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.
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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.
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.
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