Johann Bessler’s Amazing Gravity Enabled Non-Stop Wheel.

Many people who are aware of the story about Johann Bessler and his extraordinary Perpetual Motion machine are familiar with his pseudonym, Orffyreus and how he arrived at the name.  But why did he decide to use a pseudonym?  What was his purpose in using one when everyone knew his real name?  The reason is simple once you know.

When he had worked out how to build a gravity-enabled perpetual motion machine he began construction and built his first working model.  He hoped to sell the secret to a rich prince for a lot of money, but there was a real problem to overcome first.  He had found the secret to making this device but realised the difficulty he was going to encounter in substantiating his claims without revealing the secret of its construction. How was he to convince would-be purchasers of his machine that it was genuine?  If he allowed anyone to see the interior and understand how it worked, what was to stop them just walking away and making their own version of his mechanical marvel?

Word about his machine quickly spread and people came to study it and examine the external features but no one was allowed to view the interior.  The inventor moved from town to town gradually moving closer to the busier places and as his fame grew people of high rank came to examine the device.

Gottfried Leibniz, the famous scientist, came to see the wheel on two occasions spending a couple of hours on each occasion and although he dismissed Perpetual Motion as a legitimate possibility he recognised that Bessler’s wheel had something of value about it and recommended that it should not be ignored for fear of losing it.

He and Bessler discussed the problem of proving its legitimacy without revealing the interior workings of the wheel.  Leibniz suggested that it would be helpful if he could find a patron who had the kind of secure facilities to allow Bessler to exhibit his machine for official examinations and tests.  It would also help if this patron had a reputation for absolute honesty.

They discussed a number of features Bessler could include which would be very difficult to achieve if the machine was a fake.  These were present at all the demonstrations.  They included two separate fixtures to which the wheel was attached, to allow the examiners to thoroughly examine all external aspects of the wheel, moving it from one set to the other as often as was requested.  An Archimedes pump was attached to the wheel axle and a 70 pound weight was shown being lifted several feet up and down the castle walls. A 54 day test was carried out under lock and key and 24 hour guard to prove no winding up was necessary.

These actions were carried out on several occasions during Bessler’s residency at Hesse Kassel for around ten years.  No sign of fraud was ever found and it seems that there were approaches made to purchase the device.  But they failed due to the inventor’s insistence that the money be paid in full before the purchaser could ascertain to his own satisfaction that the machine was genuine. This, despite the fact that Bessler swore on oath that if he was found to have cheated he should have his head chopped off!  Not an unlikely outcome in those days.

Johann Bessler was driven by a determination to be acknowledged as the original inventor of the gravity-enabled perpetual motion machine, but from the very beginning he seems to have realised that his chief difficulty lay in proving that he was not cheating.  This seeming impasse convinced him to encode the information required to understand and build a replica of his machine and embed the information in a book he planned to publish.  Ideally he wished to sell the secret and the machine for a large sum of money but in order to do that he had ensure that the strict terms of the purchase were clear, above board and adhered to.  

Given the above it’s not too surprising that he wrote that he’d rather die than give away the secret for free. But that plan might have had to modified later in life, but we will never know because he died early aged just 64, when he fell from the top of windmill he was building for the local town council of Fürstenberg not far from his home in Karlshafen. So all we know is that the encoded information lies embedded within the three books he eventually published.

He left strong hints that the information was there and could be found and understood if people searched for it. I have written about this on my previous blogs and provided links to my web sites in which I describe many of codes and ciphers I have found and deciphered. They can be found in the lower end of the panel on the right of this blog.

Over the years I have gathered a lot of information about the wheel and how it worked.  But even given the extraordinary number of clues in both text and drawing, it has been an almost impossible task to draw together all of the clues and pieces of deciphered text.  I think I have got it now and even after all this time, my whole life, I’m not one hundred per cent certain that I’ve got it right, but one thing I do know.  I understand the principle completely and it works.

The following link will take you to the books, including my own biography as well as all Bessler’s publications which each contain a full English translation.

https://johncollinsnews.blogspot.com/p/johann-besslers-books-and-biography.html

JC