When Karl the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel described Bessler’s wheel as simple and expressed surprise that it hadn’t been invented before, I think that gives a misleading impression about the wheel’s construction. Yes, it was easy to understand when you could see it in action, but without that information available to one’s eyes, even with a written description it would be difficult to get the details correct. When you add Bessler’s disguised hints and clues it confuses what one thinks one understands or knows.
Bessler also embedded pieces of information in some of his drawings, but again these were designed to inform but also to deflect instant conclusions from their eventual true meaning.
Thus we find ourselves with so many pieces of information which can be pulled together resulting in a mishmash of half right and half wrong constructions which fail over and over again.
But in the end we can remind ourselves that the inventor succeeded in building a gravity-enabled wheel which rotated continuously for 54 days in one test and numerous short runs over many years. It is clear that he intended us to find the correct solution, dropping hints that the information was available to anyone with a particular interest in looking. But he made it so damned difficult, that even though we believe him and we study every word and image he left, we still can’t seem to find the solution….yet.
His primary intention should he fail to find a buyer for his machine, would seem to have been achieving acknowledgement for inventing his perpetual motion machine. Even though he occasionally referred to it, as just that; a perpetual motion machine; he pointed out on more than one occasion, that his machine could run continuously but may be brought to a stop for a number of different reasons; worn parts, broken parts, external influences or just that everything wears out in time. It could run continuously but not perpetually, but per se, as if it were a PM machine.
What was in his mind when he originally placed coded information in Gruendlicher Bericht, which was his first publication? It looks like an advertising booklet and although there is little or no sign of coding, it does contain his first published image of his wheel, and that definitely contains embedded information about the design of his wheel. Obviously he planned to hide information in plain sight to coincide with his first certified attestation that his machine was genuine. The first public test was witnessed and signed by several people of more than local importance
Here’s a curious fact. Bessler sent Karl a special greeting each year, on his name day, full of thanks and praise for the Landgrave, these were full of his favourite chronograms, each including the date of the document. One curious feature was the discovery that he composed special editions dated 1519, 1619, 1719, 1819, 1919 and 2019! Perhaps he anticipate that it would take another 300 rears or so to decipher his clues and produce a working model of his wheel?
I have never studied these documents other than in a cursory manner because I did not have my good friend Mike Senior who did all the translation for my books available, because he passed away before I obtained them. It is obvious from studying them that Bessler spent a lot of time and effort in designing them and I’m not sure if Karl would have had the time and inclination to do more than admire Bessler’s work. This begs the question, why did Bessler take so much trouble?
One thing is certain; every single document issued and received by Karl, was duly recorded and saved, and I think that Bessler had this in mind when he created these items addressed personally to the Landgrave. What better way to ensure any information hidden within the documents is still available every year until now?
I plan to publish pictures of them here as soon as I can do so. I may have to post small versions of the originals as they are a little larger than A4. I’ll try to make them as sharp as I can to allow downloads which can be enlarged. There are in total twelve pages some containing text and other chronograms with Bible references
My purpose in this is to make them available to as many people as possible so any attempts at translating and deciphering the content can be posted here or elsewhere. The encoding appears to include some pages of chronograms with Bible references attached and that leaves the widest possible option for codes of varying kind, for deciphering.
NB A chronogram is a word, phrase, or sentence with specific letters that are interpreted as Roman numerals to represent a date. These inscriptions can be found in various contexts, from historical monuments and poetry to modern applications like a type of phylogenetic tree with branch lengths proportional to time. The word itself means "time writing," combining the Greek words chronos and gramma.
NB Karl’s nameday is not a standard historical record for him. However, he was born on August 3, 1654, and his baptism date was August 17, 1654, which may be related to a name day celebration.
There are examples of Bessler’s chronograms in all three of Bessler’s published books.
JC
I think that Bessler was just imitating Nostradamus who wrote his "Centuries" in the 16th century that Bessler would have read. Karl, being interested in prophecies, would have read it too and those chronograms in his birthday cards was Bessler's way of amusing his patron. Each of Nostradamus' centuries was a collection of 100 quatrains (four verse lines) that were supposed to make predictions about what would happen in each year of the hundred years in a particular century. Unfortunately, all of the predictions only become apparent AFTER they happen which kind of makes them worthless before they happen.
ReplyDeleteBessler's chronograms start with the year 1519 and, from Wikipedia, we see that "Ferdinand Magellan set sail from Spain on September 20 with a fleet of five ships, aiming to find a western route to the Spice Islands. This expedition would later become the first to circumnavigate the globe" I think that Bessler was fascinated with nautical navigation which we see from his globe in the second DT portrait and his bad experience at sea during a storm. Also, he adjusted the asking price for his invention to match the value of the prize amount that the English government was offering in 1714 for some way of accurately determining longitude at sea while sailing east or west of England (IIRC, 100,000 silver reichthalers was equal to the English £20,000 at the time which were gold coins called "sovereigns").
Each of the years in Bessler's chronograms probably had special significance for him and Karl based on their study of history and the Bible. 1719 was the year Bessler published DT. Who knows what he predicted for the remaining years and it may not be relevant to the construction of his wheels (however, I just noticed the year 2019. Isn't that the year Ken B published his Bessler book?! Probably just a coincidence...or is it?).
1519 was also the year that Hernán Cortés' ships arrived in Mexico and began the destruction of the Aztec empire (btw, in the news recently the current Spanish government finally acknowledged and apologized for their nation's bad treatment of the "indigenous" people of Mexico back then...only 500 years late!). Maybe, however, Bessler started with that year in his chronograms because he read of how Magellan traveled around the world by sea. That feat could have reminded Bessler of how the weights in his wheels traveled around their drums. Just guessing here of course.
DeleteInteresting that exactly 300 years pass between DT and the KB book. I've seen that number 300 elsewhere. JC mentioned in the last blog Euclid's geometry book from the year 300 BC. Also, didn't all of the item numbers (1 to 24 IIRC) for the Merseburg wheel drawing parts add up to 300? All of this is probably just a coincidence though. I think we're so desperate for answers here that we tend to read too much into every number that comes along. Still, I'd like to see an English translation of the birthday poem for Karl with the 2019 chronogram in it if it ever becomes available.
I think I can explain where Bessler got the year 1619 from for his chronogram. In November of that year Rene Descartes, who was in the military at the time, fell asleep and had a weird dream. That dream inspired him to develop his system of philosophy and helped him advance mathematics and science. Bessler also claimed to have had a weird dream that inspired him to go on to find the secret of pm. Here's a short video that will tell you more about Descartes:
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mrllFz7UDo
I must apologise because my blog might have misled you. There are in fact 180 chronograms within the twelve pages of text, each with its own biblical reference. I’ll give more details when I post the pictures.
DeleteJC
You did write: "One curious feature was the discovery that he composed special editions dated 1519, 1619, 1719, 1819, 1919 and 2019! Perhaps he anticipate that it would take another 300 rears or so to decipher his clues and produce a working model of his wheel?"
DeleteSo there would seem to only be six "special editions" that might provide some hints about how his wheels were built. I think it's probably better to concentrate on them than to try to tackle 180 other chronograms that may only have had some sort of numerological or religious meaning for Bessler and Karl.
Meanwhile, where are any of those "never before revealed clues" you promised to show us last month? People here want to SEE them instead of being distracted with all of this decoding stuff. Your many "codes" have been on your various websites for over a decade so far and have led to nothing. There's no reason to believe that will change in the next decade. But a never before revealed geometry or symbol clue in the Bessler drawings could be VERY important. Please skip the gravy and give us the meat as we continue to starve for any NEW information from you!
I'll give it a try. Like that anon above said, the 1719 special chronogram would have mentioned Bessler's DT book and how he was trying to bring his revolutionary pm wheel to an ignorant and greedy world. His 1819 chronogram would have told how a century later the whole world was then using his wheels as everyone got richer and praised Bessler's invention. His 1919 chronogram would have said that the world was doing even better with his pm wheels and continued to praise Bessler and Jesus every day. BUT then an envious Lucifer showed up and tried to get everyone to worship him instead and also destroy all of their Bessler wheels! Finally, 2019 would arrive and it would be the End of the World! Jesus would come down from heaven with a huge army of angels swinging flaming swords. Those who had destroyed their Bessler wheels and followed Lucifer would be instantly incinerated. The whole world would then worship Jesus while following Bessler's version of Christianity, rebuild all of their pm wheels, and live happily ever after. Anyway, that's my prediction about those special chronograms so I guess we can skip getting them translated and get back to trying to find the secret of Bessler's wheels again.
DeleteWhen you see the complete greetings document you will understand why I suspect secret information lies inside waiting to be deciphered.
ReplyDeleteJC
Your suspicions are fine of course. But unless that "secret information" you suspect is in those greeting documents is something that can be turned into a simable or buildable design, it will be of little value to us. We are mostly builders here and not historians or theologians. We need angles, lengths, tensions, masses, etc. if Bessler actually hid them in those documents.
Delete@anon 22:46. Sounds like you are hungry for meat. But, you're in the wrong restaurant. All that is served here is gravy...and plenty of it.
DeleteFor those who crave fresh, sizzling hot, juicy meat for a change of diet from the usual lukewarm, watered down, bland gravy routinely served here...tomorrow I will reveal THE solution to Bessler's wheels that you have all been eagerly waiting for! You can skip the chrono nonsense, Y lever baloney, delusional "clues", and phony psychics. I've got the REAL solution which you can start simming and building NOW. Get ready to FEAST! See you tomorrow everyone...and pleasant dreams until then!
DeleteThe new restaurant will now be called " Karma " . It serves just desserts .
DeleteA most intriguing comment anon 02:53. If you've not posted here before, then a most warm welcome to you. Yes, JC has kept us starved for such a long time that we are all more than ready to "feast" on whatever you can reveal. But, be forewarned, we tend to have a low tolerance for bs merchants around here. You must show us something that looks plausible or we will get annoyed that you have wasted our time. I look forward to seeing your "REAL solution" as I'm sure others also do.
DeleteYes, welcome to our little band of weary wheel warriors. But, we've seen many come and go here over the years with "real solutions". They either show us nothing while teasing us along or they show something that hasn't a prayer of working only they can't believe it because they know next to nothing about mechanics. Let's hope you'll be the exception to this general rule. So, do show us what you have.
DeleteI hope your wheel, anon 02:53, does better than the last design of mine that I linked to here. It looked good at first sight, but soon turned into just another mechanical mirage that faded away. Btw, please make up a username for us to use when referring to you. You can use your real name, of course, but few seem to do that around here for some reason.
DeleteBrad
Here we go again! Another promised pm wheel "reveal" that, as we all know, will inevitably turn into a yet another dead duck nonrunner once we take a closer look at it. Oh well, at least they provide some temporary entertainment around here while we await JC's "BIG reveal" that many here, especially me, don't believe will ever happen.
DeleteLet's see...when was that expected to happen? Before the end of this month? Before the new year begins? By JC's next birthday? Lol! Really makes no difference since it will not ever be happening. Meanwhile he'll have you wasting your time trying to "decode" some of Bessler's 300 year old poorly written poems. Enjoy your gravy everyone! Slurp, slurp, slurp. Lol!
Just a thought...JC better hope none of these drop in pm wheel revealers doesn't happen to have his design. If that happens, then JC will lose all priority to what he has been working on (assuming he has anything at all, that is). In this world the first to publicly disclose an invention gets the historical credit for it whether it's patented or not. Keep that in mind, JC, as you continue to play hide and seek with the followers of this blog.
So where is it already? We've all been drooling nonstop since you promised to finally show us Bessler's REAL pm wheel secret. The floors are getting soaked with drool and there is danger of one us slipping and breaking a hip or something bad like that. Please end our anguish as soon as possible!
DeleteI think he's going to ghost us. Should have known it was too good to be true!
DeleteI'm back with your FEAST...so dig in everyone and enjoy!
ReplyDeleteI've been studying the Bessler pm wheel invention forever and have found enough evidence to convince me that this is IT...the actual design he used. It's low torque and one direction only. I haven't figure out yet how he made it two direction, but I don't think it would be too difficult to do that. Feel free to sim and build it to your heart's content.
I'm unfortunately no longer a builder. I was years ago, but Father Time has different plans for me now...is it my poor eyesight or do I see the Grim Reaper heading my way?! Probably just my eyes...I hope!
https://i.postimg.cc/W17WB8bh/PM-SECRET.jpg
Sorry everyone was drooling so much waiting around for my reveal...time to find a mop! Anyway I hope you all like my username. I'm using it because Brad said I should have one and also because it reflects my current lifestyle.
Rumrunner
Wow! It looks good! I can't see any obvious reason why it couldn't work. Good luck with it, RR.
DeleteBessler's ghost approves of it!!!
Deletehttps://i.postimg.cc/KvtLNXLt/smile.gif
@rumrunner Thanks for finally solving this mystery for us! I suspected for years that Bessler used something like this. There are the eight weights. The springs. The ropes. And the weights working in pairs as one weight gets closer to the axle while the other gets farther away because they are connected together by a rope. It should also make noises on the descending side as weights there hit the inside of the drum's outer rim. Your design has it all! Congrats!
DeleteAnyone else notice the rope connecting the 12 to 6 o'clock weights goes to the right of the inner axle drum and the other 3 ropes go to the left of the axle drum.
DeleteThank you for the entertainment guys!
DeleteTo anon 17:39, you make a valid point, which I’ve been aware of for a long time, so one else might succeed before I publish anything, I don’t think anyone will beat me unless their publication is imminent!
I don’t like to disrespect anyone else’s design, but trust me that I one won’t do. But keep trying.
JC
@anon 07:34 I think that's due to the 12:00 weight being at the top of the drum and the 6:00 weight being at the bottom and on a lever that falls to the left of the axle. That causes the 12 to 6 o'clock rope to wrap around the right side of its axle pulley. The other three ropes don't have that configuration.
Deletehttps://i.postimg.cc/0Ny3JfSM/Rum-Runner1d.gif
DeleteI decided to do a quick graphical analysis of Rumrunner's wheel design and, as the attached image link shows, its CoG is not located on the wheel's right descending side but rather slightly onto the opposite left ascending side. That means that the wheel, AS HE DREW IT, would have no tendency to spontaneously rotate CW and would only slowly rotate CCW when released.
DeleteHowever, I do think his basic design is good and that the bad location of its CoG that I found could be due to him misplacing the weights when he drew the design by hand. This is a problem that can crop up when relying on hand drawn designs of wheels with low torques. Also, above he mentioned that he has "poor eyesight" which would not help when making a drawing. Imo, his design really needs to be simmed to see if its a runner. I'll leave that task to someone else to take on.
https://postimg.cc/Rq43xncW
JC wrote: "...so one else might succeed before I publish anything, I don’t think anyone will beat me unless their publication is imminent!"
DeleteYou need not fear anyone beating you and thereby stealing away your credit. That's because everyone knows Bessler used eight weights in his wheels and not five and they are working on trying to duplicate HIS actual wheels and not something dreamed up after reading one of Euclid's 2300 year old geometry proofs and then finding an angle of 36 degrees somewhere in the Bessler drawings. If one makes the effort, he can find all sorts of angles in Bessler's drawings and Euclid proofs that include them. Imo, you need to start working with eight weights if you ever want to make any serious progress. Eventually, however, I think you'll get that five weight bug out of your system. Most likely by the end of next year. One more year of no progress should finally cure you. We can only hope...
I'm also impressed by Rumrunner's pm wheel so I'll try making a wm2d sim of it to see what its potential is, if any. However, it won't be a complete sim using all eight of the weighted levers which can be very time consuming. I'll just use a single opposed pair and then adjust their spring tensions to see if their CoG can be made to stay on the wheel's descending side throughout a full 360° rotation.
DeleteThe rotation will be slow and motor driven to reduce CF effects. If the pair's CoG cannot be made to stay on the descending side of the drum, then there's no use adding in the other three pairs of opposed weighted levers.
I think any design that is low torque will be very tricky to work with. The spring parameters, rope lengths, weight masses, stop placements, etc. have to be just right to create constant imbalance as a wheel rotates. Most handmade model wheels are far too crude to achieve such a delicate balance. Bessler was an apprentice clockmaker at one time, IIRC, so he would have been an expert at balancing mechanisms. Most pm chasers do not have such a skill. They are hoping that their design's arrangement of weights will produce such a big imbalance that it will more than overcome any minor imbalance in the total structure of their wheel. That unfortunately won't be happening in the real world.
Bessler was the right guy at the right time with the right skills to succeed at achieving pm where thousands of others had failed and are still failing. Yet, despite his success, he is today almost universally regarded as a charlatan even in his own home country! We've got to set the record straight even if it's centuries overdo.
@14:55
DeleteLol! Telling JC that he shouldn't be using five weights in his wheel is like telling a fish he shouldn't swim! You're just wasting your breath. He's got an extreme case of "pentagons on the brain" and I'm not sure if there is any cure for it...other than maybe when he finally drops dead (which finally cures everything when you think about it!). We need to just let him be so he can do his thing. Actually I think he secretly enjoys being the outlier of pm wheel chasers. It gets him the attention that he craves even if he never produces a working wheel. Unfortunately it is mostly negative attention, but for some that is much preferable to no attention at all.
Actually, there is no law requiring JC or anyone else to tell us anything! He can just remain 100% secretive as many past members on bwf and other similar sites have done. They were always hinting at what the "real" secret was and that they knew it in detail, but then revealed nothing...ever. JC can do the exact same thing. He can just keep telling us he "knows" how Bessler's wheels worked, but continue to reveal nothing to us. Of course, there is no law requiring us to believe anything he says and, with an absence of independent verification (provided by him showing us where those "clues" he's found are located in the Bessler literature and drawings or giving us some drawings, photos, or videos of what he claims to be working on so that we can sim his design to see if it actually works), we can just continue to consider him as being FOS if we choose to do so.
DeleteMoral bankruptcy vs honor.
DeleteBad news to report. I eventually made a full sim of Rumrunner's pm wheel and, despite many adjustments to its springs, I could not get it to maintain an imbalance to achieve pm. I exported the sim to my desktop as an .avi file, but then had to convert it into a .gif file and, unfortunately, the conversion did not go well. Anyway I uploaded what resulted to a free gif host site and they only provided a small size image frame of the video. But, the bottom line is that this wheel unfortunately does not work and just gently oscillates about its equilibrium position when released. Wish I had better news for you Rumrunner.
Deletehttps://s12.gifyu.com/images/b3A2J.gif
Arrgh! Cough! Choke! Our "feast" turned out to be rancid meat! Poor RR will be devastated by this bad news. He was so cocksure back on 4 November that he had B's wheel all figured out. Hmm...kinda like JC is now about his version of B's wheel!
DeleteThe safest bet to make whenever a new design is revealed here is that it's going to prove to be yet another non runner. However, anon 10:07 is only one simmer. Maybe another one would tweak RR's sim a little differently and get positive results? Guess we'll never know because once the first simmer rejects a design, his rejection tends to turn others off to making their own sims of the design. Too bad RR cannot make his own sims. Now it's time to be patient until the next design comes along and it will eventually. Its arrival might take a few weeks or even months, but right now out there in lurkerland there are probably a half dozen pm chasers with pet designs of their own that they are 100% convinced are "it" and with which they want to stun the world. Amazing how Bessler's ambiguous writings can create that delusional effect.
DeleteMuch thanks to anon 13:27 and anon 10:07 for taking the time to evaluate my "real" solution to Bessler's wheel that I was so very convinced was it. Yes, I am "devastated by this bad news" anon 10:25. I spent years studying Bessler and his wheels and now I have been forced to realize that it was all for nothing! I will spend no more time on it. I'm even starting to think that maybe the critics are right and it was just some sort of hoax that was never discovered. I think I need to find a new hobby. Thanks everyone...sorry the feast was no good.
DeleteRumrunner
Sorry to hear the sim result Rumrunner. We live, we learn. Does that make JC the Frontrunner.
DeleteRoadrunner
@RR
DeleteI feel your pain man. However, I think you're just going through the typical post pm wheel failure depression which is one of the notable hazards of this crazy subject whether you're a theorist, a simmer, or a builder. In a world that demands success, no one wants to be known for only delivering one failure after another.
So take a break for a week or two. If you haven't done so yet, you might also want to read that Ken Behrendt book on Bessler's wheels. He REALLY takes a deep dive into the subject and his book just may give you some solace at this time. It took him about a half century to find some answers that make sense and he will definitely convince you that Bessler's wheels were not a hoax.
We've all been there Rumrunner at one time or another. You can spend months working on some surefire pm wheel and then it all comes down to a single test to determine if you've finally found success...and in seconds it FAILS! It feels like someone pulled the rug out from under you. Your emotions are all over the place. You can even start getting paranoid and not knowing who to trust. Then you get irritable and begin hating yourself for being so stupid to think YOU would be the one in thousands to find a working design. How could you have been so egotistical?! You can start to lose sleep and it can take a toll on your health.
DeleteWhen this happens it's good to get completely away from the subject for a few weeks to let your brain cool down and heal up. Take your vitamins and minerals and get plenty of sleep. Then, when and IF you are ready again, you can gradually go back into the subject. You'll then be doing it with a fresh mind and you may start seeing new approaches that you wouldn't have seen before. Sometimes failure can actually be a blessing in the long run.
Sounds like a good time to self medicate...with RUM and plenty of it! I always prefer the dark stuff to the light. Seriously, though...sorry to hear about your disappointment...
DeleteAnons 00:15 & 01:27 before RR hits the medicating shelf why doesn't his wheel work so he knows? Are the ropes all the same length and the springs the same force?
Delete@anon 04:15
DeleteI did the sim of RR's wheel and the springs and ropes were all the same. The model wheel was 36 inches in diameter, the weights were 2 lbs. each, and the springs were 8 inches long with a tension constant of 0.25 lb/in. The rope lengths were 53.583 inches each. His wheel did not work because it could no keep the CoG of its 8 weights on the wheels descending side.
"His wheel did not work because it could no[t] keep the CoG of its 8 weights on the wheels descending side."
DeleteThat's the common problem all OB pm wheel designers/builders must face and overcome. Bessler did it so it must be physically possible. Trouble is that most builders have no idea exactly where the CoG of their wheel's weights is located. You cannot see that invisible point in space while building your wheel. You can only estimate its location and hope it stays there when you unleash your creation. The chance that it will in a low torque design? Less than your chance of winning a major multistate lottery jackpot! One thing that can help you is to get yourself wm2d and start using it. It will save you a LOT of wasted time and effort and expense.
Anyway, I was VERY impressed with anon 13:27's graphical method above for quickly finding the location of the CoG in RR's wheel. I'd not seen that simple method used before and will start using it myself. If you can't use a sim program, his method makes a nice substitute although it won't show you what will happen when you let your wheel rotate. At least you'll know where the CoG's starting location is and what direction the wheel will turn when released. But, to keep the CoG at that location, at any moment the GPE being lost by descending weights must EXACTLY match the GPE being gained by the rising weights. Sounds easy to do? Lol! No! It is EXTREMELY difficult and requires PRECISE coordination between your wheel's weighted levers. I'm wondering if it would be possible to submit a wheel design to some super AI program and ask it to add the springs and interconnecting ropes to the design so that the CoG would remain fixed in space as the wheel rotated. IF that could be done, we could be building all sorts of nice WORKING OB pm wheels!
"...at any moment the GPE being lost by descending weights must EXACTLY match the GPE being gained by the rising weights. Sounds easy to do? Lol! No! It is EXTREMELY difficult..."
DeleteThe only design I know of where that happens is if you have, say, eight weights equally spaced around the rim of a wheel and rotate it. Another possibility is when you have, again say, eight weights that are suspended by ropes or levers from pivots that are, themselves, equally spaced around the rim of a wheel and rotate it. Once you start trying to change that situation, especially the second one, you get into trouble real fast. Bessler apparently solved the problem with a combination of springs and "connectedness principle" ropes between his wheels' levers. Find out how he attached the spring and ropes to his levers and you will solve his wheel. Y shape levers? Why not? Maybe they or some other shape are critical to using Bessler's connectedness principle. Sos keeps pushing all those clues he's finding for the Y shape levers. He finds too many of them, imo, for it to just be chance. I can accept the Y lever. Now how to attach them all together with springs and ropes to keep the cog of the weights at the ends of the levers on a wheel's descending side?
Ok anon 17:27. That makes sense. So lets assume you got the right sping and rope connections and your wheels falling weights supply the exact amount of energy to the rising weights if the wheel rotates. The cog of the weights then stays on the descending side of the wheel and stays there after you release the wheel and it turns and picks up speed. Fine. But an increasing speed wheel is gaining rotating energy. Where is that gained rotating energy coming from? According to the 1st of thermo it cant come from anywhere. Any ideas? If the 1st of thermo is right then the wheel should just sit there motionless even if its overbalanced and you released it. Its all very confusing I think.
Delete@anon 01:34, I have seen OB wheels that had offset cog's and still did not move by themselves when let go. You could move them by hand to any positions but then they would just sit motionless in that new position when you let go of them. If you gave them a spin, they would turn for a while and then slow to a stop while still being OB. Bessler's wheels would have been OB but did not have that problem. The question is how did he do it?
Delete