Bessler's Wheel - the World's First Working Perpetual Motion Machine.

While I was away on holiday I got to thinking about Bessler's wheel and how important it could be in the near future.  Then I realised how, over the many years I have researched this subject, that I had become so habituated to thinking of it as a viable machine that I believed that it was just a matter of time before it reappeared as an alternative source of energy.

Then I was reminded forcibly, what an amazing, even stunning, thing it would be if we could reconstruct it and prove all those know-it-all 'experts'  wrong and watch them squirm and wriggle out of their rigid, inflexible mindset!  It isn't as if I hadn't known what a wonderful discovery this would be, but I had become like those above, too accustomed to the idea and subconsciously I 'knew' it was simply a matter of showing them the evidence and the rest would follow.

But of course that isn't the way it will be, but when I finish the wheel,I have some ideas which I hope will drown out the voices of scorn and derision.  But in the mean time I would like to take another brief look at the evidence that supports the conclusion that Bessler's Perpetual motion machine really worked.  So here are the basic facts relating to the wheels and the inventor which led many of us to believe Johann Bessler's wheel was genuine and not a scam.

I'll keep to the most basic facts.  Ok, so all the wheels were demonstrated in front of large crowds.  People were encouraged to examine each wheel and were permitted to to stop and start them, or even slow them down, as often they wished.

The first two wheels would begin to spin as soon as the brake was released.  This ability to begin to spin as soon as they were allowed to do so, showed that the wheels were permanently out-of-balance, even when stationary.  They could only spin in one direction, which seems obvious given that they were always out of balance. 

Due to accusations that the wheels must have been driven by clock-work, Bessler subsequently introduced a different wheel design, which meant it could turn in either direction.  This one needed a gentle push in either direction, from which start it accelerated to its top speed, approximately half that of the one-way wheels.  This was to counter the accusation that the wheels needed winding up.  I suppose that he thought it would prove difficult to produce a wheel which could still be wound up and yet spin in either direction as required by each witness/examiner.

He exhibited in total, four wheels and the last one, another bi-directional version, measured twelve feet in diameter and eighteen inches in thickness.

It could raise a bucket of stones weighing 70 pounds from the castle yard to the roof.  It could drive an archimedes screw for pumping water.  It underwent an endurance test lasting 54 days in a locked and sealed room with a 24 hour guard posted outside.

During the many public examinations, the wheel was set up on one pair of supports started and eventually stopped at which point it was carried across to a second set of supports.  Both sets of supports were thoroughly examined before and after and no sign of fraud was discovered.  The tapered bearings at each end of the six foot axle were just three quarter of an  inch in thickness. Each bearing shell was open for inspection.

During a period of approximately twelve years the various wheels were examined by numerous people, among them royalty, scientists, sceptics, professors, engineers and politicians.  No single case exists of anyone anywhere finding how Bessler did it.

But one man was allowed to see the interior of the wheel, under a strict oath that he could never reveal the secret.  His name was Karl, the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel, a famous and highly respected man, whose castle at Kassel was where the final wheel was displayed.  He demanded access to the secret as a condition that he provided Bessler with a place to exhibit the wheel.  He was a keen amateur scientist and had already had a history of sponsoring the steam experiments of Denis Papin and he was not prepared to be misled by a swindling con artist.  That is why he insisted on seeing for his own eyes how the machine worked.

Gottfreid Leibniz the famous scientist, philosopher, historian, engineer, and designer of the calculating machine  among many other inventions  - literally a polymath - was at first sceptical of Bessler's clams, but gradually through some extended communications between others who had seen the machine in action, and his own two lengthy and thorough examinations of the machine became convinced of Bessler's sincerity.

It was he who suggestd the number of tests that Bessler needed to arrange in order to convince the sceptics without exposing the machine's interior.

It is worth mentioning that if Bessler had been discovered behaving fraudulently he had a very good chance of being beheaded.  No prince of that time would ever allow such a crime to go unpunished and there are many examples available to support this conclusion.  In his younger days as a miltary leader, Karl exerted the strictest discipline upon his troops and execution was used where he felt it necessary.

But what of Bessler himself?  Was there any indication in his actions that might have suggested an intention to defraud his patron or his public?  He published three items all of which extolled the virtues of his machine, and explaining that it was for sale for £20,000; the same figure as offered by the British Board of Longitude which was set up to find a reliable way of estimating a ship's longitudinal position at sea, and arguably a more valuable invention.  These publications contain information about the inventor's search for the secret of perpetual motion and how he strived to overcome the scornful dismissal of his self-imposed task.  He also stated that if he failed to sell his secret then he would die content in the knowledge that he would be acknowledged post humously - this is not the action of a fraudster.  It also implies that there was or would be information available after his death which would provide vindication for his claim.

He declares in one booklet, Apologia Poetica, that those who wish to know the secret of his machine should examine the book closely.  The book contains an obviously coded section, plus other apparent pieces of code, all of which when combined with other features in the two other booklets each strongly suggestive of additional coded information.

As I have said previously, I have made considerable progress in deciphering one particular type of code and have sufficient information to design and build one of Bessler's wheels.  I hope to complete this in the next few weeks or months and also publish the decoded information.

JC