Saturday 16 November 2019

The Legend of Bessler’s Wheel and the Orffyreus Code

My apologies to all, I accidentally deleted my post about my progress on reconstructing Bessler’s wheel!  I lost all the comments too, and that is, I think, the first time in nine years that has happened, I’m so sorry but I can’t get it back.

PS Thanks for the quick action by anon, he recovered my lost post and has published it in the first comment below this one.

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.

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.


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 

24 comments:

  1. Google has a Cache function that saves webpages for a brief period. I was able to get your original blog post from it. :)

    An Update on My Reconstruction of Bessler’s Wheel.

    So my new determination to work every day on my latest attempt at reconstructing Bessler’s wheel proceeds at a snail's pace - but it proceeds! As I've said before, even though the design concept is clear in my mind, transferring it into physical reality on the wooden back-plate which provides the support for everything, is harder.

    There are, as you might have guessed, five mechanisms, for at least three good reasons. Firstly, five is the most I can fit on. Secondly, two mechanisms interact in every turn, in other words they work in pairs, so that two mechanisms act as one, which means that the five are effectively reduced to four, as each half of a pair acts in concert with its adjacent partner. Obviously the same applies to however many mechanisms you use. Thirdly, Bessler said five are needed, and that is a fact which can be proved, but you will have to wait until I’ve managed to build a working model before I publish the solutions to the many clues.

    The difficulty lies in assembling the various components in such a way that they don’t interfere with each other, except when they’re meant to. There are five sets of quite complex mechanisms, which may seem as though it goes against Karl’s description of the concept being simple. But although one can easily understand how it works, the construction is quite difficult. When you add in the requirement to have pulleys and cords it complicates things more. I’ve finally got one of the mechanisms working, so all I have to do is copy it’s construction! I think this would be easy for an accomplished engineer or even someone with the right tools but for me it is very fiddly, but when you see it you will understand. I actually made something close to this mechanism about ten years ago, but rejected it because it was not working as I wanted it to. I now know that there is an action within the complete cycle which is not intuitive, at least to me anyway.

    I'm using stiff nuts on the bolts to hold the parts together and this gives me the option to adjust how tightly they grip, either clamping them tightly or just holding them together slightly loosely, so that the parts designed to move can do so with minimum friction. This works but the nuts protrude too much and can catch on other parts moving across them - so frustrating! So I have to mount the levers on longer anchor bolts giving me the option to place them higher, thus clearing offending nuts. I tried rivets but they bind too tightly restricting free movement.

    The cord does not seem to present too much of a problem but I don't have any pulleys yet, so I am just passing the cord through eyes screwed into the back-plate, not a perfect solution bringing in unwanted friction, but they do work.

    Lastly I only have a threaded rod as an axle at present but I will get some bearings as soon as I need them, I have identified both pulleys and the bearing shells and the same applies.

    I’m trying to complete this work before next year arrives so that I can comply with the 2019 date in Karl’s card! It’s cheating I know, to fix things to confirm a prophecy (well it’s not really a prophesy) but the timing is just about right anyway.

    JC

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    1. Thanks for finding that last blog, Anon 23:30. I was wondering why it suddenly disappeared because it had a lot of interesting comments in it. Sadly, such is the nature of the internet. Here today and gone tomorrow. Hopefully, John will be around for many years to come!

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    2. Well, thank you anon! I’ll put a note at the beginning of the above post directing anyone interested in reading it again. I’m working on my next blog at the moment, it’s slightly off topic but interesting to people, I hope!

      JC

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  2. After years of trying I finally got my wheel running!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-5tDxugHag

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    1. hey maybe this method could help john get his wheel running?

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    2. John should like it because it uses FIVE rockets! Lol!

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  4. yes.... there is usually a system that is out of balance, and it does not have a violent impact involved

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    1. Most designs are out of balance at the start. The trick is stay out of balance as they rotate. Nothing in MT will do that.

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  6. I am the only one in the world with a working bessler wheel. No one else has it because God gave it to me and no one else . I got it eight years ago after a synchronicity involving four elephants and a giraffe in a Zoo that I was working in.

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    1. What a coincidence, I got the solution while watching a flea circus.

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  8. Endeavor to persevere..... the toys page has always been a fascination to me, that forces on both sides of the pivot (axle) needed to be put to work has been a real head scratcher with no impact, which is not required

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    1. The most important parts of the Toys Page are NOT the toys. They are actually the five letters and their alphanumeric values: A = 1, B = 2, C = 3, D = 4, and E = 5. Combining them in different ways gives you the different specifications for the various parts used in Bessler's wheels. But, you won't be able to recognize and get those specifications from the Toys Page until AFTER you first find the design he used! Good luck finding that design. Examples: Use the values of B and the two C's and you can write 2 x (3 + 3) = 2 x 6 = 12. That gives you the diameter of the Merseburg and Kassel wheels' drums of 12 feet. Use the two C's and write 3 + 3 = 6 which is the length, 6 feet, of their axles. Using just D = 4 gives the mass of a Merseburg wheel weight or 4 pounds. But, Bessler also provides the specifications in the Toys Page of the springs he used in his various wheels, the lengths of their lever arms, the lengths of their coordinating cords, where the cords were attached to the levers, the distances of the lever pivots from the center of the axle, etc. Again, unless you ALREADY have found his design, you won't be able to use the Toys Page to find the specs for his various wheels' parts. You will literally have to become another Bessler to find that design! He really does not give you his secret design in the Toys Page. He only gives you final confirmation there that you have found his secret design. If you don't understand the Toys Page fully, then it proves that you haven't found Bessler's secret design yet. Good luck finding that design! When (actually IF ever!) you do find it, then all of the possible combinations of the alphanumeric values of the page's five letters will make complete sense to you. Yes, it's an important page and he placed it in MT as a substitute for the pages that clearly showed the design he found and used in his wheels which he had removed and destroyed. It is useless substitute but serves another important purpose: to let you know when you have finally found Bessler's exact design.

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    2. Amazing he could do all that with just seven letters. You can get a lot of different results by combining them in differnt ways. The E for 5 could be the five mechs John thinks he used. But D + D = 4+4= 8 could be the eight mechs most everyone esle thinks he used. There must be info about the spirngs he used because the two little guys on the bottom have springs for bodies and no hands to hold their hammers or are they axes? The little guys on top have arms holding their hammers so maybe there's info on the levers and weights there?

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  9. I believe that MT 17 is the drawing that best represents the "Spirit" of the working wheel. Full on one side and empty on the other. How one achieves this concept is quite the dilemma. There leaves little doubt that this concept will turn

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    1. B. puts down mt 17. I think mt 18 has more the spirit of his working wheels but lacks the connectednest principle because no ropes between weights. ovvyus on his site used to use mt 18 on his speculation page but got rid of it for some weird heat engine thing that B. wouldnt have used. Stay with mt 18 because it makes the 9o'clock weight float and easy to move (remember B's quote "a skill craftman can easily throw a heavy thing up")

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    2. I think MT13 is important because Bessler said it would be 'very good for running' except for 'resistance' which means the over balance wasn't producing enough power to lift the weight approaching 12 oclock to vertical. It has four letters: B, C, C, and D. If you convert to numbers and add you get 2 + 3 + 3 + 4 = 12. And that wheel just happens to have 12 levers! He puts the D near a weight and it could mean a 4 lb weight like in Merseberg wheel. I think maybe he tried to build MT13 and was surprised it did not run despite its over blance. Big problem is when curvy lever arm hits the little wheel at B. Then the over balance has to lift the lever weight and that also causes the big crescent weight at 6 oclock to swing to the left and rise which takes even more power and too much for the over balanced wheel. I wonder what would happen if the little wheel at B was attached to a post outside of the wheel? Then the over balance only has to lift the weight at 12 oclock. Maybe that would turn it into a runner?

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    3. @anon 7:16
      Don't waste your time with mt13. I made several wm2d models of it and none worked. Didn't matter if the little wheel was at the top of a heavy half moon pendulum or attached to a post outside of the wheel. Just couldn't get a lever to rise as it reached 12 o'clock.

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    4. All of the MTs are break even at best when friction has been removed. I agree to not waste time with MT13, but that goes for all the devices in MT. Look for the prime mover, adapt to one of his wheels, and you will have a runner.

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The True Story of Bessler’s Perpetual Motion Machine.

On  6th June, 1712, in Germany, Johann Bessler (also known by his pseudonym, Orffyreus) announced that after many years of failure, he had s...