The Truth Behind the Legend of Bessler’s Wheel and the Orffyrean Code
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 as well as hundreds of local inhabitants. Several official examinations were carried out and each time the examiners concluded that the inventor's claims were genuine.
Over the years Karl’s health began to deteriorate and his sons decided that it was time for the inventor to leave the castle and he was given five years salary and 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 it’s no coincidence that this sum matched that being offered by the British Government as a reward for the invention of a way to establish a ships longitudinal position at sea. Bessler clearly believed his invention was equal in value. Many people were interested in Bessler’s wheel, but 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. He said that a bag of money should be put on the table and the buyer could take the wheel there and then. He swore that if he was found cheating he should be beheaded, a not unlikely result if he was found to be a fraud and deceiving his ruler.
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.
This problem of acceptance by his potential buyers 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 cautiously optimistic 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, his account of the search for perpetual motion - and my own account of Bessler’s life is also available from the links. It is called "Perpetual Motion; An Ancient Mystery Solved?"
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 cautiously optimistic 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, his account of the search for perpetual motion - 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
I and thousands of others around the world believe that Johann Bessler’s claim to have designed and built a perpetual motion machine, or a continuously rotating device enabled purely by gravity, was genuine. The circumstantial evidence is compelling. This device if reconstructed now, could potentially provide cheap clean electricity, and by reducing the need for fossil fuels, provide a huge step forward in reducing carbon emissions in a very short time.
For some ideas about Bessler’s code why not visit my web sites at
www.orffyreus.net. and
JC
Found it! Good news. Ken B. has not been "disconnected" by Big Oil and his surprise for us was uploaded to the internet, as he promised, this morning at exactly 2 am local Kassel, Germany time. It's on his youtube channel. I only found the email notification for it his morning. It's a wm2d model of the Kassel wheel hauling a load of bricks up the side of Weissenstein castle and I guess you could say no one's seen that since 1717. Ken B. takes this palindrome date luck stuff seriously. Here's a link to the video:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKytCoA2Kjk
It's nice, but I was hoping he actually did manage get a video of a surviving lever from the real Kassel wheel! But even if he did how would we know it was genuine?
That is nice. The music is relaxing. But how did he get the rope to wind around the axle and the arms to wave on the little men in the model? I've been using WM2D for years and I can't even do that!
DeleteThe men waves their arms with actuators I would think.
Delete"But how did he get the rope to wind around the axle?"
He didn't. There is a modified pulley in the scripts tutorial for WM2D that approximates a rope winding around a pulley or axle. The rope length changes at the connection point according to the distance traveled by the circumference of the pulley. Quite handy in some circumstances.
What I noticed is that Ken says the wheel slows in rotation until it stops completely at the top level ready to unload the bricks. So I timed the rotation of the wheel between floors and it progressively increased from 6 seconds, then 8 seconds, then 10 seconds at the top floor. But it didn't stop.
I also checked the rate of climb of the box of bricks between floors. It was always 31 seconds for all three floors. Did this by stopping the video.
This doesn't match up with the decreasing RPM of the lifting wheel and distance the circumference has traveled ect. I'd suggest there is something amiss with his pulley rope length changing formulas. They don't quite match as they should.
From about time 1:28 to time 1:33 you can see that the reference line on the rotating green drum has almost stopped so it must be slowing down as he says. But, as you say the load of bricks always rises at a steady speed. Maybe the reason is that, by the time it gets to the top floor, so much rope is wound around the axle that the incoming rope is no longer being wound around an 8 inch diameter axle, but one that's more like 10 inches in diameter? That increase in axle diameter for the incoming rope would tend to keep the rise rate of the bricks steady while the axle slowed down. I did some approximate calculations and, assuming he's right about the masses of the wheel and the bricks, then they would be lifted in about 100 seconds through about 48 feet before the drum completely stopped even if the rise speed of the bricks is not as uniform as he shows. A remarkable coincidence. How did he happen know how the floors were arranged inside of the castle so that the bottom of that fourth floor window would be almost exactly 48 feet off of the ground? There's a lot more to this simple model than meets the eye, imo. It is interesting because I don't think I've seen anyone else attempt to model the lift of a heavy load by suddenly attaching a rope directly to the axle of a Bessler wheel turning at its maximum speed.
DeleteKen has timed the unveiling of his video perfectly! If he had missed the February 2nd date, then the next lucky palindromic date won't be until December 12th of the year 2121 or 12/12/2121 which is 101 years from now. The next one after that won't be until March 3rd of the year 3030 or 03/03/3030 which is almost 909 years later or over a millennium from now! These special days are very rare and one must take maximum advantage of the luck they bring when they appear. I wouldn't be the least surprised if Bessler had timed the construction of his Kassel wheel to be completed at exactly 7:01 am on the morning of Thursday, July 1st of the year 1717 which can be written as 7:01/7/1/1717. He would have done that to achieve maximum luck in selling his invention.
DeleteSayer of Sooths
For a while yesterday I thought he was not going to deliver on his promised surprise. But I should have known better that his huge ego would force him to deliver it and exactly on time. I must admit that it's impressive considering how simple it is. I think he made the arms on the little silhouette figures wave by putting motors on them that were programmed to keep changing their swing directions every second or so. He then hid his method by making the motors invisible. The little men definitely add to the realism and it looks like they are giving directions about the lifting of the bricks. Too bad he could not have added some more of the animated figures at the windows of the floors below the wheel but that would have been a lot of extra work for a quick youtube video made to meet a lucky date deadline and it might have become too distracting.
DeleteAnonymous and PROUD of it!
Anon 04:27 wrote "Maybe the reason is that, by the time it gets to the top floor, so much rope is wound around the axle that the incoming rope is no longer being wound around an 8 inch diameter axle, but one that's more like 10 inches in diameter?"
DeleteThe 48 feet of rope that was taken up by the axle might have been bunched up in the middle of its section of the axle and made a sort of lump there even bigger than 10 inches in diameter. That would happen because the pulley wheel frame on the floor could not swivel and as a result the groove in the pulley wheel would always apply a force to the rope traveling to the axle section to try to pull its windings back toward the center of that section whenever the windings went too far to one side or the other of that center. Having a wheel that did that automatically would have been another favorable selling point for his invention because it would prevent the rope windings from possibly going off the end of the axle section and getting jammed into a space between the end of the axle and the vertical support there.
Are you saying that from your calculations the wheels angular momentum at 26 rpm is what does the lifting of the bricks and is exhausted at 48 feet?
ReplyDeleteHis model could be just momentum driven after a motor is turned off. The rate it slows depends on the MOI of the wheel.
Yes. I gave the axle a mass of 100 pounds and put the other 1,000 pounds into the drum and toward the rim. At 26 rpm's there's enough rotational KE in the axle and drum to lift 200 pounds about 48 feet and it takes about 100 seconds of lifting to use up that rotational KE. But, the wheel also is producing its own torque that offsets loss of rotational KE so any calculations will only be very approximate.
DeleteKen has already made his effort to get good luck from this month's 2/2/2020 day. Now I'm wondering what John will be doing to get some good luck this month for his wheel because it looks like he missed out on that now past lucky day. I read somewhere that birthdays are supposed to be very lucky days and he has his 75th one coming up on this Wednesday the 5th which is only two days from now! That makes me think he's going to reveal something new about his 5 mech wheel to get some good luck for it in the future. Maybe he's not announcing it now and intends to spring it on us as a surprise? That would be really nice.
ReplyDeleteWhen I’m ready to do so I’ll reveal my design in the form of a working wheel. It’s not finished yet and probably won’t be for a while. As I’ve said many times, if it fails I’ll publish all the details. I have many calls on my time which takes me away from my wheel and leads to delay. I know that people get impatient for me to show my work, but I don’t want to be in Ken’s position without a working model if possible. Believe me, I’m impatient to finish it too, but some of you will be aware of my granddaughter’s illness, and that takes precedence over everything else. I’m determined to finish my wheel as soon as possible, progress is steady but slower than I would like. Please accept my apologies for my slowness.
DeleteJC
I don't think John believes in such things as lucky dates and numbers while Ken obviously does. But I think luck is a very important part of life. Would any of us even be here now if Bessler by chance had not found his way into the kitchen of some monastery near dinner time and laid eyes on that rotating turnspit that had some meat that was roasting on it? That lucky event is what triggered his obsession with pm and made him go on to achieve incredible success. It was his version of our reading of Dircks' and Gould's books. What would his life have been like if he hadn't seen that turnspit? Would someone else have come along eventually and managed to do what he did? Something tells me that would not have happened. This whole subject is based on the incredible luck of one man three centuries ago.
DeleteI always like to assume that certain numbers might be lucky, in advance, but experience always shows me that it is at best, a lucky coincidence, if the number appears at a fortuitous time. Fortuitous, happening by chance rather than by intention.
DeleteI agree that it was a luck chance that led me, a bored fifteen year old, to the school library where I stumbled upon Gould's ‘Oddities’. I prefer the word ‘serendipity’.
JC
John's 75th birthday is on this Wednesday the 5th? That's very good! Birthdays tend to be lucky. 7 is considered to be a very lucky number and in the Bible it speaks of there being 7 heavens with God up in the highest or 7th heaven. 5 is the number of mechanisms he has in his wheel. I think this means that if he works on his 5 mechanism wheel on his birthday the 5th, he might just have a very lucky breakthrough with it!
DeleteSayer of Sooths
I hope you’re right SoS. I’m not sure if I’ll be working on my wheel tomorrow, but I will definitely go and study it, hoping perhaps for final confirmation that it is the correct design. Many people say that we shall never know if, on the day a working wheel is revealed, it is the same design as Bessler’s, well I can assure all that my wheel’s design will be exactly the same as Bessler’s.
DeleteJCo
"...well I can assure all that my wheel’s design will be exactly the same as Bessler’s."
DeleteI'm sure you know that Ken makes the exact same claim for the design he's found and since they are totally different you both can't be right! We need some accurate way of telling if a particular wheel is "the" one Bessler invented. There must be some test that only HIS wheel could successfully pass. But, what would that test be? Anyone have any ideas?
Yes there is a way. I haven’t been able to access Ken’s book but I’m told that he has found all his clues within the portraits at the beginning of Das Triumphirende. I don’t know how any of his clues can possibly reveal the design, but I do know that his findings are utterly different to mine. When I publish mine their explanations are obvious and clearly correct, and lead to a unique and simple concept. I realise that without my explanation or a working wheel, no one can accept my words with any conviction, but I will publish as soon as I can.
DeleteJC
@John Collins. You say in a past blog that you found the clues for Bessler's wheels in six different places but you have not revealed them yet. I can't comment on any of them without knowing what they are. I am now reading my way through Ken's giant Bessler book and most of his clues do come from the two DT portraits as you say. But they are not obvious clues. They are very easy to overlook even though there are dozens of them. When you put them all together you will get all the right measurements for the parts used in either Bessler's first 3 foot diameter wheel or his last two 12 foot diameter wheels.
DeleteKen spends much time on that little piece of paper with the odd curves and lines drawn on it in the second portrait. Turns out that it provides all of the places on the arms of the levers that you have to attach cords to. The same cord connection locations on the lever arms are again given in the first portrait only using the fingers of Bessler's left hand on the table this time. But there's a lot more info in the two portraits like the shapes of the levers and the weights of their lead weights, the lengths of the 4 different types of cords that must be used for his connection principle, and the stiffness of the springs so the levers can balance against each other perfectly . We've all seen those two portraits for years now but Ken puts them under a powerful microscope and shows details in them that you would never guess were there in a million years without him showing you were they are.
For example in the second portrait there's a little cartoon mouse that Bessler put in that is a clue about how he made his wheels turn in both directions. See the book on the table in the first portrait? It's the 4th of the group of 4 books Bessler's right arm rests on. It stands for the 4th decade of Bessler's life when he discovered the secret of perpetual motion since he was 31 when he got his first little wheel working in Gera. His right hand's finger points to that book to tell you the secret of his wheels can be found by studying it. Again Ken puts his microscope on that 4th book and shows how it gives you the exact shape of the levers used in Bessler's wheels.
I've read a lot on Bessler and his wheels over the years and I think Ken's book is the best so far. Even though it weighs a ton I would recommend it for anyone actually trying to build a working Bessler wheel. It has about 40 pictures in it and many of them show the mechanisms inside of the wheels which nobody has seen before. His book looks like he wrote it specially for carpenters because all of the measurements are given in 16ths of a inch and the weights are in ounces and pounds. We still use them here in the US but people in the rest of the world will have to change them into metric which he does not provide but you can use an online measurement converter site for that.
Thank you for your instructive comment....Ken. I’m sure that you believe you have the answer, and yet I believe I have it. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see who is right.
DeleteJC
I think the competition between John and Ken's wheel designs will not really be settled until both are used to make working physical wheels that you can put on a table and touch with your hands instead of just run on a computer screen. Whoever's wheel cannot be made into a working physical model will probably be quickly dismissed no matter how good the simulations for it look.
DeleteAs far as Ken's book is concerned I finally finished reading my copy even though it took me over a month. It does read quick though and is well illustrated but you need to take your time with it especially when you get past chapter 2 and the discussion becomes more technical. In the last chapter he gives you what he calls the "Bessler Wheel Design Formulas". These let you design a Bessler type wheel of any size and starting torque by calculating all of the parameter values for its parts using simple math. He says these formulas are the exact same ones Bessler would have used. To make life easier for the craftsmen reading the book he provides a giant chart that gives all of the parameters for all of the parts in all four of Bessler's publicly exhibited wheels. He even gives them for a six foot diameter one direction wheel that Bessler was trying to sell to the Royal Society over in London before he died and a giant super wheel intended to pump water up to the top of Karl's cascade that was never constructed.
In one of the emails I got from Ken he claimed that his Bessler book is the best selling one he's written so far and that actually surprised him. That's good because it will make it more likely that some reader will be motivated by it to try building a wheel using the design the book provides. Really though whether its John's, Ken's, or someone else's wheel the important thing is that we finally get something that works and cannot just be dismissed as a hoax or mistake by the skeptics. We need to show some long overdue progress with this subject.
Henry L.
Also...HAPPY 75th BIRTHDAY to John and many more!
https://www.funimada.com/assets/images/cards/big/75th-birthday-12.gif
There will be just ONE true mechanical Perpetual Motion Principle. The Horse.
ReplyDeleteThere may be more that one way to mechanically implement it. The Cart.
Arguing about who has the correct Cart design is pointless without a Horse to pull it.
Maybe Bessler had a cart that pulled itself?
DeleteHappiest of Birthdays to John!
ReplyDeleteWithout his dedication we wouldn't have this great blog to visit every day to help keep our minds on Bessler's wheels and how they might have worked. There's really nothing like it anywhere else on the web. Thank you, John!
Anonymous and PROUD of it!
Happy birthday John, and a lot of health and success in wheel build!
ReplyDeleteWithout your "life job", there would be no so much adherent persons out there, then there are now.
All the best
PLMKRN
Thank you guys, for your kind good wishes for my birthday. This has to be THE year! Have I said that before? Maybe once or twice or.............!
ReplyDeleteJC
Happy birthday!
ReplyDeleteThanks Ineke. JC
DeleteHappy Birthday John !
ReplyDeleteThank you for all these years of research and sharing. I hope you find the solution to the puzzle, but I hope even more that you stay in good health and that Amy covers hers. . .
Robert . . .
Thank you Robert, much appreciated. JC
DeleteHappy birthday John :-)I appreciate your life's effort and dedication.
ReplyDeleteZhy
Thanks Zhyyra, it’s good to know people appreciate one’s efforts. JC
DeleteOn this day....... John Collins please accept my warmest wishes on your birthday
ReplyDeleteThanks Gravittea. I had a great time with my family. JC
DeleteSorry I could not wish JC a happy 75th birthday yesterday as I had originally intended. To make up for that, I've found him a nice video of Count Karl's cascade in its full glory as water is released from the base of its Hercules Octagon. Check out the geyser formed at time 2:45 when the water reaches a spout in the lake at the bottom of the cascade! That building in the background is where Weissenstein Castle was previously located. But Karl wanted his cascade to run like this continuously day and night from spring through fall and Bessler probably promised him that his largest super wheels could make it all possible by pumping water back up to the octagon from the lake continuously. Unfortunately, they were never constructed. But, maybe someday soon they will be! Once his working wheel design is found again, it's only a matter of raising the funds for the construction.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBra147uAqA
Sayer of Sooths
Wunderbar!
DeleteThank you SoS, as the other comment said, wonderful! I’m hoping to go back to Kassel to see the waterfall in action as soon as my wheel works. JC
DeleteHello John what do you know of this fellow John Worton? https://vimeo.com/151241081
ReplyDeleteSome anon above mentioned that there are cartoon mice in the DT portraits. Damned if I can find any of them. But the more I stare at this
ReplyDeletehttps://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ljbZhK74f-c/WfWSS6HzkqI/AAAAAAAADTw/JsyXWDSUL5ItluTifUz0zCHj1xY-HxiGQCLcBGAs/s320/logo%2Bcleaned.jpg
the more I'm convinced that it IS a cartoon mouse! The circle in the center is its nose. The top curls of the reversed R's are its eyes. The loops of the R's are the ears. The curling legs of the R's could be its front paws. I also notice when Bessler spells the 18th century German word for counselor or "Rath" it sometimes looks like the word "Ratte" or even "Ratz" which are words for "rat"! In that "little book" poem in AP there is a line that reads "The cunning cat slinks quietly along and snatches juicy mice."
Why all of these references to mice and rats? Any ideas? The poem suggests that mice are "juicy" or nourishing and tasty to a "cunning" cat. I'm thinking that's a hint that those wanting to learn more about Bessler's wheels better find the mice in his drawings and try to figure out what they mean.
That is not the mouse Ken (other anon) was referring to. Bessler wrote lots of things in his AP book, way to much to begin over with here. You should think about purchasing John Collins English translations of Bessler's books (at minimum AP). They are downloadable electronic PDF files. They really are a must for the serious researcher. Additionally you should think about visiting and joining www.besslerwheel.com (a great forum for everything Bessler).
Delete@anon 20:50
DeleteI think you could make a case for it being a mouse or a two direction wheel or practically anything. I'm sure however that Bessler noticed its similarity to a mouse as you did.
He does mention horses, dogs, cats, and mice in his AP poem as well as crabs and peacocks. Starlings which are small crow-like birds are mentioned elsewhere in AP.
Aside from the crab and peacock which refer to his wheels, I think Bessler uses these animals as symbols for the social classes of his day and his place in it. The royalty and nobility were like hungry horses that consumed the bulk of the wealth in a society and lived in luxury. The dogs and cats were the well paid servants of the rich and represented the lower status but educated professionals, doctors, lawyers, priests, businessmen, etc. They also grabbed a lot of wealth and lived well, but not as well as the horses. Then there were the mice and starlings. They were small and helpless peasants in the lowest social class. They had to scurry about to survive on whatever crumbs were left over after the horses, dogs, and cats had fed and grabbed about 95% of the wealth. I think in this symbolism Bessler saw himself as a mouse who wanted to become a cat or dog. His deal with Karl managed to help him do that at least as long as his patron lived.
If there are mice inserted into the drawings in Bessler's books, then they were put there for a reason and probably an important one. You can be sure that nothing in those drawings is there by accident. I'm going to take another look at those drawings and see if I can find any of the mice and point them out if I do.
Ken B points out the mouse in the second DT portrait in one of the figures in his book. It's not really in the portrait part but in one of the letters in the words under the portrait. Look at the word Wurde on the first line. In the middle of the letter W there is a tiny black mouse. He has big ears and his head is turned toward the left side of the W. He looks like he's holding up a paw to fend off an attack from something on his left or is maybe even praying for mercy. That something to the left of the mouse looks like it's running to the right and chasing after the mouse like a cat would do and there even appears to be a thin needle like claw coming down on the top of the mouse's head to trap it as cats do when they play with a mouse before killing and eating it. This hard to find symbol according to Ken B describes how certain latches worked inside of Bessler's largest wheels to make them able to turn in either direction. Although he does not mention it I think I've found another mouse in the first portrait that's easier to spot. Let's see if anyone else can find that one. (Hint-the one in the first portrait is actually in the portrait and not in the letters under it.)
DeleteHenry L.
Yes John and I have corresponded several times over the years, but I was unaware of that film. Very interesting and I’m so pleased that you gave me that link. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteJC
Worton posted links to some photos of his Bessler wheel sculptures here years ago. They were well made, but really bizarre things with curvy arms going off in all directions. He was actually trying to turn your translator's AP translations into mechanisms. The problem was that those translations are mostly subjective interpretations and who knows if they actually describe Bessler's wheel mechanisms. But Worton took them literally. He had a lot of energy and enthusiasm but just did not know in what direction to head. Maybe he hoped by chance that he would hit upon something that worked which never happened. I wonder if he's still active?
DeleteAnonymous and PROUD of it!