Are There Any More Doubting Lions Roaring Around?

I borrowed the title of today's blog from Bessler's own words challenging those who disbelieved him to come and sit by his machine as it revolved.

I note that the the old familiar doubt about the truth of Bessler's claims has reared its ugly head again, on the Bessler wheel forum.

I published my book about Johann Bessler in 1996, and I thought I did a pretty good job of providing as much evidence as possible about Bessler and his machine and the tests, and the witness reports, and the letters about him, to him and by him.  I wrote and published the book because I was convinced of his sincerity about his machine.  Not only was the evidence convincing but you could feel the sncerity in the pain and anguish he suffered and emoted in detail in Apologia Poetica.  In my opinion no scam artist could write with such evident sincerity about his feelings about the rejection of his machine.

So when I read that someone who is relatively new to the forum keeps repeating the mantra, "if Bessler was telling the truth," or "perhaps Bessler lied,"  and often misquotes incorrectly passages from the book and all manner of untruths and half truths, I'm tempted to stop trying to persuade people of Bessler's ingenious machine and how much benefit it could bring to the planet earth in these difficult times. Why can't people only their write their ideas once they are in possession of the correct facts?

But in fairness to all those who aren't as familiar with the legend of Bessler's wheel as I am, I admit that over 300 years of schools and universities hammering the facts that perpetual motion machines are impossible and gravity cannot be used as Bessler seems to imply, is a paradigm that is going to take more than an ancient retired engineer (me!) berating them from a small insignificant blog, to persuade them that they are wrong.

There does seem to be the perennial question over the role of gravity in Bessler's wheel. Over the years I have come to accept that gravity itself cannot be regarded as a source of energy and the nuances of the connection between gravity itself and the force that drove Bessler's wheel are subtle and hard to explain, but this is my opinion.

Bessler implied that gravity was the source of energy but he did not say so explicitly.  He simply said that it was the excess weight, or extra heaviness on one side of the wheel that caused the wheel to overbalance, but we and thousands like us have been working on that theory for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years.  He did not use the word 'gravity' because that word was coined almost accidentally by Sir Isaac Newton when he used it in his famous book, Principia' and in Besslers day that was largely unread by anyone other than the top philosophers of the day.  Newton's book was written in Latin, the universal language of learning, and he used the word 'gravity' as the Latin for 'heaviness' to describe this force we all call ‘gravity’ now.  But in Bessler's day they use words such as preponderance which can  mean superiority in weight or significance. This meaning relates to the word's Latin roots in the word praeponderare, which means "outweigh."  So looking for the word ‘gravity’ in Bessler’s papers will result in none being found.

Why have our teachers told us it is impossible?    Because gravity is a conservative force and the energy expended in causing a weight to fall exactly equals that  available to raise it again, and only then if you omit the energy used to overcome friction.

A weight can fall through any path, straight down or around in a curve, all that matters is the straight line vertical distance traveled.  These two factors mean a weight would have to fall in a closed loop, zero energy would be used, which would be impossible.  The assumption is that this rules out any chance of a weight driven wheel. working.

But they deny that it is possible to configure the movement of the weights to create a variation which would break open the closed loop making an asymmetrical loop.  If you study the argument if depends upon the motion of one weight around a circle, but we have always attempted to find a way to include various movements of each weight during its path around the circle in an attempt to create a variation on the closed loop which would achieve continuous rotation.  BTW note my preference of the phrase 'continuous motion' or 'continuous rotation' rather than 'perpetual motion', I just think its more accurate and less inflammatory.

NB I forgot to say that even though gravity is a conservative force and isn't a source of energy, the transfer of energy from the force of gravity to the weights is undeniable because it is this transference which enables the weights to fall.

My own wheel has been designed with a break in its closed loop which provides for a variable between each side of the centre of rotation and I am confident will lead to continuous rotation, but I didn't think of it myself, but was only able to work it out with Bessler's help!

Anyway whatever the result, work continues albeit slowly to the grand or not so grand finale.

JC