Why I Believe in Johann Bessler Despite the Laws of Science?

I have been asked on numerous occasions, why do you continue to believe Johann Bessler’s claims to have built a Perpetual Motion machine despite what you have been taught about the subject?  My typical response has been to describe the overwhelming empirical evidence that proved, to my mind at least, that the inventor told the truth.  But this is only part of the picture; there must be an underlying reason that makes us continue, in the face of scientific argument, to seek Bessler’s solution, and to deny the loud accusations of fraud, delusion and naivety.

Could there be an unconscious psychological aspect to our  apparent obsession? Not anything psychologically defective, but rather I’m thinking of instinct and intuition and gut-feelings; in the unconscious assimilation of information which is processed by the brain and revealed to the conscious mind through a variety of ways.  Instinct is a genetic inheritance which can have a psychological ingredient that is generally thought to enhance our ability to cope with vital environmental contingencies, but it does not necessarily lead to any intellectual solution  which we might seek.  But we often say that we know instinctively that Bessler’s wheel was genuine.

Intuition is a person's capacity to obtain or have direct knowledge and/or immediate insight, without observation or reason. It's the "gut feeling" you get. People often place an enormous amount of faith on their intuition even making decisions that seem to go against all available evidence. I prefer the term ‘insight’. Insight is the capacity to gain an accurate and deep understanding of someone or something.  

The ecstatic feelings of triumph when you feel that you have made a discovery or sensed some progress in your search for a solution might be the carrot part of a carrot and stick approach, but I doubt if it is enough to overcome the depressing effect of years of utter failure.  So what is it that drives us onward with something we are told quite remorselessly is a waste of time and energy, not to mention financial resources? Obviously it can only be a gut feeling or intuition if we “know” we are right and the golden cup at the end of the rainbow is just out of sight, but available if we can only find the way.

Of course one needs to be an incurable optimist as well, because repeated failure can dull anyone's enthusiasm for a task.  So intuition, insight and optimism seems to be the key ingredients, plus a good analytical and open mind, able to consider any ideas, no matter how apparently wrong, and the determination not to give up.  Finally the ability to build to your design because without a working model you have nothing, as I have been reminded countless times.

So we who labour long and intensely in the search for the solution to Bessler's wheel know intuitively that those who would have us believe that we are wasting our time, are wrong, so very wrong that we simply cannot wait to prove it.  In this perpetual pursuit perseverance is paramount.

JC

Update - Bessler’s Wheel.

This is a brief account about my work on my wheel over the last couple of years.

Two or three years ago a friend made a simulation of a design which I believed at the time would work. The sim revealed the flaw in my thinking but also gave me some guidance in the right direction. There has to be at least two actions and although I had two, one of them had no positive effect on the wheel’s motion.

Building the first successful Bessler wheel, is an ongoing perpetual job, pardon the pun, but it has to be, to get to the solution.  I’ve tried getting my head around simulations, but generally I prefer to build.

I often think I’ve found the correct basic concept but it is never quite that straight forward. I find that the process of laying out the pieces in their predicted places and moving them by hand is more informative than a sim. It is at this early stage that you can see where the design needs to be altered, or discarded.

Curiously I have occasionally worked on a design which I had just thought of, and realised that it has echoes of a previous design that I might have rejected years ago - it happens.  The new inspiration can reveal some aspect of the original design that you overlooked initially, or made an incorrect assumption about how it was supposed to work, so it makes sense not to reject too quickly.

So where am I now?  The concept and the design work are done.  It is more complex to make than it may seem once it’s in action....hopefully. I’m gradually putting the mechanisms together, but I sometimes only get a ten minute slot to work on it, but I will finish eventually.

If you saw the wheel in action you might think that’s so simple, just like Karl did. He understood how it worked, but could he have correctly imagined how it might work without seeing it first and in action?  To me it’s like learning a foreign language; translating given foreign words into English is hard at first but it gets easier, but translating English into another language is harder because you are not given the foreign words to translate the English into.  Karl understood how it worked by watching the mechanisms in action, but he could not have envisaged the design and then made it.  It’s the same for all of us.

As time races by and I’m struggling to finish my wheel, I adjust pieces which are the correct ones but which are not acting exactly as I predicted, but then with a little consideration I get the right action. A few months ago, that  process then led me to discover yet another of Bessler's feature which I had ignored, but without which the mechanical action does not produce the desired result.

There is a lot of adjustments and minor alterations to make even if you have what you believe to be the complete solution in your mind. I have found that I can ‘see’ the action in my mind but the reality sometimes reveals an unwanted additional problem. This can be resolved if you are physically building, but not in a simulation, in my experience.

You may have correctly assumed that my perfect design should be precisely the same as Bessler's, but sometimes I encountered a problem in my build which seemed insurmountable, but further study of Bessler’s clues led me to  make a connection to a piece of information which I had ignored as a piece of non-information, this has happened on several occasions and that is why I like to build rather than use sim software. Having said that I think a sim would be useful to validate a design once it is finished and working.  In other words you don’t really know if your design is capable of being validated until you know that it works because you have a working model, and that is when you have definitely finished the wheel, and there are no more alterations to make because it works!

It might seem pointless to get verification that a wheel works when you have a working model already, but to my mind seeking verification of a design which you haven't tested in a build is even more pointless, because there are features of mechanisms which don't appear until you build them.  Mechanisms can lock up at either or both ends of their range of movement, and that can lead to loss of part of the advantage indicated in the original design.

 I will continue to work on this wheel until it’s finished and then publish the results and the design, but doubt that  seek verification with a sim.

JC

The Huge Potential in Bessler’s Wheel.

It was confirmed in writing on several occasions that Bessler’s wheel could lift a chest of stones weighting 70 pounds from the Kassel castle yard to the roof.  The Kassel wheel could turn in either direction at 26 rpm unloaded, and 20 rpm when lifting the heavy chest.  The Merseburg wheel could  perform a similar task and could achieve 50 rpm.  Given that Bessler said he could design wheels with different outputs, either in speed, lifting ability and/or size, and suggested running several wheels on one axle, I am convinced that the wheel could be modified, improved and made larger and would be a perfect electricity generator- despite all those who claim a poor output of no value.

For those who have tried to estimate the output of the wheels, in my opinion it’s a pointless task, because we have used the speed of two of the bidirectional wheels and they may have been slowed down by the counter-rotating ability.  How much weight each used, how many, how the two wheels differed in their design?  Yes we can make a rough estimate taking into account the weight of stones lifted, the speed of the lift, and the size of the axle and even the effect of the pulley system, but it is still a guess based on nothing else.

The truth is we simply don’t have any idea of the potential, but to me it seems blindingly obvious that such a machine capable of a simple demonstration of its lifting power could easily increase its lift capability by ten-fold by simply increasing its size and its internal weighting system. With the modern development techniques its efficiency could be increased by an unknown amount, but it would be considerable.

Whether an electric generator would be best suited for individual residences or a small group, or larger numbers only time will tell, but it will come.  ‘The three major categories of energy for electricity generation are fossil fuels (coal, natural gas, and petroleum), nuclear energy, and renewable energy sources. Most electricity is generated with steam turbines using fossil fuels, nuclear, biomass, geothermal, and solar thermal energy'.

Below is a picture of a modern steam turbine generator, powered by nuclear power.  It can be powered by fossil fuel such as coal, gas or oil.

 

Note the size of the operator compared to the device.  I can easily imagine a giant Bessler wheel consisting of many wheels in series mounted on a single axle of a similar size.  A typical power plant such as the one above rotates at 1800 - 3600 rpm, over 100 times faster than Bessler's Kassel wheel when under load.  Does that rule it out?  No, because a modern windmill generator turns at 30 - 60 rpm.  It connects the low speed shaft to a high speed shaft via a gearbox and increases the rotational speed from 30 - 60 rotations per minute to about 1000-1800; this is the rpm speed required by most generators to produce electricity. The gear box is a costly and extremely heavy part of the wind turbine. but an essential one.

So Bessler's wheel would have to be big enough to increase its slow speed, say 50rpm, up to 1000 -1800 rpm, but given a gearbox similar to those in use in the windmills, I believe such a system could be adapted to a large Bessler wheel, or series.

The modern windmill generator, the GE 1.5 megawatt model, for example, consists of three blades, each 116 feet in length atop a 212 foot tower, giving a total height of 328 feet. and a total width of about over 200 feet!  Surely we could construct something closer to the size of the machine in the picture above which as a Bessler wheel could easily generate as much electricity but within a building and at a far cheaper cost, and with much greater reliability than the windmills?

Each 2MW windmill costs $3 - $4 million installed! Each gear box costs more than $150,000. There are around 1,200 incidents of gearbox failures reported each year – one failure per 145 turbines.  There are 341000 windmills to date and more coming on stream before the end of 2019.  In the GE 1.5-megawatt model, the nacelle alone weighs more than 56 tons, the blade assembly weighs more than 36 tons, and the tower itself weighs about 71 tons — a total weight of 164 tons.  The gearbox in the largest windmill generator weighs 86 tonnes it is the largest wind turbine gearbox ever built.

Windmills are reliant on the right wind speed, too strong and they're locked down, to weak and they won't turn.  When the gearbox fails it can take up two months for repair and costs are usually around $100,000.  It may use the wind to drive it but you can hardly call it free energy.

Bessler said his wheel would run winter and summer, rain or shine. 

JC

Climate Change Expert’s Predictions - CO2 or Sun Spots?

So many experts who either know or predict  outcomes! There are a number of dichotomies we all experience through life, where we need to make a decision, but one side is usually regarded as wrong and the opposite view is the respected one - the paradigm.  But how often do we discover that the one we were taught was correct - turned out to be wrong?

I am experiencing a curious feeling of déjà vu about the continuing argument concerning global warming. I’m amazed at the overpowering, apparent, consensus of opinion.  During a brief foray into google to look for global warming alternative views, I discovered a wealth of information backed up by respected science and climate experts too numerous to mention who all stress that the official demands to reduce CO2 will have absolutely no impact on the amount of CO2 in the upper atmosphere and will cost $2.4 trillion annually over the next 30 years.  The presence and increase of CO2 in the upper atmosphere, it is argued, is apparently not due to human activity but rather, a natural consequence of the sun’s increasing output, and they support this argument through the fossil record and ice core sampling, among a host of other methods all of which agree.

 Professor Lindzen, the foremost atmospheric physicist of his generation, wrote:-

“The relative stability of the earth’s climate throughout geological history, notably since life evolved, is truly remarkable. It is an extraordinary natural buffering system. While CO2 has fluctuated between about 280ppm where it was in 1940 and 5,000ppm during the Cambrian period 550 million years ago, the earth’s average temperature has been maintained by natural feed-back mechanisms within a range of about 10C. These feed-back mechanisms are extremely complex and even today are by no means fully understood." 

"Many highly respected atmospheric scientists support Professor Lindzen’s views; scientists such as Fred Singer (who designed the first meteorological satellite), the late Bob Carter (the famous Australian geologist), Willie Soon ( an expert on the sun’s magnetic fluctuations), Roger Pielke (an expert on extreme weather events and sea level change) , the two Svensmarks (who have demonstrated the link between sunspot activity, cosmic rays, cloud formation and temperature, Judith Curry, John Christy, Professor Happer, Peter Ridd ( the expert on coral ecology in the great Barrier Reef) to name just a few." Wikipedia

Professor Lindzen concluded one lecture with the following words:-

“What we will be leaving our grandchildren is not a planet damaged by industrial progress, but a record of unfathomable silliness as well as a landscape degraded by rusting wind farms and decaying solar panel arrays. False claims about 97% agreement will not spare us, but the willingness of scientists to keep mum is likely to much reduce trust in and support for science.” 

Descréjà  vu

Descript

The impact of global warming seems to be self-evident.  More extremes of weather; heat waves, floods, more and stronger hurricanes, earthquakes, etc.  No one can dispute the weather seems to be changing.  But is it really due to a build up of CO2 in the upper atmosphere?  The answer seems to be that probably it is, but that may be due to the normal fluctuations in the sun's output. There are strong arguments for this alternative view. 

So why are there so many experts with differing views?  Surely one side or the other must be right and the other wrong!  Reminds me of the Bessler wheel problem, too many experts telling us we are wrong, but there are some who believe in him.

We are all aware of the errors made in scientific predictions from before the time of Orville and Wright onward - How accurate were the predictions made around the time of the first Earth Day in 1970? The answer: “The prophets of doom were not simply wrong, but spectacularly wrong".

1. Harvard biologist George Wald estimated that “civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”

2. “We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation,” wrote Washington University biologist Barry Commoner in the Earth Day issue of the scholarly journal Environment.

3. The day after the first Earth Day, the New York Times editorial page warned, “Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.”

4. “Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” Paul Ehrlich confidently declared in the April 1970 issue of Mademoiselle. “The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”

5. “Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born,” wrote Paul Ehrlich in a 1969 essay titled “Eco-Catastrophe! “By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.”

6. Ehrlich sketched out his most alarmist scenario for the 1970 Earth Day issue of The Progressive, assuring readers that between 1980 and 1989, some 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, would perish in the “Great Die-Off.”

7. “It is already too late to avoid mass starvation,” declared Denis Hayes, the chief organizer for Earth Day, in the Spring 1970 issue of The Living Wilderness.

8. Peter Gunter, a North Texas State University professor, wrote in 1970, “Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”

9. In January 1970, Life reported, “Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….”

10. Ecologist Kenneth Watt told Time that, “At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.”

11. Barry Commoner predicted that decaying organic pollutants would use up all of the oxygen in America’s rivers, causing freshwater fish to suffocate.

12. Paul Ehrlich chimed in, predicting in 1970 that “air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.” Ehrlich sketched a scenario in which 200,000 Americans would die in 1973 during “smog disasters” in New York and Los Angeles.

13. Paul Ehrlich warned in the May 1970 issue of Audubon that DDT and other chlorinated hydrocarbons “may have substantially reduced the life expectancy of people born since 1945.” Ehrlich warned that Americans born since 1946…now had a life expectancy of only 49 years, and he predicted that if current patterns continued this expectancy would reach 42 years by 1980, when it might level out. (Note: According to the most recent CDC report, life expectancy in the US is 78.8 years).

14. Ecologist Kenneth Watt declared, “By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, `I am very sorry, there isn’t any.'”

15. Harrison Brown, a scientist at the National Academy of Sciences, published a chart in Scientific American that looked at metal reserves and estimated the humanity would totally run out of copper shortly after 2000. Lead, zinc, tin, gold, and silver would be gone before 1990.

16. Sen. Gaylord Nelson wrote in Look that, “Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.”

17. In 1975, Paul Ehrlich predicted that “since more than nine-tenths of the original tropical rainforests will be removed in most areas within the next 30 years or so, it is expected that half of the organisms in these areas will vanish with it.”

18. Kenneth Watt warned about a pending Ice Age in a speech. “The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years,” he declared. “If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”

Courtsey of Mark J. Perry. http://www.aei.org/publication/18-spectacularly-wrong-predictions-made-around-the-time-of-first-earth-day-in-1970-expect-more-this-year-2/

I am sure that when Bessler’s wheel is finished and a working model demonstrated and the full description published, there will a rush to duplicate it, improve it and find the best way of benefiting from it.

I think it will prove to be more than a seven day wonder and it won’t slip back into obscurity.  Just to produce a machine that works continuously purely from the effect of gravity, requires such a paradigm shift that it may well open up a new view of science, explaining how it works and discussions about how it was missed for so long.  If, as I believe, it will generate electricity in useful amounts, it will ultimately change the way we provide electricity.   Given the fears about global warming, pollution and the rise and rise of those protest groups, like Extinction Rebellion, I think the wheel will be an extremely hot topic of conversation.

I'm sure that intense pressure to reduce global warming has much to do with reducing the pollution caused by fossil burning technologies through out the planet.  It is related to the perception that  planetary sources of energy are limited.  This Eco drive is designed to save the remaining sources of oil, by replacing electricity generation with all the alternative methods so far known. The way to get progress is to find a safe, clean, cheap alternative to current methods and I believe that Bessler’s time has come.  It’s almost as if his technology came too early, but now the time is right and perhaps his wheel will save the planet or rather humanity’s existence.

All the old ways of producing energy, and the new ones are obsolete.  They are not ultimately green they cannot generate 24/7 365 days a year, but Bessler’s could.

JC

A Miscellany of Metaphors in AP XLVI

There is an intriguing passage in Johann Bessler’s book, Apologia Poetica, Chapter LXVI,( page 295,  in my version of the English translation, which follows on from the original German, also referred to as AP).  It is in the form of free verse and is composed of a list of phrases, mainly metaphorical, which Bessler seems to hint might supply clues to the way his wheel worked.

I'm reluctant to put my own interpretations on the meaning of the phrases, but I think it worthwhile to risk it to get some feedback.  I make no claim for accuracy, these are only my current suggestions and my thoughts hop from one idea to another and if anyone can get closer to the intended meaning please feel free to add your thoughts. The passage is introduced by the  following words:-

“Those who are keen to ask questions should ask them of this little book. My work will not be revealed prematurely. Should anyone wish to speculate about the truth, let him just ponder on the rich pageantry of words which I now cause to shower down upon him! 

The above introduction seems to imply that the book AP, contains some answers.  He also says his work won't be revealed prematurely, which also implies that it will be eventually.

Let a Gärtner be no breaker of fences, even if a Wagner leaves ruts in the road.

Gärtner can mean gardener so he is saying don't let the gardener break any fences - Wagner means wagon, and he warns that wagoners damage the roads by leaving ruts in the roads, both phrases relate to the two men's attempts to damage Bessler's reputation.

For greed is an evil plant.                                                    
Greed/money is the root of all evil

An anvil receives many blows. 
A driver drives. 
A runner runs.
The seer sees.
The buyer buys.
The rain drips down.
Snow falls. 
The shotgun shoots.
The bow twangs.

The above eight phrases describe the various forces available.  An anvil receives forceful impacts; a driver steers and whips a horse onward; a runner runs freely; the eye sees, it is a passive force; the buyer pays for his goods with items or cash of equal value; rain drips down slowly; snow falls lightly; the shot gun shoots explosively, and the bow twangs elastically..

A great fat herd of fat, lazy, plump horses wanders aimlessly.
This could apply to a point in rotation where the weights are neither pushing nor pulling, just hanging.
 
The flail would rather be with the thresher than with the scholar. 
The flail/whip/cane moves upwards faster than it moves downwards.

Children play with heavy clubs among the broken columns.
I think this could describe the actions of weighted levers, similar to items C and D on the Toys page.

Acrobats and shadow-boxers are as fleet and nimble as the wind.
Fast moving mechanisms.
 
The cunning cat slinks silently along and snatches nice juicy mice.
The dog creeps out of his kennel just as far as his chain will stretch. 
He knows how to please by playing with his little toys and nick-knacks.
He wags his tail, creeps through the hoop and is rewarded with pats on his paws by the stiff fops who watch him.
I think these are metaphors for the various actions of the mechanisms. hye will only be understood once the real mechanisms can be watched in action.

A wheel appears on the scene - is it really a wheel, for it does not have the normal type of rim. It revolves, but without other wheels inside or outside, and without weights, wind, or springs.
Seen sideways or full-face it is as resplendent as a peacock's tail. It turns to the right and to the left; it spins around in any possible direction, whether laden or empty.
 A poetic description of the wheel.


All things belong to one of the three kingdoms (animal, vegetable, matter) and - you have the physical evidence in front of you. Without such things as sulphur, salt and mercury all things will soon come to a standstill - the qualities of the elements are necessary to keep things going. Saturn, Mars and Jupiter are ready to join in any battle. Even the things we eat do not lose their

elemental influence - for it spreads itself through every limb and sinew of our bodies.
I think this could be an attempt to explain the actions and origins of the force he called 'heaviness', but we call 'gravity'.

A crab crawls from side to side. It is sound, for it is designed thus.
This describes the actions of the storks bill

Poltergeists often wander freely through locked doors.
This describes how gravity can have an effect on all matter, resting or falling.

But softly! - speak softly of all the marvels, lest the enemy grows wise! He will drench me with his spittle so that I will lose my temper and, in a sudden fit, cast aside the mantle that conceals my wheel! But he shall be thwarted in his desires! His snapping will not bring me to that point! Let that be brought home to him, for rather, I shall now magnanimously set down in my book the following specific questions which have in recent days been sent to me in the hand of One who is of high rank. 
A warning to himself not to give too much away - I wish!


My granddaughter Amy is in a rehab clinic trying to recover from a series of diseases which suddenly afflicted her about eighteen months ago.  

They are CRPS, (chronic regional pain syndrome), FND (functional neurological disorder) and EDS. (Ehlers-Danlos syndrome) .

Please share the following link and/or donate if you wish to aid my granddaughter's treatment.

https://www.gofundme.com/help-our-amy-to-walk-again

JC

The Triumphant Orffyrean Perpetual Motion Finally Explained! by Ken Behrendt

Sometimes I struggle to find a topic to write about and have had to resort to reposting “The Legend of Bessler’s Wheel”!  I don’t like to repeat stuff because it becomes boring but at least I can put something up which might catch the attention of someone who is/was unaware of Bessler.

There seems to be a lot of interest in Ken Behrendt’s book about Bessler, but I haven’t read it so I can’t comment from personal knowledge, but I welcome the fact that there is a book out there attempting to bring fresh information about the inventor.  Although I haven’t actually read the book, I was able to flip through various pages thanks to google books and I studied a number of Behrendt’s drawings relating to Bessler’s portrait, 

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ykGHDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT812&lpg=PT812&dq=ken+berendt+orffyreus&source=bl&ots=oPCmyqUYTt&sig=ACfU3U1s5GQGD9fuL8mX1LPz1RQsqLr3xQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjvs-OP_ODjAhUVRhUIHReuAKkQ6AEwDXoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=ken%20berendt%20orffyreus&f=false.  

He has done an amazing job of extracting information from both portraits;  I use the word ‘amazing’ because the information he has found is so utterly at odds with the information which I have found elsewhere in Bessler’s publications that I cannot reconcile the two  hypotheses.  Unless there are two completely different concepts, unrelated to each other, one of them is wrong - or both are.

Strong words, and I mean no disrespect to Ken, and until I publish my own theory I cannot support my conclusions.  I’m pleased that Ken published his book and I encourage people to read it, I intend to buy a copy if only to check to see if my initial opinion is supported by the evidence he has found.  It provides a good subject for discussion and it introduces some new ideas about Bessler’s wheel which have been lacking lately.  Until my own work is published Ken’s is the only new piece of information out there.  I’m not sure how long it is since I published my books but it has been many years.

Here is a link to Ken’s book -
https://www.amazon.com/Triumphant-Orffyrean-Perpetual-Finally-Explained/dp/1546276459

JC