The title of this post is taken from the title of my first book which was a biography of Johann Bessler - with one difference. My book title ended with a question mark, but as you can see, here I have used an exclamation mark! The question mark implied that maybe Johann Bessler had truly invented a Perpetual Motion machine. The exclamation mark signifies a statement of fact.
One morning about 18 months ago I woke up with a clear image of the wheel in my mind. It was an image from a dream I had had. I could see the interior of the wheel showing some of the positions of the weights. I believed from my dream that this showed the true concept of the wheel’s action; I could not see the complete configuration but I understood the concept and I was utterly astounded that no one had found it before or since. I knew beyond doubt that not only would this work, but that it was exactly the same layout as Bessler’s wheel.
I wanted to build a working model, but I had not done much work on the wheel since I moved house the previous year. Trying to describe the concept and sharing it went completely wrong and I decided, from previous experience, that nothing but a working model would persuade people that the design was the right one. I marked out on a three foot diameter disc of MDF, the precise dimensions of each section and gathered together all my previously used metal parts with a view to adapting them to the needs of the new configuration.
But there were too many alterations needed to make the best use of the material I had, so I swapped the three foot diameter wheel for an eighteen inch disc and that proved to be the right way to go. I had enough pieces of the old parts to begin the build. The concept is easy to understand but by using old used parts, the sizes of some pieces takes more time and adjustment to make fit. It has taken me such a long time that I began to fear I might not see the end of the process, but I’m determined to finish it. I’ll be 80 years old in a few days so I am determined to complete the build at or near then.
I’ve completed the mechanisms, adjusting, tightening or loosening them as necessary, and all I need to do is add the weights and the cord linkages to fulfil what Bessler called his connectedness principle.
In the mean time I’m also writing an abbreviated description of Bessler’s journey to success because it explains several details that help to prove that this is real. This will provide a better explanation than some of my previous ones which failed to explain the concept adequately in either drawings or text.
As far as I know, the complete concept has never been discussed anywhere. I used the word complete because obviously bits of it show up occasionally, but without all the contributing factors included, it can’t turn continuously.
It doesn’t conflict with any physical laws. It’s a simple concept. It will turn continuously. It is enabled by gravity alone. It’s simple understand but not quite so easy to build - for me at least!
I wrote the following on my blog in May 2012 and my opinion hasn’t changed -
“ The commonest error is the belief that his comment on the front of His Maschinen Tractate applied strictly to the drawings it contained.
“N.B. 1st May 1733. Due to the arrest, I burned and buried all papers that prove the possibility. However, I have left all demonstrations and experiments since it would be difficult for anybody to see or learn anything about a perpetual motion from them or to decide whether there was any truth in them because no illustration by itself contains a description of the motion; however, taking various illustrations together and combining them with a discerning mind, it will indeed be possible to look for a movement and, finally to find one in them.”
In fact only the toys drawings in MT contains useful information. There are additional hints in MT137 and in the letters 'A' which he used in MT, and there are hints too in some of the illustration numbers. The remaining drawings he was referring to are the four which appeared in his Das Triumphirende and of course Grundlicher Bericht and in a small way the one at the end of Apologia Poetica. These four drawings which contain the infamous pendulums also hold almost everything you will need to build his wheel.”
Lastly, the fact that I dreamed the solution is not imho, due to any other worldly input, but due to my many years of studying Bessler’s drawings allowed my brain/mind while I slept, to contemplate at leisure the problem and offer a potential solution. In my experience I rarely remember dreams, unless I’ve fallen asleep again after I first woke up and then occasionally I do remember stuff.
JC
