I expect everyone knows I believe Bessler’s wheel had five mechanisms. Before you move on and dismiss what I’m going to write, just hang on for a moment. I’m satisfied with my current and long held belief for excellent reasons, the majority of which you don’t know.
Imagine you are Bessler and you have this amazing secret which you believe is worth a fortune, but you can’t tell anyone anything about it, because you want to sell it first. You decide that you are going to publish details of the secret but hidden in such a way that no one will ever find out unless you reveal the way to decipher it. You believe that there are three possible outcomes.
Firstly you sell the machine and it’s secret and you decipher all the ciphers and publish the coded information and the world will gradually realise how exceedingly clever you have been.
Secondly, you never find a buyer and you die with the secret intact. But you have sold many copies of your books. You have inserted various comments that the books contain secret information about the Perpetual Motion machine and a clever person can study the books and eventually decipher the clues and discover the secret.
Lastly, someone else discovers the same solution and publishes it. You prove your priority by demonstrating the clues and codes published in your three books containing all the information, from years before.
It wasn’t just the money he wanted, Johann Bessler sought recognition, which is why he went to so much trouble encoding information in various ways, adding secondary codes for confirmation in many places. He stated that he would rather die without having sold his secret, than just give it away.
To continue imagining you are seeing things as if you were Bessler; before you even go public with your invention, you have planned everything. First you adopt a pseudonym, but it’s not just an assumed name, it’s a clever contrivance, ostensibly to disguise your real name, but actually since everyone knows your real name, it appears to be a stage name. Simple codes were in popular use at the time, and it was very obvious that Bessler chose an easily deciphered code name, using a well known code such as the Caesar shift, to call himself Orffyreus.
Why? Because the use of a simple code in his assumed name, plus the few words of encouragement to readers of his books to search for the encoded secret, was intended to make people like myself and others, search for the coded information and decipher it. Exactly what we have been trying to do for many years.
At the end of the day, we know that Bessler invented a way to obtain continuous rotation enabled by the force of gravity. We know he left secret information which was designed to show us how his machine worked. Why on earth would we ignore this wealth of clues and codes and hints and struggle onwards dismissing this treasure trove of information?
I’ll post some of the clues I’ve uncovered and deciphered in another post, most of which I haven’t shared before.
JC
Nice to see that this blog came back to life again! I checked in several times last year and earlier this year and it looked like a ghost town with no one posting. I actually thought for a while that it had died like so many other blogs have over the years which would be a true tragedy because of the excellent job it does in promoting interest in Bessler and his wheels.
ReplyDeleteI do agree with JC that there is much that can be learned from Bessler's pseudonym of "Orffyreus". The most important letter in it is the one that is right in the exact center of the word which is the letter Y. As some may recall, I have found many clues in Bessler's drawings over the years, especially those in MT, which indicate that the levers he used in his wheels had the shape of that particular letter. Bessler considered this lever shape so important that he made sure that he placed the letter symbolizing it right in the middle of his professional name!
The capital letter O at the beginning of the word is almost hypnotic like the "All Seeing Eye of God" and I've seen Bessler write it with a small diacritic dot at its center. That letter, of course, represents the external drum of one of his pm wheels and the dot is its axle. But, it is also the symbol for the metal gold in alchemy and the Sun in astrology. That could have been Bessler's way of saying his wheels were worth a large amount of gold and could run, if maintained, as long as the Sun shines! Gold is also referred to as a "noble metal" because of its durability, rarity, and value. These are all qualities that could be used to describe Bessler's wheels.
The letter group OR has an alphanumeric sum of 33 and that is a number associated with Jesus in the Christian gospels (33 AD was the year of his execution, etc.). Bessler claimed that the secret of his wheels was contained in the sayings of Jesus and I can point to some of the verses that Bessler had in mind when he said that.
Next, look at the prominent two letter F's to the immediate left of the letter Y. F is the 6th letter of the alphabet. If you multiply the F alphanumeric values, you get 6 x 6 = 36. Supposedly, the prototype wheel that worked for Bessler was only 36 inches in diameter. If you add the F's you get 6 + 6 = 12 which was the diameter, in feet, of his last two wheels. The first public demonstration of one of his wheels was given on June 6th or the 6th day of the 6th month. Amazing what meaning can be found in only two letters in his professional name!
The four letter group to the right of the central letter Y is REUS and the sum of its alphanumeric values is 63. This is a VERY important number that describes what could be a critical orientation of one of his wheels' internal parts but I don't have time to give the details now. It is yet another number which appears hidden regularly in his drawings.
Anyway, I hope everyone is enjoying the cooler autumn weather and preparing for the coming winter solstice celebrations. This December 21st will, for those living north of our planet's equator, be the shortest day of the year accompanied by the longest night as the Sun at its daytime zenith appears at its lowest southern elevation. Because of the decreased solar illumination in the weeks around that day, many experience a condition called SAD or "Seasonal Affective Disorder" which also seems to have afflicted Bessler. According to what I found on the internet, the symptoms can include "persistent low mood, lack of energy, loss of interest in activities, oversleeping, weight gain, and difficulty concentrating". I have found that one treatment for this problem that always works for me is to buy myself a nice gift! Yes, something I've wanted all year long but denied myself because of various reasons (like a pile of bills that needed to be paid off first!). So, if one is afflicted by this troublesome condition, I recommend he treat himself for a change...one deserves it especially if he's been racking his brain trying to solve the Bessler wheel mystery all year long.
Sayer of Sooths