There has been some discussion about the potential power available from Bessler’s wheel. Comparisons have been made between the Merseburg wheel and the Kassel wheel. The two wheels were of a similar diameter but the Kassel wheel was 18 inches thick compared with the Merseburg wheel’s 12 inches. The Kassel wheel, which turned more slowly than its predecessor, the Merseburg wheel, was designed to complete a long endurance test, of over one month of continuous rotation, which it easily achieved. Clearly a slower speed of rotation would withstand wear and tear to a greater degree than a faster rotation. The design had to be modified to achieve the slower rotation speed but the machine was still able to lift similar weights to previous machines and I suggest the extra thickness of the wheel satisfied this need.
Bessler wrote that he could make wheels of greater or smaller size and with various speeds. He went on to suggest that the useful output of the machine could be multiplied by increasing the size of the interior workings, or by making wheels of up to 20 ells in diameter, about 37 feet! In 1700, John Rowley built a tidal wheel to pump water from the Thames to the Royal family at Windsor which measured 24 foot long by 12 foot high, so Bessler’s estimate was quite possible. An alternative number of identical wheels could be mounted on a single axle thus multiplying the power of the resulting assembly many times.
These suggestions make good sense, so deriding the potential power possible from Bessler’s wheel without considering how one might increase the output and versatility of this remarkable invention seems like “throwing the baby out with the bath water”, an old German proverb.
Bessler’s suggestion that his wheel could help pump water from water flooded mines was never developed due to the Newcomen steam engine, but increasing the power of his wheel was never examined due to the distrust built up by the maid’s false accusations.
This does raise the question, what could have his perpetual motion machine be used for? He suggested mills, and irrigation but satisfactory alternatives were in daily use and there was little call for his invention to be brought in to test the market. Of course electricity generation would have provided an excellent use for his machine, but he was about 300 years too early! But not now - the time is right, with global warming, pollution from fossil fuels, lack of affordable, low tech ways of generating electricity Bessler’s wheel is needed today.
JC
"But not now - the time is right, with global warming, pollution from fossil fuels, lack of affordable, low tech ways of generating electricity Bessler’s wheel is needed today."
ReplyDeleteThe general public is slowly starting to think that "Climate Change" was over hyped and "Green Energy" is a scam! More and more countries are starting to view "Net Zero" as a fantasy that cannot be achieved and spending trillions of dollars trying to do that is a colossal waste. Already in Britain the citizens are starting to complain that they were originally told Green Energy would lower their electric bills and help save humanity from certain doom, but now, a decade later, their bills are two to three times higher than the rest of Europe and the atmospheric CO2 levels keep rising anyway.
The problem with solar panels and wind turbines is that they are weather dependent and therefore highly variable. Yes, the Sun and wind are free, but building the infrastructure necessary to capture their energy and convert it into a form that can reliably be fed out into a nation's power grid is most definitely not free. It's actually very expensive and creates a lot of pollution. Paying for all of that can bankrupt nations and lead to a loss of industry and jobs. It's already happening in Europe and many countries are starting to think that China and India, relying mainly on coal, are actually doing the sensible thing!
As an alternative to expensive nuclear power plants, many are switching over to gas powered electric plants. One 800 megawatt gas powered electric plant replaces about 60 of those giant wind turbines in only a small fraction of the space at a fraction of the cost. It can operate 24/7 at near peak output. Wind turbines can remain idle for days if the wind stops blowing hard enough. And, of course, solar panels are useless at night. No problem you say, just use batteries to collect excess power when they are working and use it when they are not working. Sounds great until you realize the cost of something like that. It can actually triple the cost of a solar or wind farm! The world is slowly abandoning Green Energy and going right back to good old fossil fuels. There's even new research coming out showing that the CO2 they emit is only about 4% of the CO2 being emitted from natural sources and plays a negligible role in heating the atmosphere up. Even the computer models used to predict Climate Change have been found to be based on assumptions and exaggerations of various climate factors making their predictions of climate doom questionable.
So, where would Bessler's wheels fit in with all of this? Unless their power output could be dramatically increased, if they are ever duplicated, then they will just remain interesting toys like those little radiometer bulbs that they sell in the gift shops of science museums. The low power of Bessler's wheels in the early 18th century doomed them back then because they could not outperform the then newly arriving steam engines and the exact same thing could happen to them now in the early 21st century. People want results today, not promises of what might be available in the future. Fossil fuels are here and now...not Bessler's wheels. Right now they are just an interesting footnote in the history of mechanics that most of the scientific orthodoxy dismisses as having been an elaborate hoax. It's up to us to prove them wrong and, so far, we cannot do that.
Good comment. Until we succeed in recreating Bessler’s wheel, we won’t know. I know you all think I’m deluded and don’t have anything useful, but I do and I’m facing the possibility of being unable complete the wheel. I have to share what I know and let others do their sims. It won’t be long.
ReplyDeleteJC