Friday 11 October 2019

The Legend of Bessler’s Wheel and the Orffyreus Code

I’m posting the Legend of Bessler’s wheel again because I’m going to be working hard on finishing my reconstruction of Bessler’s wheel.  It’s been a busy year with little time to spend in my garage where the build should have been happening, but time is racing by and I must concentrate on finishing the job.  My apologies for promising fewer blogs but the sooner I finish it the sooner I can publish everything.


Please feel free to comment if you wish and I will try to check back daily. So here it is again, 


                                              The Legend of Bessler's wheel.


Karl the Landgrave of Hesse permitted Bessler to live, work and exhibit his machine at the prince's castle of Weissenstein.  Karl was a man of unimpeachable reputation and he insisted on being allowed to verify the inventor's claims before he allowed Bessler to take up residence  This the inventor reluctantly agreed to and once he had examined the machine to his own satisfaction Karl authorised the  publication of his approval of the machine.  For several years Bessler was visited by numerous people of varying status, scientists, ministers and royalty.  Several official examinations were carried out and each time the examiners concluded that the inventor's claims were genuine.


Over several years Karl aged and it was decided that the inventor should leave the castle and he was granted accommodation in the nearby town of Karlshaven. Despite the strong circumstantial evidence that his machine was genuine,  Bessler failed to secure a sale and after more than thirty years he died in poverty.  His death came after he fell from a windmill he had been commissioned to build.  The windmill was an interesting design using a vertical axle which allowed it to benefit from winds from any directions.  


He had asked for a huge sum of money for the secret of his perpetual motion machine, £20,000 which was an amount only affordable by kings and princes, and although many were interested, none were prepared to agree to the terms of the deal. Bessler required that he be given the money and the buyer take the machine without viewing the internal workings.  Those who sought to purchase the wheel, for that was the form the machine took, insisted that they see the secret mechanism before they parted with the money. Bessler feared that once the design was known the buyers could simply walk away knowing how to build his machine and he would get nothing for his trouble.


I became curious about the legend of Bessler’s Wheel, while still in my teens, and have spent most of my life researching the life of Johann Bessler (I’m now 74).  I obtained copies of all his books and had them translated into English and self-published them, in the hope that either myself or someone else might solve the secret and present it to the world in this time of pollution, global warming and increasingly limited energy resources.


For some ideas about Bessler’s code why not visit my web sites at www.theorffyreuscode.com

On 6th June, 1712, in Germany, Johann Bessler (also known by his pseudonym, Orffyreus) announced that after many years of failure, he had succeeded in designing and building a perpetual motion machine.  For more than fourteen years he exhibited his machine and allowed people to thoroughly examine it.  Following advice from the famous scientist, Gottfried Leibniz, he devised a number of demonstrations and tests designed to prove the validity of his machine without giving away the secret of its design.

This problem was anticipated by Bessler and he took extraordinary measures to ensure that his secret was safe, but he encoded all the information needed to reconstruct the machine in a small number of books that he published. He implied that he was prepared to die without selling the secret and that he believed that post humus acknowledgement was preferable to being robbed of his secret while he yet lived.

It has recently become clear that Bessler had a huge knowledge of the history of codes and adopted several completely different ones to disguise information within his publications.  I have made considerable advances in deciphering his codes and I am confident that I have the complete design.

Johann Bessler published three books, and digital copies of these with English translations may be obtained from the links to the right of this blog.  In addition there is a copy of his unpublished document containing some 141 drawings - and my own account of Bessler’s life is also available from the links.  It is called "Perpetual Motion; An Ancient Mystery Solved?"  Bessler's three published books are entitled "Grundlicher Bericht", "Apologia Poetica" and "Das Triumphirende...". I have called Bessler's collection of 141 drawings his Maschinen Tractate, but it was originally found in the form of a number of loosely collected drawings of perpetual motion designs. Many of these have handwritten notes attached and I have published the best English translation of them that I was able to get. Bessler never published these drawings but clearly intended to do so at some point.


JC

20 comments:

  1. Hello does anyone know where i can order a custom built mechanism (that is, built according to the various lengths and sizes i need) online? i'm just way too sick and tired of working with cereal box cardboard and glue sticks. my pulley just fell off the ruler and bamboo stick that i tried sticking it to with some hot glue and duct tape. i just need a reliable device, just plastic and cheap, but something thats not going to fall all apart before i can even test it.

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    Replies
    1. Maybe you could build stuff out of these?

      https://www.amazon.com/s?k=K%27nex+construction+kit&ref=nb_sb_noss

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    2. No, those are whole kits and they don't seem to have what i need, too random. i need just a few specific sized gears, and a few specific size pulleys, and a few specific sized levers, but then they all have to fit together, and are interconnected on some axles, and not connected on other axles, some are fastened to their axles while others are loose, blah blah blah. thats why it probably needs to be preassembled altogether at the factory, hopefully its cheaper than a whole kit. like, i have a blueprint, and i need it put together, but im having trouble finding a company that can do that. i dont think knex could do that, but i could be wrong. i tried emailing them but it bounced back saying my message didnt go through, seems kind of shady company.

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    3. Maybe something like this?

      https://www.amazon.com/EUDAX-Plastic-Assortment-accessories-Bushings/dp/B0776ZPP7V/ref=sr_1_48?keywords=mechanical+plastic+gear+construction+kit&qid=1570921311&sr=8-48

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    4. For small parts you could try,
      Squires Model & Craft Tools.
      They have an online catalogue.
      Fans, motors,gears,pulleys & belts might be of help.

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    5. Duh !
      Keep forgetting, info from STEVO.

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  2. RAF John, Have you a rough idea of how many builders there are besides You, me, Jon, Yellow and Gravittea ? Thanks.

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    Replies
    1. Just the ones I know including the ones you mention, I think there’s about fifteen, but of course there are more than that anons.

      JC

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  3. RAF Say John, What ever happened to Suresh Kumar ? He was always so cordial and gave us food for thought.

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    Replies
    1. I don’t know RAF, so many people have appeared and contributed for a while and then they just seem fade away, never to be heard from again. I guess they just lose the impetus to keep searching for a solution and move on to something else.

      JC

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  4. this not bessler wheel but some may want to build because is simple

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Jo2ijgADAI

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    Replies
    1. Thank you Christopher. Interesting design even though it isn’t Bessler’s. I’m not sure if it would spin as shown, but I’ll leave it to others to confirm or deny.

      JC

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  5. I MAY HAVE FOUND AN ENCODED MESSAGE FROM BESSLER

    Hello John or anybody else: do you have a transcript of Bessler's birthday card to Karl? I looked at it but it is in Kurrent script and is causing me a headache to read, but it most definitely contains an encoded message. My reasons are as follows:

    1. It has Bible verses like AP ch 55
    2. Every single line has an accompaniment verse
    3. There are 24 letters in the German alphabet;
    and there are also 24 lines on each page of the booklet
    4. I have reason to believe each line was assigned a letter;
    the first letter of each Bible book could point to a line on the page
    5. Crossouts and revisions on the first page, and a couple v marks,
    show this was probably not Bessler's final draft,
    and from close examination reveal the list is from z to a, not a to z,
    and this is probably a very substantial help to know
    6. I have been told by researchers that each line is a summary
    of the content of the accompanying verse, which is seemingly odd
    for a birthday letter you send to someone (as big as a booklet)
    7. These same researchers say it is incredibly difficult to translate
    8. The verses form a poem, similar to AP
    9. Bessler wrote this shortly after his vindication in court,
    about two years before Karl died,
    and then afterward never returned to wheel building
    10. I speculate that Bessler left a birthday present for Karl
    buried in the birthday letter, perhaps final secrets of the wheels?
    11. It makes sense that this would be his final patent ensurance,
    since if nobody solved the clues, Karl's descendants could solve this
    12. It follows as a corollary that the code in this letter
    must be much more easier to solve than AP 55,
    since Karl was Bessler's friend, and Karl was very old at the time,
    and the letter was not publicized (or at least not widely if at all),
    so there was no fear of the public figuring it out

    A translation would probably prove to be helpful in the search as well.

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    Replies
    1. Thank you anon. I’ll look into it and post a comment later, it may take a few days but I will follow up on your suggestions.

      JC

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    2. Hello. I don't think I've ever heard of a birthday card to Karl. Where is this document thanks?

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    3. I’ll try to post a blog about it. Scanning it is difficult but I’ll do my best.

      JC

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  6. Sometimes... I have found it is easier to take a photo and use that file

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    Replies
    1. Yes I will probably do that. I forget how many pages there were, perhaps 4 or 5 but very tall and quite narrow. I’ll post each on my next blog.

      JC

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  7. not bessler wheel but some might want to sim

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiFdw2QqNfw

    ReplyDelete

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