Some of Bessler’s Clues Hidden In Plain Sight.

I’ve often mentioned how Bessler liked to leave clues disguised amongst innocent seeming text and illustrations. In other words ‘Hidden in plain sight’, something that should have been easy to spot, but in fact was so unobtrusive that nobody noticed them, or they were part of something else of little interest. Bessler used the term ‘drawing a veil over something’ and then saying ‘when I lift the veil, etc. Also in MT11, he wrote “but there is more in it than meets the eye, as will be seen when I pull back the curtain and disclose the correct principle at the right time.

So here’s the first of so many clues that I’ve lost count.

The over-numbering

In his publications, Grundlicher Bericht (GB) and Das Triumphirende (DT) all of  the parts in Bessler’s illustrations were labelled and numbered. Two of his illustrations are shown below. 

 This 

In the above illustrations  notice the main pillar supporting the wheel is labelled 4, not once but three times. This is a common feature of all the illustrations in both GB and DT.

It is worth noting that he had only 24 numbers to play with and if he wanted to put enough numbers available in the illustration to achieve a certain total he had to repeat as many of them as he needed.  When all the numbers are added together their total is 660. To find the purpose of guiding us to this number, Bessler hides another clue within the illustration.

The clock.

One day I was idly drawing in the lines of perspective, aligning with the various parts in the illustration, in the Merseberg wheel drawing, fig 2. I noticed that they all centred on the point of rotation.  I became curious when I noted that the line upon which two weights were placed were each labelled ‘8’.  Could this represent the eight o’clock line on a clock face?

Yes. A quick study of the clock illustration shows the extent of the clock-face.  Notice that the twelve o’clock and the three o’clock lines are accurately placed, and as shown by the small red rings, the eight o’clock line is accurate also.   I had no idea why this was done, but that it was deliberate was clear and I eventually realised that the number twelve was a hint to divide the 660 total to obtain the number 55.

Yes it’s that number again, inserted in his name, and in other pictures and throughout his published books in various forms.  I’ll discuss the reasons for its ubiquity later. For now I want share another piece of hidden information.

The Enlargement of Bessler’s Wheel.

There are clues available which indicate that Bessler’s wheel as shown in both GB and the DT illustrations is actually larger than shown,  see the illustration below.

The meaning of one of the inconsistencies apparent in the illustrations in both fig 1 and fig 2, puzzled me for a long time.  In the drawing below, I have red-circled the upper two ends of the wheel supporting pillars.  Notice that they are higher than the two pairs to the left, they are green-circled.  To my eye this looked wrong, and the tops of the columns are different.  Why were they not all of equal height? If you look at the first two illustration you can see a short horizontal line on top of each of the two higher pillars.  I discovered that they were datum points, and intended to provide a reference to further alterations to the drawing. 

Given that the left end of the horizontal beam, shown in yellow below, extended just outside the wheel’s rim on the left side, I drew a circle with my compasses, centred on the wheel axle. which included its outer end.  I also included the two short lines on the pillars.

The outer circle is shown in blue in the second illustration below. I mentioned earlier, the other two datum points, not outlined in red or green, which are placed just to the left of the main wheel and are shown at different heights.  This confirms that the pentagram discussed earlier is deliberate,

In the illustration below, the green line is perfectly aligned with these two additional datum points as well as the hatching infill, and therefore runs parallel with the lower yellow chord which forms part of the pentagram shown many times before. 

https://johncollinsnews.blogspot.com/2023/04/johann-besslers-tilted-pentagram.html

The blue circle skims the bottom of the main pillar supporting the wheel. It also just touches the point of the triangular padlock and then aligns with the right edge of the illustration.

Why the padlock is numbered 24 in the GB illustration and 42 in the DT version

It has on occasion been regarded as a typo, but in fact it was done deliberately.  There is no way such carefully crafted number could accidentally been carved wrongly.  In my opinion it was done for one reason - how would someone correct it without physically altering it?  I believe we are meant look at it upside down in effect swapping the two numbers 4 and 2, to read 2 and 4.  The picture could looked be at in a mirror, or flipped horizontally or vertically, but in the end I think Bessler intended us to simply rotate it 180 degrees.

The design hidden within the wheel drawing, includes five weighted levers.  By turning the picture upside down, the next lever to fall can be seen in the illustration below.

In my last build I introduced scissor mechanisms to push the falling weighted lever further back towards the following yellow radius.

The Shadows Clues.

Note in the following illustrations the differences between how the shadows are drawn.  In the DT picture the shadows cast upon the ground are changed in direction in parts of the whole picture compared with GB1.  I think that the purpose of the shadow change is to create a separation of one side from the other.  So the shadows under the wheel in the DT version of the Merseberg wheel point the opposite way to those on the left and to how they were first shown in the drawing of the first version of the Merseberg GB wheel.  

In the first picture below, the shadows all point to the left, but in the next one you can see that the shadows under the main wheel point to the left, but those in the left half point to the right. 

In the picture above I have included a close up of the two versions for ease of comparison.

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There is a lot to take in here but there is so much more, and now I’ve started I’ll keep posting more information.  It does take me some time to collect and present the information in an abbreviated form so I’ll probably not post a second collection for a few days.  I hope you all enjoy it and perhaps it will ignite more enthusiasm for the project and maybe we will discover the actual solution.

I’m considering opening another page on which to post any of your pictures if acceptable.

JC

Copyright ©️2026 John Collins.

Final Blog About Our Search for the secret of Bessler’s Wheel.

I must thank all the kind people who have visited this blog over many years.  I have welcomed thousands of comments, some serious some not so.

I’ve  posted 754 times and received 28783 comments, had 1688739 visitors, from all over the world. It’s been an excellent experience and hope I’ve managed to spread information about Johann Bessler as far and as wide as possible.

I began to write my biography of Johann Bessler back in 1994, but I couldn’t find a publisher then, although I only approached about 50, but my MS was too long at the time and Bloomsbury publishing said if I could shorten it by half they would consider it.  Unfortunately they were taken over by another publisher and their list of potential authors was scrapped.  I decided to self-publish although there was little information available at that time.  I was not computer literate but I managed.  The internet was young and I also designed and posted my first web site in 1997, see below courtesy of ‘the way back machine’

https://web.archive.org/web/19980118081552/http://www.free-energy.co.uk/

Subsequently I had at one time eight web sites, all but one devoted to Bessler, but I let some go but I will continue to keep the current ones, some of which describe the codes and clues I’ve discovered and solved.

I began this blog on 9th February 2009, and I wrote:

“ Why am I writing a blog? I'm not sure, I don't even know for sure what's going to be in it, but I do know that someone (me!) has to get people interested in Johann Bessler also known by the weird name Orffyreus. Having spent most of my life researching the history of this man, I decided to set it all down in a book. The book covers everthing I could find about Bessler but it only scratches the surface of the facts regarding his codes. Yes, he left information about the secret of his machine encoded in his own writings This guy holds the secret to our future energy needs. The fact that he's dead is something of a stumbling block but don't let that put you off. It seems that he left pointers to his secret so all we have to do is find the information, decipher it and build our super new machine for supplying energy. Oh! Did I say he died nearly three hundred years ago? No? Sorry. Fortunately he left behind a huge collection of clues, hints and mysterious pictures all of which form part of the mystery - and the answer. I call it The Orffyreus Code! I know everyone's got codes in their titles, but this one is a real code Now, I've been ranting and raving about good old Johann since 1997 and those who have followed my lead and are now devoted fans form an enormous minority of the worlds population at about 0.000034%. and climbing! Maybe there should be a couple more zeros in there? Enough for now but I'll be back. JC

I’m not giving up on trying to recreate Bessler’s wheel, and I’ve made some important discoveries in Johann Bessler’s clues so I’m confident I can succeed.  But the urge to share what I know so far is no longer a temptation because I know that my explanation through this and other web sites will just get lost and maybe ignored among the competing designs, ideas, simulations and  actual builds.  

There will come a time when I decide to share my information and that will be when either I succeed with a working model, or it fails and I accept defeat. That defeat will allow me to publish everything I’ve discovered and hope there is enough new information to inspire someone else to take forward what I’ve achieved so far.

But if I succeed as I expect, it will be wonderful to prove that Johann Bessler did not lie.  How will the world react to that news?  How many people quietly working on trying to recreate Bessler’s wheel will be pleased and how many disappointed that they were beaten?  How many will claim that they too had succeeded?  I don’t know but it seems to me that at this moment in human history, this invention is needed desperately.

I’ve decided to stop posting blogs, for more than one reason.  Firstly it’s difficult to keep coming up with a new subject after nine years!  Secondly, people get irritated with me because they feel that I don’t keep my promises.  I do actually, I try to keep them open ended, but I should recognise that sometimes they aren’t fulfilled as people expect. The trouble is, I’m an incurable optimist, you have to be, in this field of study, and I keep making the mistake of promising too much, too soon, resulting in a lot of disappointment!  Finally, this blog was intended to provide an open forum for comments, discussion, airing of views and ideas; but in the recent past it has become infested with trolls and sock puppets.  There is, of course, always the option for anyone else to offer something similar or better.

So I’m leaving a brief description of the legend of Bessler’s wheel, and links to all five of my books which always available both digitally and printed hard copy.  I will probably return from time to time if I feel I have something of interest, but at the moment I think it will most likely be because I’ve succeeded - or failed! And of course there will be the publication of my own great treatise on the detailed description and meaning of Johann Bessler’s codes and clues.

JC

Where visitors to this blog came from:-

The Meaning of the Apologia Poetica Wheel.

What I love about this blog is the way it has transmogrified into a kind of catch-all discussion group which occasionally mentions the subject heading but then meanders off into various side issues.  But hey, I don’t worry as long as people keep commenting and we get some useful exchange of views.

There has been much discussion over the value of Bessler’s clues and, dare I say it, ‘fake clues’. My own efforts don’t seem to have garnered much interest but plenty of scepticism, but in my opinion they are real, not fake.

I have been asked many times for examples of the clues I claim to have found and deciphered, so even though some of them are available on my other websites I’m going to post several here from time to time, in the hope of generating some interest. I’m not going to show those that give too much away to start with, but I plan to share them all as my efforts to replicate Bessler’s wheel proceed - and I do have a design I’m working on.

There is a multitude of pieces of coded information, buried in this publication, Apologia Poetica, but the Apologia wheel drawing at the end of this book interested me initially because it looked so simple and because of the intriguing and mysterious hint in the accompanying text, “Jesus said, ‘do ye still not understand?’

I measured the angles at the inner end of the white segments and discovered, as others have found, that the angles are ambiguous – a bit too vague to measure accurately. I noted that the angles in the white segment formed a point outside the inner circles and that the black segments did not in fact form any measurable angle unless you extended them to a point which came somewhere beyond the centre of the wheel.

Due to the way things were printed in those times the exact sizes of the angles were difficult to establish.I felt that there must be another reason for the inclusion of this diagram with its cryptic comment above, and Bessler must have made allowances for the irregularities of the printing techniques of his time. If he knew that the angles would be hard to measure then perhaps the exact measurement did not matter, but it seemed safe to assume that all three angles were equal. I measured the white angles again and established that they were variously somewhere between 23 degrees and 27 degrees.

I added together each set of the same three numbers forming each of the three angles to see if the sum of the three numbers had any meaning. Using the angles as measured between 23 and 27 degrees, I ended up with several possible totals between 69 and 81. I divided the resultant totals into the 360 degrees of a circle and there was just one number which divided equally into 360 and that was the first real advance in deciphering Bessler’s code.

Three times 24 degrees comes to 72, and 360 degrees divided by 72 is 5. A circle, which can be divided by five, is a pentagram or a pentagon (a pentagram is a pentagon inscribed within a circle). So, I decided that Bessler might be indicating that his wheel had five divisions, which might indicate the use of five mechanisms – or it was a clue to further decipherments.

During my research I have discovered that Bessler rarely, if ever, missed an opportunity to include two or more hints or ways of deciphering a clue, within each item that held a clue and the above Apologia wheel is no exception. For those who remain unconvinced that the above diagram does indeed hold a hidden pentagram the following will go some way towards convincing them of this fact.

The above drawing is virtually self-explanatory. Draw a line from ’A’ to ’B’ as in the drawing. Drop a perpendicular through the centre of the wheel from ‘C’ to ‘D’. The length of the chord from ‘A’ to ‘C’ and also ‘B’ to ‘C’ is equal to one chord of a pentagram. Using a set of compasses set to the length of the first chord, simply fill in the remaining chords to complete the pentagram. Examples of this system of double clues abounds in Bessler’s work and is a way of confirming what initial findings appear to indicate.

There is an additional clue hidden in the curiously drawn axle in the centre of the Apologia wheel. It consists of a white dot denoting the centre, surrounded by a solid black circle. Surrounding this in turn is a white circle which is itself surrounded by a thin black circle and finally another white circle but one divided by three terminations of the three white segments. Just decoration? No.

In the next figure notice the same red lines as in the drawing above. First I drew the red horizontal line (as AB above). Next I drew in the two almost vertical red lines, which begin at the lowest corners of the bottom white segment and rise, deliberately skimming the edge of the inner black circle. Note that they meet at the upper edge of the circumference, indicating the same point as ‘C’ does in the above figure. This allows you to draw in the two upper arms of the pentagon

Now observe the two blue lines; starting from the only two points left on the circumference which don’t have lines starting from them, draw two lines skimming the edge of the slightly larger black circle to the far circumference. These end points define the other points of the pentagon.

The edge of the solid inner black circle provides the two datum points for the nearly vertical red lines which define the top of the perpendicular line through the centre. The thin outer black circle provides the two datum points for the blue lines, the lower ends of which define the remaining pentagon points

This not only explains the reason for the elaborate centre circles but also proves the presence of the pentagon. He gives us three ways to decipher the meaning of this wheel; once with the three 24 degree angles, numerical, and twice with different sets of geometrical lines defining the pentagonal feature.

Earlier I mentioned the curious quotation from the Bible which accompanies the Apologia wheel, “.... and Jesus said, do ye still not understand”. The implication is that there is something to be understood which is not readily apparent to the eye. It will be noticed that the quotation is from the Bible and takes the form of a chronogram. Chronograms were particularly popular in Germany in this period and were often used on buildings to establish the date of their construction.

Taking the several Latin uppercase letters D, I, D, V, C, C, V, V, D and I, from the first line of the quotation, and assuming they also represent Roman numerals, added together they total the figure 1717, the year of AP’s publication. D = 500, I = 1, V = 5, and C = 100. It will be noticed that the last line of the quotation has a couple of blanks, easily ignored but which represented omitted letters. The missing word is in fact, ‘teufel’ meaning ‘devil’. The letter ‘U’ and the letter ‘V’ are interchangeable in German so, applying the same technique as above and replacing the letters with numbers where possible we get ‘teVfeL’. Using the V and the L, indicates the number 55 - the number 5 again but repeated this time. 

Returning to the wheel diagram, there is the numerical pointer to the number 5, plus two geometrical features pointing to two 5s. This mimics the two 5s in the missing letter blanks in the quotation. This next is arguably coincidence, but the year 1717 can be read as 17 x 2 which equals 34 degrees, one of the main angles in a pentagram.

This is such an ingenious way of transmitting information, and is typical of the rest of Bessler’s clues. What information is he offering? To me it is obviously the basic wheel needs to have five segments, and the duplicated number 5 relates to the two way wheel, but it may also to mean 5 weights in 5 segments, or two sets of 5 weights!

These clues, with my interpretations, seem a lot more convincing than others which have been published.  I have strived to find and unravel clues which are simple to see and understand.  My solutions are logical and it seems to me that it is the solution I offer which is received with scepticism not the way I deciphered it.  This example above suggesting the importance of the number 5 is widely dismissed and the reason seems to be because  Fischer von Erlach described hearing the sound of about eight weights landing on the side towards which the wheel turned, in the Kassel wheel.  But the sounds were muffled by other noises, there could have been more of them in a two way wheel, and some could have been muffled or silenced.

JC

Designs for Bessler's Wheels

I received an email today with a design which the sender believes is how Bessler's wheel worked. I studied it with my usual care but as usual found little to get excited about. I lost my hard drive last year and although I recovered all of my documents, unfortunatley I was unable to save my emails since 1997! This was a tremendous blow because I reckon I had in excess of a 100 perpetual motion designs sent to me over the years.

As it happens, none of them would have solved the problem of Bessler's wheel but I always live in hope that someone will come up with the answer one day.

I still have an amazing collection of designs snail mailed to me from when I used to have my PostBox address on line. Again they are wonderfully drawn and show an impressive imagination but all would remain resolutely stationary if they were built.

I hope this trend to design would-be perpetual motion machines continues because I'm a firm believer that when the solution is found it will come from the 'little guy' working on his own in his work shop. Maybe some one like me or you perhaps?

JC