The search for the answer to a perpetual motion machine has been going on for hundreds of years if not thousands, and yet we seem to be no nearer a solution now then anyone else has been, apart from Johann Bessler’s machine. How come he succeeded when no one else, as far as we know, even got near?
According to the man himself, he had two things things in his favour; firstly his extensive practical knowledge in the various trades commonly practised in his day; and secondly his freedom to work on the project all day, every day for as long as it took.
While I accept his expertise and probably his skillset in numerous trades was far in advance of the majority of people today, I’m not sure that that would give him much of an advantage over today’s wealth of information garnered from the internet. But there was one advantage he had over the rest of us and that was that each trade he learned required a hands-on approach, there was no way of learning from books or in a classroom, and I believe this gave him a unique practical knowledge not available to anyone else. He claimed expertise in each trade but I doubt that each of his mentors would have assessed his work as exemplary, although it could have been adequate, and he could have made good use of the knowledge gained.
Clearly Bessler had a quick and clear understanding of each of the crafts he learned and this stood him in good stead. But to return to the second advantage he claimed, that of being able to work exclusively on his project, he wasn’t married then so he only had to feed and house himself, but he had to acquire raw materials with which to build his mechanisms, which he would have to pay for, just as we do today. He still had to find ways to earn enough for all his needs and he had a reputation for having good medical knowledge, another skill he learned during his wandering years, and which he was called upon occasionally to practice, thus earning himself some income. He also claimed to be able to repair watches, probably mainly pocket and fob watches. With his experience in many areas of life, he had the means to earn enough for his purposes.
So when it comes down to it, his chief advantage seems to have been his experience in physically working in these trades. But later he decided to adopt the trade of organ maker, learning from his younger brother, Gottfried. This was a complicated and quite technical device but it used numerous items which Bessler found useful and adapted for his wheel. He did build some organs but it was only as a means to an end, and gave him knowledge not necessarily accessible elsewhere.
By reading the above you might think I have trivialised his skills as nothing more than those of a journeyman, but far from it. I believe he had a huge breadth of knowledge specific to his needs and the skills to apply them, but above all he had the intellectual ability to work out how to design and build a working model of his wheel. Following numerous trial and error experiments he gradually found his way to the correct mechanical arrangement.
His interests were not limited by his desire to build a perpetual motion machine. As we all know he died while constructing a windmill, but as was typical of Bessler he introduced the idea of a windmill with a vertical axle, allowing it to take advantage of the wind from any direction. He designed a carillon and wrote the music for it. He devised a submarine which could be moored under water with an air supply from one of his gravity wheels. He offered to design and build a leather tanning factory. He offered to build a fountain driven by his gravity wheel for “the amusement of gentlefolk”. There is so much more but these examples demonstrate the breadth and depth of his knowledge.
And when you see the true ingenuity of his coding system you will have no doubt that this man was no simple peasant but a misunderstood genius
PS - Don’t forget my granddaughter Amy needs your help, if you feel like donating to her crowdfunding site, your kindness will be gratefully received. My thanks go out to those generous people who have already donated. She is improving and our most fervent wish is that she can walk out of the clinic under her own steam, so-to-speak, hopefully before the end of this year.
Look at this
https://www.tiktok.com/@amyepohl/video/6825374007550905605?fbclid=IwAR1a79JP3xBtduq2RZbPP7dql-NvI_uqJ6_nA6Dx7iNE_5am9K44CqvlKks
And this https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-our-amy-to-walk-again
JC
And when you see the true ingenuity of his coding system you will have no doubt that this man was no simple peasant but a misunderstood genius
PS - Don’t forget my granddaughter Amy needs your help, if you feel like donating to her crowdfunding site, your kindness will be gratefully received. My thanks go out to those generous people who have already donated. She is improving and our most fervent wish is that she can walk out of the clinic under her own steam, so-to-speak, hopefully before the end of this year.
Look at this
https://www.tiktok.com/@amyepohl/video/6825374007550905605?fbclid=IwAR1a79JP3xBtduq2RZbPP7dql-NvI_uqJ6_nA6Dx7iNE_5am9K44CqvlKks
And this https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-our-amy-to-walk-again
JC
"Following numerous trial and error experiments he gradually found his way to the correct mechanical arrangement."
ReplyDeleteBessler was a jack of all trades type who became obsessed with pm one day. But there were probably thousands of other inventors just like him all over Europe at the time and some of them would have been even more skilled and obsessed. Why did only Bessler find success? Simple luck.
If only one in a million designs will work and he tried 100 different designs in a decade, then he had a 1 in 10,000 chance of finding one of them. He did luckily find one by chance, but it wasn't because he was some great craftsman or genius. He is like someone who bought one hundred tickets in a lottery with a one in a million chance of winning the jackpot and he just happened to win it. Good for him. No one talks about the other 9,999 guys who also spent about a decade making a hundred different model pm machines and achieved nothing as a result. No one brags about their failures and only very rarely are any of them even remembered in history.
Anybody getting ready to chase pm needs to keep these approximate statistics in mind. There is a 99.99% chance he will spend his entire life chasing pm and get nothing out of it but a constant roller coaster ride of hope followed by despair as one build after another fails to work as expected. It's not a good hobby for anybody who has problems dealing with disappointment and frustration and likes to get quick results.
I agree there was definitely an element of luck involved, but I’m sure he worked out what he needed to make happen and worked his way to the solution. He says he found an action that gave him an idea on how to proceed using the action and combining it with some additional design got the result he looked for. No, not just luck.
DeleteJC
For thousands of years, out of billions of people, there is only one guy achieved the unachievable. Luck plays minimal role. He worked very very hard.
DeleteDownplaying his achievement by just saying he was just lucky is unfair.
He was a crazy delusional genius.
IIRC, there was some guy who showed up on BW forum years ago. He sounded like he knew John through private correspondence with him. He mentioned that he had used MT and made 500 attempts with new designs or modifications of designs before he finally gave up. If anon 12:43's estimate of only one in a million designs working is accurate, then with 500 attempts that guy had a 1 in 2,000 chance of hitting one of them which would be five times better than the odds Bessler faced. But he still had a 99.95% chance of ultimate failure which what he got. I can't even imagine making 500 attempts which would make him five times more persistent than even Bessler was!
DeleteSo now, we compare a random guy on a forum with Bessler.
DeleteIf you still don't get how able he is, watch watch making and organ making documentaries on YouTube.
A 100 tries? 500 tries? Lol. Ken B. has them all beat with his 2000 tries to finally get something that he claims works. He didn't actually build anything though because it's all sims he made. But with 2000 tries using the one in a million designs works assumption by anon 12:43 that would give him a 2000/1 million = 1 in 500 chance of finding a runner. But that's only a 2% chance of hitting it and a 98% chance of not hitting it. Still a long shot, imo. But he also claims he found several dozen new clues that helped him. Maybe they improved the odds for him? If so and they improved his odds by 100 times that would give him a 1 in 5 chance of success. That's only a 20% chance of hitting it and a 80% chance of not hitting it. The odds were still against him but much better than buying a few lottery tickets and hoping for a jackpot win.
DeleteI do agree that finding pm is more of a numbers game then being a mechanical genius. Bessler was certainly a skilled guy but he was more of a carpenter/mechanic type and wasn't making anything like those complicated clocks and toys that were being made for the royals back then. The more builds made by each pm seeker and the bigger the number of seekers the greater the chance one of them will find a runner. If each generation worldwide has say 1000 pm seekers and each makes two dozen tries on average before quitting or dying off then there's a 1000 x 24 /one million chance of a runner being found in any generation. That works out to a 1 in 41.666 chance or a 2.4% chance of success and a 97.6% chance of failure for any generation.
This is all very approximate but you can expect one success every 100/2.4 = 41.666 generations. Wikipedia says a generation is about 30 years so that means we can expect one runner to be found about every 41.666 x 30 = 1,250 years! If each generation has more than 1000 pm seekers in it then the number of years for a runner to be found is reduced. If each generation had say 4000 seekers then a runner should be found every 312.5 years. It's been about that long since Bessler found his runner so maybe that's a good sign for the rest of us.
You begin: "The search for the answer to a perpetual motion machine has been going on for hundreds of years if not thousands, and yet we seem to be no nearer a solution now then anyone else has been, apart from Johann Bessler’s machine. How come he succeeded when no one else, as far as we know, even got near?"
DeleteYou're assuming that since you haven't nobody has. I have to say John I don't so much enjoy reading in this blog firstly because you think that you have the answer and from what I've seen of your basic concept and your mix of "classical" failed PM concept with some kind of ingenious lever mechanism. secondly because It's frequented by the same kind of people... those "authorities" with which I had the very first issues since I have been involved. To get to the point I think you have some undeserved notoriety as an inventor and at the same time you are being underappreciated as a contributor.
Hi cw, I think it’s a fair assumption that no one apart from Bessler succeeded in building a working pm machine, unless you know different, in which case show me the evidence.
DeleteYour second point implies that you think we are all wrong or misguided and from that I take it thst you think Bessler faked his wheel, is that correct?
JC
Working on such evidence unless of course you want to travel here to see what I've been working on. I'm saying that starting from a conclusion as most do is no way to find anything. Accordingly you must campaign and argue your various points and beliefs and above all you must convince yourself before you will commit to the various laborious toils of building anything. Bessler is said to have built 100 and some odd "useless" machines so before his discovery he was a perpetual "notionist" just like anyone of us. My issue with you and so many in the community is the accolades and credits and co-self aggrandizement and the general "buttrubbery" that you engage in.
DeleteDon't assume I'm attacking Bessler in any circumstance. I wholeheartedly believe he had a working device more so than anyone currently. If your codes and such are real then compare them to the mountain of thought experiments I have tried, then if we come to the same conclusion (which I have of recent reached) then I'll believe they are real.
Thanks for explaining, cw, I got the wrong idea about your views. There is a certain amount of self-aggrandisement and guess I’m guilty of it sometimes, but it isn’t what it seems to be to an onlooker. For myself, I get so excited when I break open another clue, successfully, I want to tell the world and yet I can’t for two reasons. Firstly I don’t want to give it all away for free, and secondly I have experienced many times the negative reactions to some clues I’ve posted. So I don’t intend to explain any more until I have the proof in the shape of a working wheel, but sometimes I cannot resist telling people thst I have deciphered so many clues I think I can reproduce the whee. But even now I find that the build is always more complex than I imagined it would be.
DeleteJC
You can relax, cwforshort, because John has promised to "reveal all" THIS very year! So, within the next 7 and 1/3 months all of your questions about his wheel and the clues that led him to it will be answered. He's promised to do that about three times so far this year. This is definitely going to be the year it happens. I can feel it in my bones...but, then again, maybe it's just my arthritis acting up?
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteGood luck with that! JC
Delete@DS. You make Bessler sound like another Leonardo da Vinci! I did read somewhere that Bessler invented some kind of submarine. Any drawings or descriptions of it anywhere? I assume it would have been powered by one of his wheels.
DeleteUnfortunately, I don't think we have any drawings of Bessler's submarine or even a good description of it. However, Bessler's submarine was probably based on one of three actually build by a Dutchman named Cornelius Drebble in the 1620's who was a genius inventor.
DeleteIn 1620 he demonstrated one on the Thames river and supposedly he even gave King James I an underwater ride in it as thousands of astonished Londoners looked on. It was made of wood like a large elongated barrel and covered with greased leather. For propulsion on the surface it used oars which could also work when completely underwater because of their fold down shapes when pushed forward. To submerge you allowed leather bags inside of the hull to fill with water and then squeezed it out of them later to surface again. Diving and surfacing was also controlled by large movable wooden paddles outside of the hull that acted like dive planes. To provide air to the crew the sub towed a smaller barrel behind it that stayed on the surface and had two long leather hoses attached to it to both draw fresh air down to sub's crew and then pump stale air out of it to the surface. Drebbel's subs could only go down a few tens of feet at most but could stay submerged for hours.
Bessler's version would probably have been similar but larger to hold a ship's cargo and crew. It would probably have used a single large rear propeller driven by one of his wheels inside which would make more interior space by eliminating the need for up to a dozen oarsmen. With all of the air inside of his sub's hull he would have needed his wheel's weight to act like ballast weight to help the sub submerge.
Here's a painting done shortly after Drebbel's 1620 demonstration. The king is on the right side looking on.
https://assets.newatlas.com/dims4/default/1131d06/2147483647/strip/true/crop/530x353+0+5/resize/1200x800!/format/webp/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnewatlas-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Farchive%2F3715_02.jpg
Why would anyone want to escape from a sinking ship in a submarine during a storm? The main reason is that it is has a watertight hull and can't sink although it can be tossed about on the surface. If that becomes a problem though then you only have to dive down below the depth of the lowest trough of the surface waves because at that depth water turbulence suddenly disappears.
Thanks for that information anon 00:36. I heard Drebble made some sort of clock that used changes in air pressure to wind itself up and was considered to be pm by some but really wasn't. I didn't know he was making working submarines a hundred years before Bessler!
DeleteAnyway I can see problems with Bessler's submarine. If it was big enough to save a sinking ship's cargo then it would be dangerous to have it mounted on a ship's deck or attached to the side of its hull in a storm. It would have to actually be contained inside of a regular sailing ship's hull and preloaded with the cargo. Then when it looked like the regular ship would be sunk by a storm's waves, the crew would have to scramble into the submarine, seal its hatch, and somehow launch it. Maybe the regular ship could have a gate in the back of its hull which would open and Bessler's submarine would then slide out nose first and get away from the regular ship as fast as possible as it sank?
He'd have to have a pm wheel that could put out a lot of torque to propel his submarine at a good speed whether on or below water. It might be doable but the expense of building special sailing ships to carry them would probably be a turnoff for selling his submarine to shipping companies. A lot of inventions unfortunately are too ahead of their times and his submarine sounds like another one of them.
Interesting discussion of Drebbel's submarine. I found out that while Drebbel built the submarines, they were actually based on earlier designs first published by an English mathematician named William Bourne in the 16th century.
DeleteHere's a cutaway illustration of one of the submarines Drebbel built. It is only partially covered with the greased leather and the oar design is not correct. Also it does not show the four lateral dive planes on the hull or any windows, but I've seen other versions which show several windows on the hatch tower for the captain to see out and even a small window for each of the oarsmen. To surface crewmen had to compress the water out of the leather ballast bags by standing on hinged boards on top of the bags. Once they were mostly emptied valves were closed to keep them from be refilled by the outside water pressure.
https://media.sciencephoto.com/image/c0150217/800wm/C0150217-Cornelius_Drebbel_s_submarine,_artwork.jpg
This submarine carried a crew of 16 people. 12 men to work the oars and ballast bags, 3 to work the rudder and front and rear lateral dive planes, and 1 who was the captain...Drebble who would be shouting orders to everyone else. It's good to be the captain!
Even though it only went down about twenty feet, this thing was a potential death trap. If it got a serious leak and started flooding out, they'd have to row like crazy to try to get up to the surface and then everyone would have to climb out of the small hatch before it all flooded out. But since it was made of wood it probably wouldn't have sunk. Those early submarine inventors took a lot of chances and little real use was made of their inventions until over two hundred years later. But they were the inspiration for classic science fiction novels like "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" by Jules Verne which was published in 1870 and eventually they were used extensively in the naval warfare of WWI and WWII.
Found this photo of a reduced size model someone made of Drebbel's 1620 submarine. I don't think it was functional and it just floated on the surface for photos. It doesn't have the right number of oars either.
Deletehttps://images.slideplayer.com/14/4220923/slides/slide_3.jpg
The note above the photo is interesting. Apparently, after the crew got aboard Drebbel's submarine, those leather ballast bags were then filled with just enough water to make the submarine sink up to near the top of the hatch which was sealed. Then the front and back dive planes would have been adjusted to slant slightly downward and the forward motion of the hull due to the continuous rowing would make the submarine submerge as the hull was steered in different directions by the rudder in the back. But if the guys stopped rowing, the submarine would then automatically slowly rise to the surface again even if the water was not squeezed out of the ballast bags. That kind of made the design inherently safe as long as there were no outside water leaks into the hull. At the surface, the ballast bags could then be fully squeezed out and the hull would rise even higher up above the water so the crew could exit and then stand on the top of the hull without getting wet. Also, the bags, after being partially filled at the start of a dive or completely emptied after surfacing, probably did not have mechanical valves on them that were closed. The leather hoses into them were either closed by tightening wooden clamps on them or just tied closed with pieces of rope.
Really amazing that something like this existed back in 1620. While Drebbel was cruising around UNDER the Thames River in London with the king of England, the Pilgrims were getting ready to land on the shore of Cape Cod in what is now the state of Massachusetts in the USA. Can anyone imagine the conversation that must have followed at the king's dinner table the evening after his underwater adventure?!
Drebbel is a popular guy over in the Netherlands. They even put him and one of his subs on stamp.
Deletehttps://www.stampcommunity.org/uploaded/KuoLC5310/20190713_NED2010submarine.jpg
Poor Bessler. No stamps for him.
How much actually BW's monetary worth would be today?
ReplyDeleteAsk me when I’ve finished my wheel! 😆 JC
Delete@SK
DeleteJohn's definition of "finished" is everyone else's definition of "never really ever completely finished"! :)
Ouch, you can be so cruel! ☹️ JC
DeleteJohn can NEVER consider his wheel "finished" until he gets it working and he will continue to try to do so right up to the time when he either drops dead or they finally drag him off to a nursing home somewhere. He also cannot reveal anything detailed about it until then either. I'm sure he's well aware that if he "finishes" before he gets a working wheel, then he will basically be quitting and will then FOREVER lose his chance for the historical fame of being the first person since Bessler to reproduce one of his wheels and prove they were genuine. No one will ever see his likeness on a coin or stamp! All of his building efforts over the decades will then only add up to a big ZERO! He's not going to risk all of that just to satisfy the idle curiosity of a bunch of strangers who float in and out of this blog from day to day. In a way I don't blame him because in his place I'd probably be doing the exact same thing! There is just too much for him to lose by "finishing" without a running wheel.
DeleteClearly Bessler was highly intelligent - but was he a genius because he invented a mechanical gravity PM wheel that no one else has managed, not from lack of smarts, resources, skills, spare time, and trying ? It's a good question. If one of us managed to produce a working wheel would we automatically be classified as a genius by the general public and us the more knowledgeable too ? Some would say it would depend on how closely your wheel mechanics 'fit' Besslers' clues, in hindsight. Above 80% perhaps and you are not a genius, below you are ? The debate would rage on for the next two decades trying to 'fit' the 'clues'. Because you must have been subconciously directed by Bessler's 'clues' at some level. Some of course exclusively use Bessler's 'clues', and some hardly at all, because of fear of purposeful misdirection (very lose with the truth) to keep his secret. If you saw your final 'simple' mechanical solution would you be so inclined to label Bessler a genius ? You might push him from the pedistal you put him on when its simplicity is revealed ? A let down for all, disappointment ? Mystery solved, simple mechanics laid bare. Bessler himself tells us how worried he was that he wouldn't get paid once known. So it is likely that you (the Besslerite) might feel less disposed to label him a genius once your anguish of not knowing his mechanical secret is extinguished. Which is why he was multi skilled in many disciplines as well as carpentry and mechanics. And left 'secret' codes etc etc. To write another narrative of the man with perhaps polymath abilities (like Drebbel, Da Vinci, and others) to run concurrent to the perhaps more fragile label imposed by the likes of us of the 'genius' inventor of the gravity PM wheel. Should the court of public opinion should turn against him once his mechanical secret of PM and his Laws of PM are known. IMO.
ReplyDeletePersonally I think of him as at functional genius level, even if his mechanical PM secret proves rediculously simple. "The secret to genius is not complexity, it's simplicity" - axiom. “The definition of genius is taking the complex and making it simple.” - Albert Einstein.
-fletcher
Wikipedia defines "genius" as:
Delete"A genius is a person who displays exceptional intellectual ability, creative productivity, universality in genres or originality, typically to a degree that is associated with the achievement of new advances in a domain of knowledge."
I think that, by this definition, Bessler is DISqualified for being considered as a "genius". Why? Read the last part. Did Bessler's invention lead to "the achievement of new advances in a domain of knowledge"? The obvious answer is NO! The reason is that he never revealed HOW his wheels worked so that their reality could be verified by others and they could be put into widespread use. He published much, but his works became an excuse to vent his hate for the rest of humanity for not accepting his word that he had a genuine pm wheel nor being willing to pay him an exorbitant price to buy one of them. When it came time to show the details of what he had, all he could do was drop a few useless hints here and there and he even destroyed the few illustrations that showed how they actually worked. He made NO "new advances in a domain of knowledge" because, if he had, we wouldn't all be here now wondering how his wheels worked.
While true geniuses like this one were being suitably and honorably commemorated over the centuries:
https://www.wnsstamps.post/stamps/2014/RO/RO147.14.jpg
What do we have of Bessler? Only one image that HE had to pay to have done! Reason? When it came time to think of the big historical picture, he was worried about making a quick thaler and being on his way chasing after some other grand dream scheme he had. That kind of short term thinking is why we don't see his image on any postage stamps or coins, even in Germany, and the scientific world, when it rarely mentions him, considers him to have been a crook who was just lucky enough not be exposed during his lifetime.
That is Johann Bessler's "legacy" to humanity and it will remain so until someone finally reproduces one of his wheels and can PROVE it is, in fact, one of his wheels. I don't recommend anyone hold their breath while waiting for that to happen!
@anon 4:11 I'll be happy if anyone, John or another, PROVES they have invented a working PM gravity wheel. Let alone that it was also Bessler's principle. The two are not mutually exclusive. If they were mutually exclusive would Bessler then be elevated belatedly to 'genius' by your standards and his legacy rewritten because now it could be proven and is a useful and original contribution to advances in Energy and Physics understanding?
ReplyDeleteIf someone comes up with a working pm wheel, claims its the same as Bessler's, but cannot prove that, then it will do nothing to establish Bessler as a genius. History will still remember him as a charlatan and most likely a swindler. It is critically important that any pm wheel that is created and claimed to be his be proven to be or the label put on him by history won't be changing.
ReplyDeleteOf course, as long as a working pm wheel is not proven to be Bessler's, then it will be considered to be the creation of its present inventor and he will probably be hailed as a genius even though he may only have stumbled upon the working design by chance. The world tends to be more interested in results than in exactly how they were obtained. I suspect that a lot of "geniuses" in the past were actually just average people who got incredibly lucky at some time during their lives and stumbled onto new ideas and devices that by chance worked. Maybe instead of calling them "geniuses" we should be calling them "winners"?
Edison had to test 1600 materials before he found one that worked in his light bulb invention. The press referred to him as "The Wizard of Menlo Park" (which was a town in New Jersey where he build a lab in 1878 and invented both the phonograph and light bulb). If he had quit after trying 1599 materials there would have been no light bulb and he may eventually have lost financial backing for other future inventions and gone out of business altogether. He was lucky enough to have the stamina to hang in there until by chance he stumbled upon a material that worked. He was a smart and practical man, but luck had much to do with his success and it will have much to do with any future inventor of a working pm wheel.
You make your own luck - Ernest Hemingway. "Make (one's) own luck" - to rely on one's skill, ability, and perseverance to capitalize on opportunity, rather than relying solely on luck itself - genius.
ReplyDeleteWhat is the difference between genius and intelligent? - A genius is more creative than a person who is merely intelligent. It is creativity that leads to invention of new products and is labeled as a prerequisite in a genius. Intelligence helps in adapting to different circumstances easily though it does not need genius.
What's the difference between genius, intelligent, and lucky?
All good comments and I’m largely in agreement with them. If I succeed in building a successful working wheel this year it will be because I have interpreted Bessler’s clues correctly. It follows therefore that, if it works, it must be the same design as Bessler’s. But the real proof will follow when I publish the clues and then I think people will agree that if he wasn’t a genius, he was at least ingenious!
ReplyDeleteJC
And if you don't succeed in building a working wheel this year (or any other year) it could also be because your clues are only imaginary and there is no way of ever correctly interpreting them and getting a working wheel out of them. You may be assuming that can only happen to other pm chasers but not you. But, the reality is that it's just as likely to happen to you as to anybody else.
DeleteObviously I disagree with your comments. As I’ve said countless times, if this design doesn’t work, or I fail to finish it this year, I’ll publish everything I know and you can judge for yourself if the clues are worth anything.
DeleteJC
Lol! Yes "countless times". By my count this is about the third time so far this year you've promised to publish all "this year" if you don't get a runner. The problem is you make that same promise EVERY year! You'll still be making it next year in 2021 and hoping by then that everyone has forgotten all of your previous promises. We haven't! The longer you delay in "revealing all" the truer it makes that dreadful Mr. Lepard Spots Prophecy seem! Your continuing unfulfilled promises have become nothing more than verbal sleeping pills you keep slipping to everyone here so you can maintain the illusion that you have some special inside information about Bessler's wheels that they don't have. You dare not reveal it because you know if you do everyone will quickly realize you really had nothing of value all along.
DeleteI trust you’ll be among the first to apologise for doubting me when I publish everything.
DeleteJC
Bessler was born and brought up in an era when famous and genius ones existed... So, it is not wrong if we called him a genius...
ReplyDeleteOther than his wheels he really achieved nothing more than thousands of other guys had also achieved in Europe at the time and they weren't geniuses. If not for his wheels no one would ever have heard of him. He was what is now called a "one-trick pony".
DeleteIntelligent people are a dime a dozen. Plenty of derelict people are intelligent. Geniuses are obviously more rare, about 1 in 5 million. They are good at abstract problem solving. If a gravity pm wheel is PROVED, and it is established beyond a doubt that it was Bessler's design, then Bessler might be remembered in future as a show pony with a genius one-trick.
ReplyDeleteNot every genius is stable or functional. Bessler was.
ReplyDeleteIf I had a time machine and could go back three centuries to give Bessler some advice, here is what it would be:
ReplyDeleteI would advise him to contact Christian Wagner and then invite him to personally examine the interior of the Kassel wheel. There would be no charge for this privilege, but Wagner would have to swear on his sacred honor never to reveal to anybody what he was going to see or try to use it himself. Wagner would also have to sign a document stating that he would keep the secret or have to pay Bessler a huge sum for having revealed it to anyone. But, there would be an additional requirement.
If Wagner discovered that the wheel was not a spring powered fake, then he would have to publish a one page statement at his own expense in all of the major newspapers in Saxony. In it Wagner would state that he had examined Bessler's Kassel wheel and discovered that it was, in fact, a genuine pm wheel. He would also apologize to Bessler for having doubted his word and for any embarrassment or distress that had been caused Bessler by the publication of Wagner's previous debunking "Critiques". He would also have to say that anyone investing in the wheel need not worry about being cheated out of their money with a fake.
Wagner, 100% convinced that Bessler's wheel had to be a fraud, would have confidently accepted the offer and made his way to Weissenstein Castle for the examination. One wonders how he would have reacted when he first saw the wheel's interior and did not find the "split axle" design he expected to find and which he had used in the smaller wheel he had built. I suspect that he would have been physically ill for several days afterward as he prepared to write the most humbling document of his entire life.
Anonymous and PROUD of it!
I like the idea but I doubt Wagner would agree to all those stipulations, and he was well in with Gartner and Borlach. Gartner had his own agenda and definitely would not have wanted any agreement with Bessler to overshadow his own reputation, and he controlled his two stooges with an iron will. But he already had a man of excellent reputation who had validated Bessler’s wheel, Karl the Landgrave.
DeleteJC
@AAPOI!
DeleteYou've presented a really bizarre scenario. Wagner and his buddies were used to issuing challenges to Bessler that he backed away from accepting and this would have been a chance for Bessler to turn the tables on them for a change. It's basically a "put up or shut up" kind of challenge. Wagner's confidence versus Bessler's confidence. Wagner would really have no excuse for not accepting it and if he didn't it would look like he was afraid of being proved wrong and then people would have perceived him as a coward and started to dismiss everything bad he was saying about Bessler and his wheels. I think he would have had to have taken the challenge for the sake of maintaining his reputation as well as pride in his intellectual abilities. I wish that it had happened like you say because it would have added yet another interesting sub plot into the Bessler story.
John I remember there was a small hole on one of his wheels.
DeleteHe said "If something went wrong with my machine, I'd mend it through a tiny hole, to prevent anyone seeing inside."
Well, what type of mechanism can be fixed using a tiny hole?
Good question yellow. We could start by considering what could be fixed through a small hole and I guess lubricating a part which might be sticking. Or tightening a weight which might have come loose. It’s impossible to know but perhaps it will become clear when we see the actual parts.
DeleteJC
@yellow. Here's some info that may answer your question.
DeleteThat hole was in one of the wooden slats on one side of the Draschwitz wheel, IIRC. It was only the size of one's palm and Bessler would not have reached his arm through it to fix anything. It was used for inspection purposes only. If his wheel stopped running or started making weird noises because some part inside broke loose and was slapping around, he would peer in through the hole and try to locate where the problem was. Apparently, there were enough small crevices between the slats which allowed just enough outside light into the drum's interior so he could see where the problem was. The crevices were not large enough to show any of the major details of the wheel's mechanisms to someone located outside of the drum. He probably used bright daylight from a nearby window shining on one side of the drum for this (shining on the side opposite the side with the inspection hole). Then he had to remove the slats covering the section of the drum where the problem was to fix it (those slats would have been on the side of the drum being hit by the sunlight).
The slats on the side of the drum with the inspection hole were just nailed directly to the drum's radial supports. But on the other side of the drum many of the slats would have been permanently attached to large individual frames that were then each separately attached between the drum's radial pieces and could be individually removed. These frames covered with slat pieces probably weren't nailed down but were held in place by screws with large wing shaped heads on them so they could be easily removed and replaced by hand. Removing a single frame would then uncover a large portion of the drum's interior. Bessler would always have made repairs from the side of the drum covered with the removable slat frames (and which faced the sunlit window). When no one was around, Bessler would have removed one of those slat frames in minutes, fixed the problem inside of the drum, and then replaced the entire frame of slats again. Probably most of his repairs involved replacing broken springs or cords. Occasionally he would just have routinely lubricated various bearings inside of the drum to reduce any friction in them. He wanted his wheels to be as easy to repair as possible because this was a feature he hoped would help sell the invention.
There seems to be a lot of information there for which there is no documentation and I therefore suspect it originated from Ken B’s mind.
DeleteJC
Yes John. He is the haunting ghost of this blog, isn't he :)
DeleteBessler explicitly said that hole was for fixing the wheel. This seems to be a huge clue to me.
I think it's right out of Ken's book. But, you have to admit, even if he made it all up, it certainly sounds good. I guess it can at least be acceptable as "plausible conjecture" if nothing else. I give him credit for trying to provide us with some answers that make sense because no else seems to be able or willing to do so.
DeleteI just wish that when Ken speculates he would say it is his opinion and not necessarily factually correct. There are several ways he can suggest things without presenting them as verified facts.
DeleteJC
On page 292 of JC's version of AP it says:
Delete"If something went wrong with my machine, I'd mend it by poking around through a tiny hole, to prevent anyone seeing inside..."
"I'll tell you with great pride that my timbers are all solid. There's also no trickery going on behind that hole ...it's just for inspection purposes."
He seems to talking about TWO different kinds of holes here. The first quote describes "a tiny hole" used for repairs which was small enough so no one could see inside the drum when it was exposed but large enough to allow Bessler's hands to get inside of the drum and "poke around" with the mechanisms there to repair them. Maybe the use of the word "tiny" here was a poor translation? This hole was one of several such holes. The second quote is for "that hole" which was just used for a quick visual inspection of the drum's interior. There was only one of those holes and it would probably have been on the side of the drum opposite the inspection holes.
Actually, I find that anon 18:21's description is logical if we assume that the Draschwitz wheel's drum had only one small inspection hole on one side which was open all of the time and multiple repair holes on the opposite side which were kept closed until needed. Using multiple repair holes on just one side of the drum makes sense so Bessler could only open one of them as needed to make a quick repair to a particular "perpetual motion structure" near one of the various different locations around the drum's outer circumference.
No reason to suspect two holes. You may find Ken B’s description logical but you have added more speculation to his initial speculation!
DeleteJC
The unfortunate thing about the B. literature we have is that it often tends to be ambiguous due to originally being poorly written and also to then being poorly translated later. As a result what exists hasn't let anyone find a solution in about three hundred years. Anyone who hopes to make some real progress toward finding a solution better be able to read between the lines and even retranslate some of them at times. I don't think there's anything wrong with that as long as it's kept to a minimum and the reinterpretations make sense.
DeleteFor example, on page 326 of AP we read
“My axle is not like that. Rather it has many compartments and is pierced all over with various holes.”
Some might immediately think that the word "it" in the second sentence refers to the "axle" in the previous sentence. But that makes no sense unless one can believe the small section of axle inside of the drum had compartments cut out of it and holes drilled into it. However, it does make much sense if the word "it" refers to the entire drum. With that reinterpretation then those "various holes" could refer to the ones on one side of a wheel's drum used for servicing the drum's internal mechanisms.
I do carpentry as a hobby and I know that if B. was a skilled carpenter he would have had no problem covering a lot of service openings around the rim on one side of the Draschwitz wheel's drum with removable frames so precisely fitted that the outside surfaces of the strips of wood attached to them would be completely flush or level with those of any nonremovable strips of wood on that side that were just nailed directly to the drum's radial members. You'd only know where the removable frames were by looking for the thumb screws that attached them to the drum's radial members. Possibly he even hid the attachment screws by using low profile pan head type screws, but then he would have had to use a wide tip screw driver to remove them. That would have created the illusion that the wheel's drum only had one small inspection hole on the other side.
I'm surprised he would have left that small inspection hole open, but he probably did that because there was nothing to see at its location between the axle and the drum's rim and he could occasionally place it at the six o'clock position under the axle to show people there were no weights hanging down from the axle on ropes or chains. Personally, I would have kept that small hole covered up so the drum looked completely closed on both sides.
Well if I’m not mistaken it’s Ken B again with more of his unsupported speculation. But aside from that I know how offended Mike Senior would be to read the opinion of someone who doesn’t understand any German describing his translations as poorly translated. I also doubt if Bessler would’ve be too impressed as having his own huge opus as being poorly written. This from a man who suffers from loggerhea. (definition - Excessive talking or talkativeness or wordiness that is characteristic especially of the manic phase of bipolar disorder.)
DeleteJC
"Unsupported speculation"? Anon 03:15 gave a quote from that version of AP you put out using Mike Senior's translation that clearly makes NO sense whatsoever! I think that when Mike "translated" Bessler's German poetry into English he did a LOT of subjective interpretation and there's really no way of knowing how much it agrees with what Bessler was trying to say. Imo, anybody using your AP as a guide to try to rebuild a Bessler wheel needs to keep that in mind or he could waste years looking in the wrong direction.
DeleteThis has been discussed and commented on numerous times over the years both here and on the BW forum, but for old times sake I’ll repeat yet again. The way Mike Senior translated all of Bessler’s book was discussed between us before he even started. He asked me if I wanted a literal translation or one that would read more easily but whose meaning would be as accurate as possible given the 300 year difference between when it was written and when it was translated. Not knowing what was in the books I went for Mike’s best interpretation. Translation itself is not an exact science so everyone accepts that, given these minor obstacles, meanings are subjective and it’s up to the reader to decide what Bessler meant.
DeleteI will add that Stewart who has studied Bessler’s German and has actually taught himself German says that some words in Mike’s translations may occasionally vary from his own ones, but the meaning is usually accurate. You may have difficulty in understanding what Bessler meant, but many have no problem with it.
JC
Here this quote is from Bessler's "enemy" Wagner's Critique;
Delete"Lastly, I must mention that they who inspected the Draschwitz wheel observed, almost in the middle of the radius on the one side which faced the wall and was rather dark owing to a lack of incident light, a hand-sized gap formed by the removal of a mere thick splinter an indication that Herr Orffyreus by necessity had to do something in the machine to reset the internal motive principle or superior force to its previous state. Mr. Orffyreus was prepared with the excuse that this opening was left so that whenever something came undone inside the wheel he could fix it right away without having to remove the entire casing (how he always takes care to excuse himself with the fragility of the materials!); this, however, just cannot be. If something breaks on the other side, which is several ells away and has no such service hole, how would Herr Orffyreus be able to fix it through this tiny opening? The wheel currently set up in Merseburg, which is covered with linen cloth, has various openings ~~ that have been left around the axle and are bandaged over with pinned-on strips."
That hole is definitely for fixing not for inspection. But it seems there are also additional holes around the axle.
Thank you reminding me, yellow. Although I’m sure there was a hole in the Draschwitz wheel, and Bessler made the excuse as stated, bear in mind that Wagner was out to prove Bessler was a fake, and from the style of his account it looks as though he was reporting what was told him about the Draschwitz demonstration, so he wasn’t there, and this cannot be relied upon as an unbiased account. If there was a weakness in one of the mechanism which sometimes caused it to stick, the unsticking or lubricating the part might be achieved through the hole.
DeleteIt’s worth pointing out that, given later validity by Karl the Landgrave, and the obvious fact that Bessler would not have chosen to exhibit a wheel with a hole in it which he claimed was to allow him to fix a problem. He had designed it to have flawless exterior, but as with many prototypes hitches happen, and they require a quick fix. Obviously the hole was in a place close to a mechanism which previously had some problems. Equally obviously it wasn’t there to fix any other problem elsewhere in the wheel. Wagner’s suggestion is ridiculous
JC
" Obviously the hole was in a place close to a mechanism which previously had some problems. Equally obviously it wasn’t there to fix any other problem elsewhere in the wheel. Wagner’s suggestion is ridiculous".
DeleteJohn,
Wagner's suggestion may not be as ridiculous as you think and the hole being in a place near a known problem is a long way short of being obvious too.
If the fixed part of the sections within the wheel were of a very simple and sturdy construction, the likelyhood of needing to interfere with them would be limited. Access to the whole surface of the wheel would only be needed for major overhauls. For the purpose of inspection and lubrification a small hole at the appropriate distance from the centre would be ample to assure the frequent maintenance needs to assure the correct running of the machine. For this to be achieved the task is very easy. Check and lubricate the mechanisme through the hole, turn the wheel a full turn, check and lubricate the next mechanisme. And keep turning the wheel a full turn until each and every mechanisme has been located at the hole.
What is obvious, is that to be able to do this, the mechanismes would simply need to progress around the wheel.
John, not only Wagner, Bessler himself said that hole was there for fixing. It is obvious inside of that wheel there must have been another mechanism that could be detached from the outer shell.
DeleteRH4706, you seem to be suggesting that the hole can be revolved independently of the mechanisms inside? Seems unlikely to me.
DeleteYellow that is not obvious to me, why would he have a mechanism that could be detached from the outer shell, you and RH46 seem to be of the same mind, but I don’t get it. JC
What is it that you both think the hole is for and why do think it’s important?
DeleteJC
Read Wagner's critique;
Delete"Finally, Herr Orffyreus supposedly gets to the root of the matter when he asserts that children in the lane play with his perpetual motion or so-called superior force. "
So the mechanism he used, most probably, in appearance, was something similar to a mech. in a children's playground.
I am imagining 1717...Karl was there, Bessler removed the cover and there it is, in the wheel, there is some type of a see-saw.
Designing a mechanism that rotates around an axle is hard, requires several motions, but see-saw is easier. It just goes up and down to a certain degree. What happens there is also very easy to understand for an observer.
So I think, that hole also adds some credibility to the inner see-saw idea. That inner see-saw can just hit or push the outer wheel. You can also use a ratchet for direction control and it also explains the sounds.
So see-saw or not, with detachable design, with a hole on the outside shell, you can just go where the problem is and fix the inner mechanism.
JC wrote "RH4706, you seem to be suggesting that the hole can be revolved independently of the mechanisms inside? Seems unlikely to me."
DeleteDoesn't seem unlikely to me. Wagner was convinced that Bessler's wheels were mechanically the same as the one with the clockwork movement hanging off of a divided axle like the one Wagner had constructed. In such a wheel, the mechanism will hang almost straight down as the drum rotates around it while the wheel runs. Wagner also says in his Critique that the little hole in the Draschwitz wheel's drum covering was "...an indication that Herr Orffyreus by necessity had to do something in the machine to reset the internal motive principle or superior force to its previous state." I think Wagner was suggesting that the little hole was there to allow Bessler, when the hole was under the axle, to insert some sort of crank into the drum's interior whose end would then engage and wind up a large spiral spring to power the clockwork mechanism and make the wheel run. I think he was suggesting that because that was exactly what he did with the small fake pm wheel he constructed.
Ah I see, yellow. There are other games children play, one that has been mentioned before. Hoop rolling, also called hoop trundling, is both a sport and a child's game in which a large hoop is rolled along the ground, generally by means of an object wielded by the player. The aim of the game is to keep the hoop upright for long periods of time, or to do various tricks. This goes back hundreds of years. I did consider the see-saw but eventually dismissed it. Of course I might be wrong and you should keep looking.
DeleteJC
Thanks RH46, Bessler definitively stated that his wheel definitely did not hang weights from the axle.
DeleteFor me the truth is clear, and there was no chance of a fake, as you so eloquently argued on the forum no one has ever managed to duplicate Bessler’s wheel using only the materials available to him.
JC
JC to RH46: "... as you so eloquently argued on the forum no one has ever managed to duplicate Bessler’s wheel using only the materials available to him."
DeleteBut that would seem to contradict this Bessler quote from AP, pages 288 and 289:
"But the point is, my invention is not fanciful...I haven't suddenly come up with an unheard of form of matter; rather, I have invented something new from commonplace materials."
John, my suggestion is not that the hole can revolve independantly around the wheel.
DeleteMy suggestion is that the multiple mechanismes can evolve independantly around the wheel, and because the hole cannot, each and every mechanisme will at one point be infront of it.
@Unknown.
DeleteIt sounds like you're saying that the Draschwitz wheel's drum was stationary! No way!
Not at all. If the mechanisms holding the weights and the wheel are Independant of each other, they can both ratate. They don't rotate at the same speed, therefore each mechanism with a weight will progress around the wheel, and end up after enough rotations in front of the hole. Each mechanism will have it's turn infront of the hole, then progress around the wheel to find itself infront of the hole again. The number of rotations would depend on the amount each weight progresses around the wheel.
DeleteIf you try and apply your reasonning to another persons theory of how it could work, things don't add up. The hole goes around with the wheel because it is at a fixed place on the wheel. The weights do not need to hang of the center to do this.
Yellow sir... The mechanism just consists of levers and weights... Not even cords to hold them... So when a lever weight combination malfunctions it can be replaced or corrected through a hole by inserting a hand... It is as simple as that...
ReplyDeleteWhy do we fail to digest this fact?...
Because, no one has figured out how or what the mechanism is yet?...
People talk of lofty codes, etc., But, it is all just about designing a single simple lever weight system... And this is not being discussed so much... just one lever weight unit and the rest is duplication...
It is like designing a bicycle wheel... Two such wheels make a bicycle...
Hundreds of years have passed without any significant outcome... why?...
We think it is very complicated...
We think it requires a genius...
We think springs and cords are important...
We think secret codes exists...
We think a normal man cannot build the wheel..
We think that geniuses already tried all...
We think it requires a multi talented to...
We think it would be very expensive to build..
We think it would take a long time to build...
We think it can be clarified by simming...
So our very thinking about it is not correct broadly...
It can be erected by any young Carpenter boy... But only when the simple mechanism is figured out first...
"So when a lever weight combination malfunctions it can be replaced or corrected through a hole by inserting a hand... It is as simple as that..."
DeleteBessler must have had an usually long arm to be able to reach through that single little hole from one side of the 9 feet diameter drum to the other side to make a repair there. And he'd have to be able to make all of the repairs using only one hand!
I think it's more likely that he had a specially trained squirrel that would enter the hole and then make the repairs for him. After a repair was completed and it came back out of the drum again Bessler would then reward it with some nice tasty nuts. Bessler probably also kept that pet squirrel with him during public demonstrations of his wheels. If anyone in the audience started heckling Bessler or suggesting his wheel was a fake, the squirrel would then run up his leg and repeatedly bite him in his balls. The word soon got around and then there were no more hecklers at Bessler's wheel demonstrations after that.
Roflmao! I haven't laughed this hard in weeks! I think any arse heckler visiting one of Bessler demo's would have to make sure he kept his twig and berries inside of a sturdy metal cup placed inside of his pants or he would have been singing soprano later on! Lol!
DeleteI contend that B. didn't enter into an agreement with Wagner et al (which sounds logical to do) for various reasons. One that JC mentioned, that Karl had already attested to the truth. I think a more important reason is that B. knew mechanically skilled and talented people would read his books, and thus his 'clues'. Therefore he had to make the 'clues' obscure in case somebody like Wagner or Gartner (or John Rolley etc etc) were able to grasp their meaning, with their superior mechanical knowledge compared to the average citizen or even other great craftsmen of various disciplines. Thus had he entered into such an agreement with Wagner, Wagner might call him out on the accuracy and relevance of the published 'clues' as misleading or at most generous leading the reader up the garden path. B. couldn't afford another conflict with Wagner et al. Perhaps Karl was able to make the connections to most of the 'clues', in hind sight, or then again perhaps not ! He never said.
ReplyDelete-f
Yes good point. And don’t forget Karl had decreed that once Bessler was in his employment no more negative comments or publications would be permitted, which effectively silenced the three ‘enemies’ as Bessler called them. But until 1715/16 he was fair game.
DeleteJC
AAPOI above did present an interesting hypothetical scenario that probably never occurred to anyone before.
DeleteOne way to eliminate one's enemies is to turn them into supporters. I think what really burned the arses of Wagner and his buddies was that they really didn't know exactly how Bessler's wheels worked and could only guess. Wagner's fake wheel seemed like a plausible explanation, but I think they knew its continuous power output was far less than for Bessler's wheels and Borlach's hidden vertical support board drive rod explanation was impossible for a wheel like the one at Gera that was on a movable stand of some sort.
By revealing his secret pm mechanics to them their curiosities would have been satisfied and they probably would have kept Bessler's secrets to themselves although I'm sure all would have been secretly building duplicates of Bessler's wheel without telling him. Indeed they might even have all started publicly proclaiming Bessler a genius and welcomed him into their esteemed ranks. With that kind of support, in addition to Karl's, maybe Bessler could have finally found a buyer for the invention and history would have been changed. Sadly we'll never know for sure.
Greetings John, Does Mr. Bessler ever mention a "toggle" movement as a part of his mechanism ( or hint at this)? Thanks!
ReplyDeleteHi Richard, sorry but not to my knowledge. I don’t recall it but could it have been an alternative word or phrase?
DeleteJC
Anybody ever hear of a tract Bessler supposedly published in November of 1717 called "News of the Curious and Wonderful Trial of the Orffyrean Wheel at the Castle of Weissenstein"?
ReplyDeleteI never heard of it before and I thought we already had all of Bessler's pm wheel writings. Yeah, if it exists I'd certainly want to read it. Maybe it's got some more drawings of his Kassel wheel we haven't seen yet? That would be really nice!
DeleteYou can find reference to all the Bessler related documents in the BW forum wiki, which lists all documents. The one you referred to is listed as being published 28/1/1718.
DeleteJC
Thanks for that tip, John. I did find the tract and went through it. No new drawings of the Kassel wheel in it unfortunately. But, it does have this one oversized decorative letter on one of the pages that is interesting. It shows a stork pointing his beak toward the portion of a spiral that looks like the letter "B" which could stand for "Bessler". Could that image contain the secret of Bessler's wheels in symbolic form?
Deletehttps://digital.slub-dresden.de/werkansicht/dlf/91822/7/0/
(Part 1 of 2)
DeleteThanks for providing a link to that most interesting image, anon 08:42. Being a numerologist, it's various hidden meanings hit me like a lightning bolt between my eyes almost as soon as I saw it!
First, as you rightly suggest, the stork's bill points to a letter B shaped section of the spiral in the center of the oversized decorative fraktur letter to let everyone know they are getting some important information from Bessler about his wheels in the symbolism of the letter. The information pertains to the Kassel wheel since we see Weissenstein Castle in the background where that wheel was constructed and a path or steps leading down to the letter.
That spiral wrapped around the thin vertical staff in the center of the letter is a symbol for a stretched spring and was Bessler's way of telling the observant reader that his wheel needed springs to work and that he is going to give him some important information about those springs. The stork's bill is a symbol for a lever inside of the Kassel wheel and is pointing between two thick black curving parts of the large letter and also at the B shaped portion of the spiral. B being the second letter of the alphabet has an alphanumeric value of 2. I think that's Bessler's way of telling us that each lever had two springs attached to it.
The diverging portions of the large fraktur letter on its left side form the letter V. The other portion of the letter on the right side along with the stork's two long thin almost vertical legs form three letter I's in a horizontal row. Put them together to get III. Next, combine that with the previous letter V to get VIII which is the Roman numeral with a value of 8. Most likely this means each of Bessler's one way wheels contained 8 levers. The stork's eye represents a lever's pivot and the top pointed end of the right black portion of the letter points to a spot on the stork's neck. This means that the springs were attached at a certain distance from a lever's pivot. How far? My guess would be 2 inches.
There is what appears to be a large thin letter S that swirls up and around the large black left V shaped portion of the letter. That S is also a spring symbol. That big black circle at the top of the S represents the pupil of an eye. That was Bessler's way of telling the reader to very carefully use his eyes to study this decorative letter's symbolism. The bottom of the S has a larger dark but somewhat transparent circle on it and it is actually connected to another similar dark circle to its left by a short darkened crooked line. The two transparent circles represent lenses and with the crooked line acting like a bridge between them form a pair of eyeglasses and again this symbol, like the eyeglasses in the second DT portrait, is Bessler's way of telling us to carefully study the symbols in the oversized fraktur letter. With the addition of those eyeglasses to its bottom end, the letter S is transformed into a giant numeral 2 that has been written backwards to hide it! Notice that the bottom of the letters S and V cross each other and that cross or X symbol means a multiplication must be performed. Here Bessler tells us we must multiply some value by 2, but what value?
(continued and concluded in Part 2 of 2)
Sayer of Sooths
(Part 2 of 2)
DeleteNote that the upper right portion of the V is actually attached by a short dark curly line to the top of the thin vertical staff that the spiral is wrapped around. If you look at that spiral carefully, you will see that it contains five complete numeral 2's stacked one on top of the other so that they are added together. Adding those five 2's together gives us the a value of 10 which is the value we seek. Now, finally, we can multiply this value of 10 by the value of the large thin numeral 2 and get 10 x 2 = 20.
What does this value of 20 represent? I strongly suspect that it's the tension constant of a single spring used on a Kassel wheel's lever or 20 pounds per inch. If there were two such springs per lever that means the total tension constant for each lever in the Kassel wheel would have been 40 pounds per inch. It's also possible that the maximum stretch distance those springs each got as the wheel turned was 2 inches meaning that the maximum spring force applied to a lever in the Kassel wheel was 80 pounds which is a value we can also get by multiplying the previously gotten value of 8 by the value of 10 we got or 8 x 10 = 80.
Where was a lever when it had this force applied to it? We need a clock symbol to tell us that, but there doesn't appear to be one. But wait! Look at the stork's bill. It can also represent the hour hand of a clock and looks like it's pointing toward 9 o'clock and also the spiral which represents a stretched spring. Most likely, Bessler is telling us here that a lever in his Kassel wheel had a maximum spring force applied to it by its two stretched springs of 80 pounds when the lever reached the drum's 9 o'clock location (assuming a clockwise rotating drum) and the two springs were each stretched 2 inches at that time.
I've never seen the image of this decorative letter before (and I'm not even sure exactly what letter it is because I can't read fraktur German that well), but I think that it is almost as important as the "Toy Page" that everyone talks so much about. Like that page, it needs to be carefully studied. Bessler put a lot of work into it and for a good reason as I suggest here. It definitely should not be ignored, imo.
Sayer of Sooths
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteI think the word is “nachdem” Which means, once, or after, so the enlarged letter is ‘N’,
DeleteJC
@SOS. When I first started reading your analysis of that illuminated manuscript style decorated drop cap I thought you were just another nut case full of shat. Then I saw those eyeglasses near the bottom left corner that you pointed and realized you weren't. Incredible job you've done which probably gives us more info about the Kassel wheel's springs then ever before. All I can say now is "Thou Art Sayer of Sooths: KING of Numerologists! Long live the King!"
Delete@ SoS. For the Kassel wheel your numeralogy analysis says there were two springs on each lever with each attached 2 in. from a lever's pivot, each having a spring constant of 20 lbs./in., and each stretched 2 in. at the drum's 9 o'clock position. I also have Ken B's book and although he doesn't mention that decorated letter you analyzed, in his last chapter he has a giant chart that also gives the values he found for the Kassel wheel's springs. The values you found match his EXACTLY! Either you took his values and worked them into your "analysis" or you just provided independent verification of his analysis. You don't sound like a hoaxer but how can be we sure?
DeleteLet me briefly respond to everyone who commented by saying that when the symbolism is as obvious as it is in this letter's image I can easily give an analysis and it's usually accurate.
Delete@SG. Bessler was naturally drawn to the number 2 because his last name began with the letter B whose alphanumeric value is 2. In the numerical values he hides in his drawing he often requires one to either divide or multiply the alphanumerical values of certain letters by 2 to obtain the actual values he's hiding.
@JC. Thanks for letting me know that was the fraktur letter N. That letter is the 14th letter of the alphabet and you can also get that value by subtracting the value of the Roman numeral V on the left side of the letter which is 5 from the alphanumeric value of that thin letter S wrapped around it which is 19 to get 19 - 5 = 14. What does that value represent? It might be the distance, 14 inches, from a lever's pivot to the point at its end where its weight was attached. More interesting to me is the pair of eyeglasses in this letter N's image which appear identical to those in the second DT portrait. Bessler even puts them on the left sides in both cases. I have the feeling Bessler was using this smaller letter's image to practice what he would be doing later in the much larger DT portraits!
@Anon 22:26. Glad to read you noticing those eyeglasses helped convince you I wasn't "another nut case full of shat"! Many researching Bessler clues seem to totally ignore the fact that he was a numerologist. As such it's only natural that he would have hidden the secrets of his wheels using the methods of numerology, yet those researchers are usually completely blind to those methods and then wonder why they make no progress. Hopefully I can help open their eyes a little and get them to put on a pair of Bessler's eyeglasses so they can finally see all of the clues he left us.
@Anon 03:52. I can assure you that I have not read Ken B's book although I have several friends who are constantly urging me to do so and I probably eventually will. They tell me he's a serious numerologist so I'm sure I'll find some of what he's written to be of interest. I never saw the image of that fraktur letter N I analyzed before early yesterday. You say he doesn't mention that letter's image in his book so he must have gotten his Kassel wheel spring values from other images he's analyzed. As you suggest I think this is a case of independent verification which increases the probability of the values determined for the springs being accurate.
Sayer of Sooths
2 zoll. Sock puppets.
DeleteSoS gave a very interesting analysis of that fraktur letter picture from that little known Bessler work. It makes me wonder if there are any other similar letter pictures in other tracts he could analyze? There could be important clues in them no one is aware of yet even though we've been at this for decades now! Studying Bessler and his wheels is like diving into a bottomless pit. Every time you think you've reached the bottom there's even deeper to go!
DeleteSorry John, I poorly worded my question. I see now the word toggle first appears in 1769 and was a nautical term. In the M.T. drawings, does Mr. Bessler (show) a toggle movement,w/o using the word itself?
ReplyDeleteNo worries Richard, but I still can’t help. Sorry but I haven’t looked at the M.T. drawings for a long time and I’ve kind of lost interest in them apart from a couple, number 137, and the Toys page. I wouldn’t know where to start!
DeleteJC
This is the only MT figure I found with something like "toggle action" going on in it:
Deletehttps://besslerwheel.com/wiki/images/7/77/Mt_053.gif
JC wrote : "Yes good point. And don’t forget Karl had decreed that once Bessler was in his employment no more negative comments or publications would be permitted, which effectively silenced the three ‘enemies’ as Bessler called them. But until 1715/16 he was fair game."
ReplyDeleteThe decree by Karl is a powerful statement to B's. integrity in and of itself. Some may think B. was a fraud and Karl as well but only a die hard would pursue that line. I'd take the opposite view that B's. PM wheel was beyond reproach precisely because Karl made that degree and had no financial or otherwise vested interest.
-f
Karl removed the question off the table that the wheel was genuine. He was a man of great wealth and integrity and put his entire reputation on the line.
ReplyDeleteI agree John, M.T. 138 , the toy page, is very important, as He indicates. What does Mr. Bessler want to convey to us by putting that spinning top at the bottom of the drawing?
ReplyDeleteA spinning top can keep its CoG away from a vertical through its point contacting the floor while it's spinning. Maybe the top was put into MT 138 to show that his wheel could also keep its CoG away from a vertical through the axle while it was spinning and that was how his wheels worked? All other inventors' wheels fail because they cannot do that.
DeleteUpdate. Current US deaths from COVID-19 now 96,195 and closing in on the big 100,000 predicted for June 1st weeks ago by the Center for Disease Control's computer model projections (btw, they use 12 different model's and go with the consensus). These models also predict that if social distancing and mask wearing is relaxed too soon, we could reach as much as 3,000 deaths per day. That's almost a 9/11's worth of deaths day after day after day.
ReplyDeleteAnother depressing detail has also emerged. They discovered that if Americans had starting wearing face masks just ONE week earlier it would have resulted in saving about 38,000 people's lives over time! Why didn't we start wearing them earlier? We were too busy laughing at our leader's jokes about the "Chinese Virus" and the "Kung Flu". 38,000 Americans aren't laughing about them now.
All US states have now begun to start "opening up" again, but only with a lot of restrictions. Seems, however, that the Republican dominated states or "Red States" as they are called have the least restrictions and are in the greatest rush to "get back to normal". The governor of Texas, when told opening up too fast could result in more people over 60 getting infected and dying, said that grandparents "should be happy to die so their grandchildren can have jobs"! Another governor in Arizona has decided that he won't be releasing the state's figures for how many are dying in nursing homes. When asked why, he said it was "bad for business"! I think there are efforts quietly being made now to "cook the books" and not report all of the COVID-19 deaths so that the American people can be lulled into a false sense of safety that will then get them all out working and shopping again as soon as possible. If that's done too fast, the result could be a "second wave" that could be WORSE than the first one!
This coming Monday, May 25th is Memorial Day in the US and a federal holiday that is set aside to honor the men and women who died while serving in the US military. This weekend is referred to as the "Memorial Day Weekend" and is the unofficial start of summer. People are used to going to beaches, shopping, and getting together for parties and outdoor barbecues. This, of course, has been made all the more difficult by the need to practice "social distancing" and wear face masks while in public or crowds. Americans are already starting to ignore these warning in some areas and it's expected that we'll see a sharp spike in new infections in the week or so after this weekend. Many don't realize yet that wearing a mask is really a way of showing respect for someone else's health because the mask can contain any virus in droplets that the wearer, infected without knowing it yet, might be spraying out when he or she sneezes, coughs, or even just talks. Many think if they have no symptoms that they are not infected. That is a false assumption that could cause someone else's death!
Another expert said that this pandemic won't finally be over for another two years and only after about 60 to 70% of the world's population has been infected or vaccinated. They still don't know if prior infection or a vaccination will give one permanent immunity so he or she can't get infected again. People may have to be vaccinated every 3 to 6 months!
The US Treasury says that there is the possibility that this pandemic may have caused PERMANENT damage to the US economy. Meanwhile, Trump wants to put the total blame on China and the WHO. He's also threatening to cut funding to any states that allow voting by mail. It was discovered that when voting by mail is allowed, it can double the number of votes cast and increases the number of Democrats who vote. That's bad for Trump whose popularity continues to slide in the polls.
Anonymous and PROUD of it!