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
