What are the clues in the Orffyreus Code?

This a follow-up to Thursday's blog, as I received several emails asking me to clarify what the clues are.

The first and most obvious clue lies in Bessler's pseudonym, Orffyreus. Everyone knows how it was arrived at but no one seems to have known why he chose it. The system he used, known as atbash, invented by Jewish scribes, was a way of disguising proper names and was used in the Old Testament. The alphabet was divided in two and the second half aligned under the first half. Letters comprising the names of certain people were substituted with those letters appearing under or over them.

The questions that have not been satisfactorily answered until recently, are, why did he bother creating a pseudonym, and why did he choose this name and this method? The answer to why he had a pseudonym was alluded to in my blog earlier this week; it was to create a method which could be used to hide vital information about the construction of his machine. The name, Orffyreus, arose from the use of the atbash cipher as I explained and was designed to lead one to search for further indications of this method. Other examples exist within Bessler's written works, but they don't seem to help us get more information. Bessler himself, wrote that those who sought answers would do well to read his books and the truth is that there are answers there but they are not obvious and require some effort to decipher the clues once they have been found.

Typical clues are, a list of 141 references to chapters and verses from the bible; and page of verse which appears to be full of metaphors; and many examples of chronograms. A chronogram is a sentence or inscription in which certain letters, can also be interpreted as numerals, thus standing for a particular date when rearranged. The word, meaning "time writing", derives from the Greek words chronos ("time") and gramma ("letter"). Bessler was
particularly fond of this method of enciphering a date.

There are other clues which once found are not difficult to decipher but are extremely well hidden. These I have deciphered and as a consequence I know the basic concept behind Bessler's wheel and I shall be working hard to build a demo model as proof of the principle. I am convinced that it is only a matter of months before a working model is made - either by myself or by others who appear to be close to success.

JC