A Brief Account of My Bessler Journey to the Present.

Between 1960, when I first read Gould’s excellent account of Bessler’s perpetual motion machine (or wheel) and 1974 when I built my first attempt at replicating it out of balsa wood and washers, my thoughts were confined to my mind and numerous scraps of paper and pencil drawings. The reason for my reluctance to accept what I had been taught; that perpetual motion devices  violated the laws of thermodynamics and were impossible; was the fact that the documentary evidence available  seemed to deny that assumption.

From then until about 1980 little changed until I made up my mind to try to obtain as much hard information about Johann Bessler and his perpetual motion machine as I could possibly manage.  This was of course before the internet made this kind of task so much easier.

I joined the British Museum Library and was able to actually touch and handle GB, AP and DT. Subsequently I obtained poor copies of those same documents, but I couldn’t read them anyway because I knew no German, not to mention that the language used was more than 300 years old. I advertised in a local newspaper for anyone who could translate 18th C German into English. Amazingly I was contacted by four people, one of whom was Mike Senior who became a good friend over the next twenty years or so.

He translated everything into English, handwriting it and adding a number of notes about what he had done.  He asked me if I wanted a literal word by word translation or what he said would be his best impression of what Bessler wrote, conveying meaning and nuance where possible. I chose the latter because I simply didn’t know what was in the documents at that time.

Seeing as we all make use of his translations I should say a word or two about Mike.  For a start he was was a polymath and a member of MENSA. He was consultant to the local authority on flora, having a Masters Degree in Botany in fact several degrees in different unrelated subjects - he was just curious about everything.  He read and spoke 18th C German, read and translated  Latin and could quote from memory from all the Greek classical plays in the original Greek.  He was an expert on astrophysics and wrote papers for peer review in scientific journals.  He loved Maths problems and tried to explain String Theory and Riemann’s Conjecture to me, for example.  It went straight over my head at very high altitude! He  also like his beer!  There was so much more to Mike but space is limited. But he did once say to me, “of course you do realise that what Bessler claimed is impossible”.  We laughed and agreed to disagree.

Once I had the translations plus a number of other documents about Bessler, also in German and needing translating, I set about writing my own biography of Bessler, trying hard to stick to the facts as presented.  Most of these were either letters to and from and about Bessler, or items from the local newspapers of the time.  Included were accounts of several official examinations arranged by certain men of high standing including Karl the Landgrave of Hesse Kassel who agreed to offer his patronage and support but only if he had first satisfied himself that the machine was genuine

I was unable to get a publisher in the U.K. to publish my book, although I only sent it to about a dozen publishers having written the manuscript in one year.  I read that JK Rowling took seven years to write and sell her first book!  Maybe I should have held out for more publishers, but I was impatient, and decided to self publish.

Later I decided in addition to PM:AAMS? to self publish GB, AP, DT and MT.  It wasn’t profitable at all but it enabled me to just about cover my costs in running several web sites.

While this was happening I continued with my day job and in my spare time constructed many PM wheels.  I began this blog back in  April 2009.  It’s alarming to see how confident I was back then - nothing’s changed!

I’ve done numerous radio interviews both here and abroad.  I was invited to Rome to take part in a documentary about Bessler.  Unfortunately it was all in Italian, even my words were dubbed in so I don’t  even know what I said let alone what the rest of the cast said.  It was a bit of a set up as the other speakers were traditional scientists following the classic path that it was impossible.

I was asked to lecture at the Glastonbury Crop circle symposium in the mid 1990s and met Brian O’Leary a trained astronaut although he didn’t complete his training. It was a strange gig, which resulted in me discovering I could dowse for water, not a very useful trick these days, but curiously rewarding.

I also did several radio interview from home and here in England plus one memorable interview with Redneck radio in Greenwood, USA.  Hilarious but good fun.

There is so much more but I don’t want to bore the pants off you!

JC

GB Grundliccher Bericht

AP Apologia Poetica

DT Das Triumphirende

MT Maschinen Tractate.

PMAAMS Perpetual Motion; An Ancient Mystery Solved?

John Collins

Bessler (Orffyreus) Left Coded Information to Build his Perpetual Motion.

When Johann Bessler first exhibited his Perpetual Motion machine in Gera in 1712, he had already formulated a plan for going forward from that point; he wanted to sell the machine.  He had written a manuscript for a book which he wished to have printed, selling copies to buyers.  It was an account of his journey to success, an autobiography.

It also included  a collection of coded clues which were designed to provide secret information about the design of the machine.  The book was titled ‘Apologia Poetica’, and was written in rhyming couplets.  He mentions that there is information within the book for those who are willing to look for it.

As a strong hint about the presence of coded information he adopted the pseudonym, ‘Orffyreus’, which was obtained by use of a simple substitution code used throughout history going back to the early Hebrew scribes who used it to disguise the names of certain people they mentioned in the books of the Old Testament. 

Besides the Hebrews it has often been used for encoding messages by various governments and organisations as well as individuals. It involves substituting A, for instance, with N, B for O, and so on.  Alternatives include placing the first half of the alphabet beneath the second half which can be reversed, and substituting the one above for the one below and vice versa.

Bessler used the same system to make his pseudonym, Orffyreus, substituting the coloured letters in the box above or below with their adjacent letter.  This ancient cipher, called atbash by the Hebrews and the Caesar Shift and more recently, ROT13, is so well-known, it seems odd at first sight that he decided to use it. But its only purpose was to convey the impression that more  codes lay hidden within his documents and not just the first book but others which followed later.

I have identified numerous codes and interpreted many of them.  This information is currently being used in the construction of a version of Bessler’s wheel.  Some of these codes can be read and understood at my other websites.  There is a list of the links at the bottom of the right hand pane.

I have also produced digital and printed versions of five related books accessible from the top of the righthand panel by clicking on Bessler’s books. Those which I have published in their original German include full English translations.  Additionally you can get copies of my biography about Bessler, called Perprtual Motion, An Ancient Mystery Solved?

I am also in the process of writing a book which will include details of many of the codes, their interpretation and how they reveal how Bessler’s wheel worked.

JC