Those of you who have visited here before will be familiar with the title of this blog, so I expect the usual ironic comments but this time I’m serious. I’ve spent much of my spare time during my life, researching the life of Johann Bessler but at 78 I have to admit it’s time I shared my work, my discoveries and hopefully, the solution. For me the chief problem is that I keep finding new clues or new ways of interpreting the clues but the new stuff doesn’t alter what I have already surmised. I really need to stop researching because I worry that there’s an increasing chance that if I delay any longer I might become unable to share what I know due to possible dementia, physical illness or early demise!
I first suspected that Bessler just might have been telling the truth when his maid claimed that he had forced her to turn the wheel from his bedroom via a simple mechanism. The method she described was absurd and impossible for her, with the help of Bessler’s wife and his daughter, to turn the wheel just one rotation let alone, night and day for 54 days - it was a ridiculous statement. Later on in my research I discovered that she had been imprisoned twice for spreading malicious gossip about her previous employer, Bessler’s in-laws.
Leaving that aside, you get the feeling that Bessler was genuine just reading his account of his search for the secret of perpetual motion; his long running battle to get accepted and his constant harassment by the three men who set out to try and prove him a fake. They were Andreas Gärtner, Christian Wagner and Johann Gottfried Borlach and they did their damndest to prove Bessler a liar, but they failed.
Bessler was visited by the great scientist, Gottfried Leibniz twice, and he was highly impressed by Bessler’s machine and recommended a number of tests the inventor should include in his demonstrations, to prove the machine’s value . With the acknowledgement from Karl the Landgrave of Hesse, who had been allowed to examine the interior of the machine and had stated that the machine was genuine, the inventor was able arrange the demonstrations just as Leibniz had suggested.
The demonstrations included raising a heavy load from the castle yard up to the roof, as many times as people wished; driving an Archimedes screw; transportation of the device from one set of bearing to another set a few steps away. This last allowed investigators to thoroughly examine both sets of bearings and the pillars in which they were set, to the satisfaction of all present. The bearings themselves were left open for detailed examination. Finally an endurance test was arranged. The machine was locked in a room, after all present were able to verify that there were no hidden trapdoors or other means of access to the room. The machine was started, and Karl the Landgrave locked the door and impressed his personal seal on it, and placed a guard on the door for the full period of the test, which ran for 54 days. What more could he have done to prove he was genuine?
But Bessler was still in a catch 22 situation. This is a paradoxical situation from which an individual cannot escape because of contradictory rules or limitations. The terms of a deal in which payment was to be made following an agreement to buy his machine required the buyer to give the money to the inventor before being allowed to inspect the interior. No would-be buyer was willing to do that for fear of being cheated. But Bessler was equally unwilling to allow access to the machine before he had been paid. He argued that the buyer could study the inner workings of the device and then change his mind about completing the deal and just walk away, and build his own version and sell it for a lot less money than Bessler was asking for..
A very emotional letter exists, one of Bessler’s final ones, in which he begs for more material so that he can complete his last contract, which was to build a new type of windmill, with a vertical axis so that the wind could apply its force from any angle without having to rotate it to face the wind. He had built the mill up to the first floor but had run out of timber. The remains of the mill can still be seen, and it’s a very impressive structure. Bessler unfortunately fell to his death from the top of the building, and it was believed that the secret of his machine was lost.
I discovered that Bessler had left a complex series of clues of various kinds which would reveal the secret of his machine. As far as I know no-one before me had even suspected such a thing existed. I have published numerous examples of these clues on my other web site at www.theorffyreuscode.com
When I publish the actual clues which reveal the secret I hope that someone will take the challenge and build a working model. I hoped it would be myself who gained that honour, but I’m finding it more difficult these days to build the mechanisms and in fact although Karl described the configuration as simple and the design easy to understand, his suggestion that an apprentice could build it given a chance to note the details, may have given the wrong impression. I think that apprentices could do it, after all they used to study under a Master craftsman for seven years before being released from their apprenticeship, so I believe they were probably more capable than I!
As for the design configuration, it really is simple and easy to understand and, like Karl said, “I’m surprised no one has discovered it before.” There’s going to be a lot of faces filled with chagrin!
JC
