before the Wright brothers showed how it could be done. The theory of gliders was recognised long before the Wrights achieved powered flight, but before them there was no suitable engine, they were too heavy. It was the introduction of an aluminium crank case which lightened the engine enough to allow the airframe to lift it in flight. Yet the academic response to their claims and even to a model that actually flew, was denial. But people believed instinctively that it might be possible to fly an aircraft, in the same way that we believe that is possible to construct a weight driven wheel which will spin continuously.
We need to keep it simple, just as Karl described the interior of Bessler's wheel, so simple a carpenter's boy could make one if he was allowed to study it for a short while. Anything which requires complex mechanics should be avoided. Bessler was afraid that people wouldn't think the wheel worth so much money once they knew how it was done - that is what he said.
Ignore anything which does not apply to the one way wheels, but rule out nothing. Conflicting advice? No, but don't just assume eight weights/mechanisms are necessary. Accept that the wheel started spontaneously when the brake was released. Make a working model; the Wright brothers did and even then there were many sceptics who denied its possibility, so we have an uphill struggle even if a working model is produced so for that reason, in my opinion, simulations are a waste of time.
JC
I find myself in full agreement with you in regards to the wheels ability to start rotating as soon as the brake was released.
ReplyDeleteIf you assume that gravity acting on the weights were the driving force then it seems to me that the wheel must always be in overbalance.
In fact it appears that Bessler took some time to create the balanced version of his wheel, So it seems that balancing the initial overbalance was quite difficult if that makes sense :-)
Terry
John,
ReplyDeletewith regards to the five mechanisms, if one thinks about the workings of the wheel several things come to mind.
First, the easiest way for a weight to move is downward.
Secondly, once a weight reaches the 6 O'clock, it no longer does work, and it has to be lifted.
So, five mechanisms are the minimum number required, when one weight is at the bottom, the next inline is on a downward slope.
That doesn't happen with four mechanisms, more than five would mean that in order to fit them in, they would have to be made smaller, which may not necessarily give an increase in output.
Five mechanisms does seem to be logical.
There must also be a minimum number of weights as to avoid the wheel intermittently slowing. If space for the mechanisms were a concern, they could be layered if permissible.
ReplyDeleteYes I've considered layering the weights but given that the first Gera wheel was only 4 inches thick and probably close to three and a half or less inside, it seems to me that there would little room for vweighted levers to move without clashing with each other. But we shouldn't rule it out just in case the action takes place in a static region of a single revolution.
DeleteJC
Hi John
ReplyDeleteI am at the moment little concerned about Your last blog comment, about Your wheel setup. Where Your mention: "... I have divided the disc into five equal parts for five mechanisms, which, by the way, include five lengths of cord."
Sorry my english is not so good to understand all technical small details behind particular written word or word combinations.
My question is about those last three-four words.
For by my own understanding at the moment, cord is almost the same as rope! What is difference between "Cord" and "rope"?
Do you mean here rather than - cord as a spring?!
and
How to understand this "five lenghts of cord"? Is it like fife "some measures" of one cord, or is this - five cords, each one by "some measure"? Or totally something else?
Thanks in advance
Eastlander
I agree with you, Eastlander: everything is not always very clear —or simple to understand— for non-english locutors. (By the way, I make the proposition to anyone to write in esperanto ☺️ . En Esperanto, ĉiu vorto havas nur unun signifon, kaj tio simpligas ĉion.) Talking about vocabulary, I am often confronted with the same kind of hindrances, over all concerning technical terms like 'scissor jacks', or abbreviations, and so on. For instance, it took me some time to understand 'imo" or 'btw'... My own difficulties include measurements units (inches, yards, pounds) as well, that I have to convert in centimeters, meters, grams or kilograms. But that is not insuperable.
ReplyDeleteMichel, I'm too old to learn Esperanto! Modern abbreviations are difficult for us too, but we look them up and try to learn their meanings.
DeleteAs for inches, yards and pounds, and all the rest, we had the same problem back in the 1970s when for reasons I've never understood, the UK decided to abandon our old Imperial system and adopt the metric system. There was plenty of objections but they did it any way and we had to learn the metric system, which was very hard for all of us who had grown up with yards, feet and inches, and pound, and ounces etc.
One of the problems we had was trying to trade with the USA who were and are still using a. Variation of the Imperial measurement.
JC
John, Michel,
DeleteI was surprised to learn that the only measure of length to be officially legalized by the US government is the meter (metre), it was done by an act of Congress in 1866.
Of course there's the difference in spelling as well, kilogram / kilogramme, meter / metre, liter / litre, etc.
There's also a difference in US pints and UK pints, gallons, fluid ounces and so on.
The US hundredweight is 100 Lbs. the UK hundredweight (cwt.) 112 Lbs.
The US ton is 2,000 Lbs. the UK ton 2,240 Lbs.
Also, there is a miniscule difference in linear measurement, but it's so small it's disregarded, If I recall correctly, it's something like a 1/4 inch over several miles.
Confusing isn't it ?
John, when the UK went metric, do you remember the silly rhymes they came out with ?
"A litre of water is about a pint and three quarter"
"Two and a quarter pounds of jam, weigh about a kilogramme" lol !
Michel,
if you go to Project Gutenberg, you can read the Esperanto magazines that were printed around the time of it's invention, they may be of some interest to you, even if only for their curiosity value.
John, you are right, the wheel will work with just two weights but obviously the more the better for smoother output.
ReplyDeleteI do feel that there was no difference between the starters and the non-starters. The self-starters were simply the ones that were stopped quickly while their weights could remain in a primed mode for restarting.
Eastlander, a cord is a piece of rope. I tend to think cord is a little bit thinner and five lengths just means five pieces of rope. I wasn't meaning springs.
ReplyDeleteJC
Bessler laments that someone looking upon his mechanism might consider it disarmingly simple, and hence not worth the asking price, ("not much artistry to it"), yet assures us that much mathematics lays behind its discovery and operation.
ReplyDeleteCount Karl, IIRC, was only bought in so far as to confirm no trickery was involved, ie. to see inside the wheel, not necessarily be informed as to how and why such an apparently simple arrangement could be successful..
For instance, he may have seen masses changing radius as they fell - and perhaps even that eliminating that radial translation also eliminated the gains... thus satisfying casual inspection that it was indeed the causative principle.. yet without disclosing the reasons how and why..
My own work this evening has shown that an orbiting mass sliding outwards can more than double its momentum, without drawing that gain from elsewhere in the system. It's not hard to fit that simple dynamic into descriptions of Bessler's wheels..
Except of course, a system can't have excess momentum when it's tied off stationary..
Paying for a GPE rise with free KE isn't difficult either, however, at least in principle. Additionally, lifting and dropping weights is another means of controlling momentum, as are springs..
To me, it seems as slim a chance as ever that gravity is even strictly necessary - more likely convenient and certainly all the more confounding, but i expect when we have the full solution, gravity will amount to little more than a perfectly elastic stator or reaction mass..
The only mathematically / physically viable potential OU gradient is plain old RKE=1/2MoI*RPM^2, just transposed up a bit, by piggybacking on a boosted momentum.. There's nothing similar in the GPE terms, which is just G*m*h; the first two are constants, and so any cyclic change in the only variable yields zero energy. Whereas RKE has two interdependent variables, so actually has a mathematical capacity for OU, which is in fact only enforced by Newton's 3rd law...
I rule nothing out, not least my own ignorance, so will be happy to eat my words on this... but without further evidence of how a gravitational asymmetry could even be theoretically manifest, there's 'enduring' ideas... and then there's heavy-duty Teflon endurance.. energy from gravity, LENR or whatever Ken's theory is, there's just no way to get purchase on it, whereas OU from angular KE and momentum has this ready-made dynamic built into the interdependency and variability of MoI in both the momentum and energy terms - OU or UU is simply any variation of the usual half-square accumulator on the rising cost of momentum.
Wolff IIRC wrote that his impression was that the weights somehow gained excess momentum while falling - ie. gaining more momentum from their fall than might otherwise be expected... my latest findings suggest that speculative description may indeed be possible..
Here we see some bits of Vibratorial good news.
DeleteSetting aside all the the Rocket Science level technical sprech, we see this most reassuring ditty: "I rule nothing out, not least my own ignorance, so will be happy to eat my words on this..." - Vibrator
Excellent. By this we can now know (as if we had not from earlier) that he is not arrogant in his opinionating unlike another not presently here.
And then we are treated to some nice meat by way of this following one: ". . . but without further evidence of how a gravitational asymmetry could even be theoretically manifest, there's 'enduring' ideas..." - Vibrator
Yes. Lacking such does serve to lead one to there.
But the best was saved for last: "Wolff IIRC wrote that his impression was that the weights somehow gained excess momentum while falling - ie. gaining more momentum from their fall than might otherwise be expected... my latest findings suggest that speculative description may indeed be possible.."
Excellent as is 'most' of all of the rest preceding. What a crying shame it is that he is not also a mechanician as well as a theoretician for in no time, I am sure, he himself would have it.
My avowed enemy Fletcher - enthroned noble Prince of the BWF - put it perfectly long ago as an "unstable platform".
This "unstable" by accident, or by happenstance?
No, neither.
By knowing, purposeful design is what: "not much artistry to it" Bessler here meaning as to it's appearance strictly, not the underlying majesty of mechanical ingenuity, the gave rise to the apparent simplicity.
To bad, it is, that Vibrator and I do not speak to one another and likely will never.
J.
It is a fact, that a weight falling (A) has essentially disappeared from the wheel. The energy gain from a falling weight cannot lift a weight of equal size (A) because during the lifting on the opposite side of the wheel, the requires energy all of the time. There must be something else that he was able to use....
ReplyDeleteOK I broke my silence. I think I may have a positive contribution. I've been thinking a lot of possibilities. But I really cannot manage to find a solution. But, for me, the evidence suggest that the wheel, if it is genuine, has to have a positive feedback mechanism. I am pretty sure about that. Slowly gaining speed undeniably shows that. The one strange phenomena for building this type of machine can be "buckling" since it has a rather strange negative stiffness. In MT 18, there are buckled metal sheets. Bessler may have managed to put this type of bars in a positive feedback. But, of course, this doesn't sound simple isn't it :)
ReplyDeleteI think I am going to buy the toys shown in the toys page and will spend some time with them :) The middle toys the ones with the hammers what is the name of that toy?
BS
I don't know what you'd call it. I tried looking it up but I couldn't find anything relevant. You could try something like German axe men, or wood cutters?
DeleteJC
BS,
DeleteI tried to provide a link, but it doesn't work, if you go to Etsy.com, and type,
vintage wooden mechanical whimsy toy
into the search engine, one will come up.
It cost $12 US.
But it's so simple, why not make one? No need to carve men, just a block of wood will do.
Something similar:
Deletehttps://www.rubylane.com/item/160319-5632/BLACK-FOREST-German-Carved-Vintage-Wooden
http://picclick.co.uk/old-vintage-black-forest-carved-wooden-bear-112290624150.html
Still not sure what you call it.
Thank you very much guys.
Delete@Hutch, second one is very funny :)
BS
BS...Nice to see you changed your mind...But, it is not being very positive to have doubt about the wheel being genuine...The way the Bessler's story goes, his ups and downs, the selling tactics, the distractors, etc,....All amply tell how genuine the story is...And so is his wheel...I feel that Bessler went through many failure phases and toy's page experience is one such... We may not find a big clue there but it may just tell us how he progressed...By trying out every path, until he found what he wanted...We are sure to attain success as long as we remain focused on the levers and weights...And, the success key is in their designing and arrangement...The measurement part comes later...One important factor here is that whatever dimensions the first lever and weight arm is so will be of the other arms... They must weigh and appear similar... Because, they have to perform the act in unison...One after another... Unceasingly...To attain balance... Which would be evasive...
ReplyDeleteI have built one of those toys and it is very interesting how it transfers force, but I was not able to find anything really unique
ReplyDeleteOne feels that the force from falling weights isn't adequate to lift the weights on the ascending side.... Quite right...here, some ingenuity is reqd...We need to incorporate many other advantageous energy booster factors...Like lever advantage, etc,...Then the task becomes easier... During rotation other forces come into play which enhance the movement...
ReplyDeleteI've been away for a bit.
ReplyDeleteJust now came around expecting the usual worst but, he has not yet posted on this topic.
Is he sick, on vacation, dead or now excommunicated maybe, having exhausted finally the vaunted Editorial Patience once too often? Really, this last would be way too good to be true. If so, it would be like inhabiting La-La Land for real.
Inquiring minds demand to know. Which is it?
J.
James,
DeleteI respectfully refer you to the comments for the previous post.
It was more like he decided to jump before he was pushed.
Heavens! Truly?
DeleteThanks very much, STEVO. I'll go and see.
It's possible for a single falling weight to turn the wheel and return again to a point of balance with the wheel once again stationary. I posted a physics simulation of this on the besslerwheel site a long time ago - the weird loops in Bessler's signature demonstrate the principle. The trick needed is to achieve this with multiple weights moving at the same time in different phases of their motion, so that the wheel never needs to stop.
ReplyDeleteA Certain in mechanical advantage is the block and tackle
ReplyDeleteI also feel this is somewhat in the solution.
DeleteBS
I seem to remember that Bessler said that his wheel would work with only 2 levers/cross-bars (or whatever they're called). But it would rotate very slowly and weakly. If you added more levers, then it would rotate faster with more torque. If he was able to do this, if his design was so effective that it would work with only 2 elements, than that is just incredible! And I think that means that neither John nor Ken have the answer as to how he did it. Could someone tell me what the exact quote I am thinking of is?
ReplyDeleteIn Apologia Poetica, Bessler wrote, "If I arrange to have just one cross-bar in the
Deletemachine, it revolves very slowly, just as if it can hardly turn itself at all, but, on the contrary, when I arrange several bars, pulleys and weights, the machine can revolve much faster, "
Hope that helps.
JC
John, how precice is word "pulley" from original translation?
DeleteHow it was written or what was "it's" name in original german/latin language?
Was this description about one directional wheel or two directional?
Can bow like mechanism be a pulley?
Eastlander
You could be right, Seeso... but I don't know where the quote is....With two lever-weight system it may be possible to get the wheel rotating but not quite effectively...An initial push may also be reqd... You are very much right...No one seems to have the thorough knowledge about the lever-weight combination... This is the main and most critical component in BW...It can't be achieved by SIM workouts...A very simple technology but extremely evasive to our minds... Hence the 300 plus years delay....
ReplyDeleteSounds like good info to me.... whatever happens on one side the opposite happen to the other side. It has been the opposite side of the wheel that has always ceased my wonderful mechanisms from continuing rotation
ReplyDeleteDoes it not concern anyone here that Bessler's wheels grew taller and taller as he attempted to increase power, versus making a smaller but wider drum incorporating say two or three wheels into one. Unless size was impressionable in that day, one might be able to say that smaller diameter wheels just had no power no matter how many you gang together.
ReplyDeleteI think he wanted to keep it narrow to avoid claims of a human operating the wheels from inside the drum. A wider wheel could easily hide a person inside.
DeleteAnonymous, that would be a logical conclusion as a weight near the perimeter a longer moment arm on a large diameter wheel.
ReplyDeleteOne of Bessler's sayings that keeps coming back to me is that he learned how to climb higher on Jacob's ladder. I think the secret lies in flipping weights in a similar fashion as the Jacob's ladder toy. The mechanism may have even been suspended by cords which would offer the least amount of friction. His comment that a surreptitious shove could knock it out of balance and bring it grinding to a halt hints that the weight were suspended by cords and could be knocked out of alignment from a shove from one of the flat sides of the wheel. He also said that he had a small hole in the wheel that he could use to poke around inside the wheel in case something went wrong. If it was strictly weights mounted on levers, it seems to me that a poker wouldn't work to correct the problem.
ReplyDeleteA tip: Climbing the Jacob's ladder is also a Masonic metaphor for climbing the degrees/steps on the ladder towards "G". Background: Jacob (old testament) slept with his head on a special stone (Jacob's pillow stone)... then he had a special dream..and got a vision of a ladder, with steps that lead to God. This stone was kept as a sacred artifact for generations..but was finally lost. The stone was thought to be magic/sacred, and kept the secret to understanding and reaching God. So by climbing Jacobs ladder you get closer to knowing "God" or let's say the truth about the universe and nature. This is the ultimate goal of Masonry. Rosicrucians and later Masons kept a secret about a special stone with a special inscription that explains this "G". I proved that Bessler knew the Rosicrucian secret. I guess he traded secrets with a Jesuit Priest.. Jesuits ultimately discovered the Rosicrucian secret. A secret that would get you in trouble with the catholic church. One of the simple codes used by Bessler didexpose this. The code explains how and why the Rose Cross got it's name and also why their allegorical founder Christian Rosenkreuz got his name. What the stone's inscription is, and how it was used. I look forward to expose it all..when time is due.
DeleteYada yada yada.
DeleteThanks Øystein, looking forward to your revelation.
DeleteJC
Thanks John, I know you will like what I discovered. And I hope you will appreciate the fact that you discovered some of it first. I have my newborn son that have much of my attention now, but will schedule the promised press conference and press release of my paper on how Besslers papers (and your initial research) lead to the discovery of a code used by the German artist Albrecht Durer and his peers prior to Bessler, and later re-applied in a famous British Rosicrucian relief with a hitherto unsolved inscription. Some may have heard of the Shugborough inscription, and how the code never has been cracked. This is the same code as used earlier by both Bessler and Albrecht Durer in his Melencolia 1.
Deletehttp://mathworld.wolfram.com/DuerersMagicSquare.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shugborough_inscription
If there indeed was a secret code hidden in Albrecht Durers work and in Poussin's ET IN ARCADIA EGO (as in the Shugborough relief) preserved by initiates and the Rosy Cross, who would be a better man to both discover and re-use the secret than the secret "spy" Elias Bessler..
To Anonymous: You sound a lot like my 4 months old son...yada yada.. I look forward to when he grows up and get a language though..
I have always wondered about the list of materials that Bessler ordered while his was under the care of Karl. The documentation of all of the materials and supplies are probably listed in the standard accounting process that occurred at the Kassel. I contacted the university in Germany and they said that a great deal of materials exist regarding the billings and payments made. It might list the materials and where or from whom they were purchased. There just might be an interesting connection to find.
ReplyDeleteIt would make interesting reading, no doubt. I have hundreds of pages of documents relating to Bessler, mostly written by him, and my greatest frustration is that the handwriting is virtually illegible. Having said that, MT is the same, and yet a couple of people have managed to coax meaning out of it. I believe that efforts are being undertaken to produce a German transcription of the entire collection and obviously once that is available an English translation must follow.
DeleteIn addition there are other records currently being saved from a recent inundation and resuscitated! These include details about Bessler's marriage and what restrictions he had to adhere to. More records exist elsewhere in Germany, France and England, but trying to obtain copies is frustratingly difficult, partly because Bessler has always been regarded as a crook and not worthy of research. Boy, will there be a flurry of examination of old documents once his reputation as an honest inventor is restored!
JC