A Vicious Circle and a Virtuous Circle.

Someone commented that using Bessler’s wheel to generate electricity was a medieval method and once the wheel’s concept was understood it could be applied for use with other forces such as gravity.  It made me think about other methods we use today which still relate to an origin first invented in years gone by.

Waterwheels have been used for at least 2500 years and although they are slowly going out of use their basic function to supply energy in some form or other is still being investigated in different ways, for instance tapping tidal energy.

Windmills too, are of ancient lineage, at least 2000 years of age, with similar uses, grinding corn etc. Again they’ve been adapted to produce giant electricity generators but with several disadvantages but they do provide electricity as long as the wind blows, and not too hard!

Steam engines are a relatively new invention, although  their first reference goes back 2000 years to Hero of Alexandria.  But we still use a derivative of the steam engine in our giant electricity generating turbines, most of which still depend on steam to power their mechanical rotation.

Finally there are the weight-driven clocks - not, of course, continuous motion in the way the earlier examples work, but similar in some ways.  The first examples at the beginning of this post all depend upon a supply of energy of some kind.  That energy reveals itself in action, moving water, pressurised steam from heated water,  or wind blowing over the sails of a windmill.

But is there an origin either in history or nature, as there is for the above examples, in Bessler’s wheel? Actually all of them rely on a constant supply of energy and despite what we have been taught so does Bessler’s wheel.  This is usually where we part company with mainstream ideology!

Remember that we are taught that perpetual motion machines were declared axiomatically impossible by Hermann von Helmholtz in 1847, because, he declared, no one had ever built one!  An axiom is a statement or proposition which is regarded as being established, accepted, or self-evidently true.  Only Helmholtz did not accept the validity of Bessler’s wheel otherwise the axiom would be demonstrably false.

Most of the above examples obtain their energy from something already in motion and simply draw their energy needs from it.  Wind and water; Bessler’s wheel drew its energy from something in motion too.....weights, falling weights responding to gravity.

I think that no PM machine has revealed itself, other than Bessler’s, because these other kinds of machine were available and more obviously capable of being designed to make use of whatever medium the builders had in mind.  Bessler said that the reason he was successful was that he devoted so much more time and effort in finding the correct principle than anyone else had ever been able do.

Helmholtz  declared that  Perpetual Motion machine’s were impossible because no one  had ever built one.  This is a perfect example of circuitous reasoning and perhaps a literary example of perpetual motion.

Question  - why has no one ever built a perpetual motion machine?

Answer- because Helmholtz says they’re impossible.

Question - why are they impossible?

Answer - because no one has ever built one.

Repeat ad infinitum!

The terms virtuous circle and vicious circle refer to complex chains of events that reinforce themselves through a feedback loop. A virtuous circle has favorable results, while a vicious circle has detrimental results. Bessler's wheel demonstrated a virtuous circle.

JC