Wednesday 16 October 2013

Out of ideas? Cross bars and parametric oscillation?

It may have been noticed that the number and frequency of blogs has sharply diminished of late, and the reasons are several.  Subjects relating to Bessler are getting harder to discuss as the finishing line looms closer.  Writing about the subject without giving away anything about my research limits what comments I can make and it is clear that the Besslerwheel forum is suffering from the same affliction; people are running out of ideas to discuss.  I am also keenly aware that every time I make a statement such as I believe that  I am on the final stretch towards the finish, I sound like every other would-be winner of this race to exhibit the first gravity wheel in 300 years.

I often read comments on the besslerwheel forum which seek to affirm certain suppositions as facts and which I at least know are incorrect.  My problem is that when I know for certain that they are wrong I am unable to make any comment to correct this impression if it relates to anything which might give away the principle which I have discovered lies at the heart of the Bessler wheel.

How do I know with such certainty that they are wrong?  I can best answer this with an example.  It has often been stated with considerable self-assurance that we will never know if the wheel, when the solution is eventually found, will be the same configuration as Bessler's.  I can state with equal certainty that we will know, because I have already found enough evidence to convince everyone that the design lies there for all to see if only they can put the correct clues together.  Remember Bessler's word found written across the first page of Bessler's Maschinen Tractate; 

N.B. 1st May, 1733.  Due to the arrest, I burned or hid all the woodcuts that prove the possibility.  However, I have left all demonstrations and experiments since it would be difficult for anybody to see or learn anything about a perpetual motion from them or to decide whether there was any truth in them because no illustration by itself contains a description of the motion; however, taking various illustrations together and combining them with a discerning mind, it will indeed be possible to look for a movement and, finally to find one in them'. "

These words are the important ones, as I have said before - taking various illustrations together and combining them with a discerning mind, it will indeed be possible to look for a movement and, finally to find one in them.

I have found the correct illustrations and have put certain parts of them together to obtain a movement or action that demonstrates the principle.  I found the principle which, by the way, involves parametric oscillation as suggested by Scott many years ago on the forum - and also, independently, by professor Hal Puthoff in private correspondence with me several years ago - from other clues in Bessler's drawings, but I have to say that I discovered the Bessler-Collins principle myself first and then found it confirmed in a drawing by Bessler.

You may say, "where is the wheel then?" which is a fair question and I can only tell you that it is being worked on.  Knowing the principle alone is not sufficient and the delay in finishing it lies in deciding how to arrange just one cross bar or cross or crossing to make the principle work.

Speaking of cross bars,  Creuz, the word used by Bessler, and translated as cross bar, has a multitude of meanings and could refer to clubs, as in playing cards, or sharps as in music, or traverse, or of course the letter X - or it might just refer to the shape of a cross in the design of his mechanisms, but in the end it seems to indicate how many mechanisms he employed.  One was scarcely sufficient to turn the wheel but more worked better.

I shall continue to write blogs but they need more care in presenting my thoughts, given that the solution would be so easy to give away, and - selfishly, I admit - I would like to be the one who succeeds with my own version of Bessler's wheel.  As I've promised before, the work I've done will be published if I can't succeed soon so until then I shall keep reconfiguring the mechanism until it does what I want - or give up!

JC

10a2c5d26e15f6g7h10ik12l3m6n14o14r5s17tu6v5w4y4-3,’.

Wednesday 2 October 2013

Build Update and drilled holes which wander awry!

I'm totally immersed in this project and finding it difficult to take time to write this blog, so apologies if you miss my pearls of wisdom, but I have to finally find a way to finish it - the wheel that is, not the blog!  I shall reappear periodically with another trite piece of literary garbage in a vain attempt to stoke some interest afresh, in the life and legend of Bessler's wheel and my/our attempts to solve the ingenious puzzle he bequeathed to later generations - how to cause a wheel to spin continuously requiring nothing but the force of gravity inplace of fuel.

My wood disc, which I use as a kind of platform for attaching the various bits of mechanism that I devise, has been replaced recently because the old one was in danger of becoming a large wooden circle with nothing inside the rim; this being due to my need to drill numerous holes in incalculabler numbers all over the face of the disc, each of which was designed to hold one of the supporting pivots for the forest of levers bearing weights, which formed the mechanisms, but which was found to be in the wrong place according to the resulting state of frozen immobility.

So I begin work anew using my pristine MDF disc, and have carefully measured the dimensions of the levers and drawn their correct positions on the face of the disc and have begun again to drill those accursed holes which are sometimes driven by some iniquitous urge to move slightly off position, thus preventing the success I so desperately seek.

Just kidding guys!  I have drawn in the angles the levers are intended to follow, the weights are ready and attached to the levers.  I'm making this latest version with the intention of trying it with just one mechanism - or one cross-bar as Bessler put it.  I'm not convinced that it will work with only one and Bessler said in Apologia, "If I arrange to have just one cross-bar in the machine, it revolves very slowly, just as if it can hardly turn itself at all, but, on the contrary, when I arrange several leverss, pulleys and weights, the machine can revolve much faster.."  but it should work sufficiently to prove the principle.

It's so frustrating to know the principle behind the wheel and it's so easy to understand that anyone who learns about it will know with the same certainty as I do that it is the key to success.  I was thinking of calling it the "Bessler-Collins principle of ..." - sorry guys but that would give it away! 

Somebody pointed out that the heading of the blog 13th September, Never, Ever, Give Up.originated from a fragment of a Churchill speech which went like this:-
“Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never – in nothing, great or small, large or petty – never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force, never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”
Who might the enemy be?  Why, the world of sceptics out there who deride our every word.

Anyway back to work and I hope I can give you some good news soon.

JC

10a2c5d26e15f6g7h10ik12l3m6n14o14r5s17tu6v5w4y4-3,’.

Monday 23 September 2013

Levers, Weights and Perpetual Motion Wheels

When I began my research into Bessler's wheel, 50 odd years ago (!), I used paper, pencil, ruler compasses and a protractor, not much has changed; I still prefer doing the initial design on paper before recording it on my computer.

My first thoughts were to try to design a way of making the weights keep further from the centre of rotation, or try to get more of them on one side than the other -  and that is pretty well the same thing today - that the vast majority of people try to achieve.

But, as I progressed by trial and error - mainly error - one of the mistakes I made many years ago involved the different effects experienced by a lever with a weight on one end, a pendulum if you like, when attached to a wheel.  I'm sure that most people are aware of this simple phenomenon, but as I still get designs emailed to me which ignore this effect, I thought it useful to describe it here.

A pendulum whether swinging or stationary, applies its weight to the pivot.  In other words, gravity pulls down on the weight and the pull is experienced at the pivot. For the sake of this argument I ignore other pulls experienced by the pendulum when swinging.  One of the typical features of perpetual motion designs includes the use of these weighted levers. 

Consider this; a lever with a weight on one end is attached to a pivot mounted at some place on the wheel, say half way between the centre and the rim.  When the wheel is stationary the pendulum hangs straight down, and its weight is experienced at the pivot.  If the wheel is slowly rotated, the lever remains hanging from the pivot while it counter-rotates relative to the wheel, and the weight of the pendulum is still born by the pivot and felt at that point.

If a stop is placed in the path of the counter-rotating pendulum, and this will inevitably be part of the design, then the pendulum is prevented from further motion relative to the wheel; the pull of weight is no longer experienced at the pivot but is then moved to the position on the wheel occupied by the weight. 

 This means that the pull from the weight has moved across the face of the wheel at the the instant that the pendulum comes up against the stop.

Should the wheel be rotated by hand until the pendulum is able to fall again, its weight during the fall, is negligible because it is in free fall and the pivot does not bear the weight and neither does the wheel, so the wheel has lost that portion of its total weight - until, that is, the weight hangs vertically again from its pivot.

So the position in which the weight is supported, or experienced, and where it affects the wheel, moves between the pivot itself and the weight where ever it happens to be relative to the wheel and, for a brief moment, no weight at all, as it falls.

There are several problems which arise when the design calls for the pendulum to do something which doesn't take into account these features and I'd like to have run through some, but time, space and falling reader attention combine to persuade me otherwise.

Of course this all changes if the falling pendulum is designed to do work as it falls - and that's a whole new can of worms!

I should perhaps have included drawings to illustrate this, but the clock is always against me.

JC

10a2c5d26e15f6g7h10ik12l3m6n14o14r5s17tu6v5w4y4-3,’.

Tuesday 17 September 2013

Bessler's Gera Wheel was moved by modest mechanisms of seemingly simple appearance.

Going by the designs I receive by email, from time to time, I notice that the majority of people have devised fairly complex designs in their efforts to solve Bessler's wheel.  Not complex in the way a petrol engine looks when you see an exploded diagram of one, but more complex than it might need to be.  I think the following points are worth bearing in mind when attempting to solve this conundrum.

Bessler was worried that people would think that the wheel wasn't worth the asking price once they saw how it worked and how simple it was.  He was also concerned that a glimpse of the workings or a careless word uttered, might give away the secret, and Karl, the Landgrave, described the wheel as being extremely simple

The Gera wheel, his first, measured 4.6 feet in diameter and only 4 inches in thickness.  The framework which supported the weights and the levers, or whatever else was contained within the wheel, must have been formed to supply a certain rigidity in order not to deform or break down when rotating.  We have no details on the size of the axle but assuming that it was of a sufficient size to keep the wheel stable and relative to the next thee wheel which were correspondingly larger, I think it must have been about 4 inches thick.

These figures suggest an internal thickness of three to three and a half inches maximum, which does not leave much room for the weights.  I'm sure they weren't as heavy as the ones Christian Wolff described as being about 4 pounds in weight, and they would have to have some room to accomodate an lateral movement. The motion of the wheel was described as being accompanied by scratching and scraping sounds, and this suggests that the levers were rubbing against each other as they moved, or the weights were scraping the internal walls of the wheel.

Finally I remain fairly certain that there were five mechanisms within the wheel for reasons additional to the ones I've described elsewhere and this helps to confirm the basic argument I'm putting forward here, that the solution will be found to be extremely simple and not of a complex design - and the mechanisms took up very little room.  The theory I've been working on for the last eighteen months or so, seems to suggest that although it looks simple there are at least two principles to bear in mind and I've recently found that I can distill the amount of mechanism down to fewer component parts and replicate the action I achieved with a more complex design.  This will, I hope, enable me to fit five of them within the wheel.
.
JC

10a2c5d26e15f6g7h10ik12l3m6n14o14r5s17tu6v5w4y4-3,’.

Friday 13 September 2013

Never, Ever, Give Up.

I wonder if the apparent dirth of new ideas in this field of research is real or just a symptom of my own jaded perspective.  With regard to a solution to the age old problem of perpetual motion and more specifically, Bessler's wheel, I feel as though I have seen, read about or thought of everything I that anyone comes up with these days.  I still receive emails informing me of the auhor's excitement at the prospect of solving the puzzle of Bessler's wheel and they always wish to share their ideas with me.  I always used to be pleased to see what they came up with but long years of seeing the same ideas recycled over and over, has forced me to politely, I hope, and with appropriate gratitude, turn down the offer to share their new found solutions.  I always leave them with encourgemnt and suggestons as to who else they might approach with me success.

Johann Bessler, also known by his pseudonym, ORFFYREUS, did certainly invent a machine which turned continuously for the best part of two months, lift heavy weights and drive an archimedes screw for pumping water.  It survived numerous official and unofficial examinations during more than ten years, without even the slightest evidence of fraud being found, despite the most determined scrutiny.  I believe, as do many others, that the machine made use of the force of gravity to shift weights in a paricular configuration which created a contnual imbalance in the wheel which caused it to trun continuously.

I am constantly surprised therefore to find that instead of an increasing interest in this extraordinary invention, there appears to be a fading fascination with it.  Yet, in the light of the many problems concerning energy, I am amazed that no single person or department within any kind of research or educational institute has shown the slightest curiosity about why it worked or if fraud, how Johann Bessler did it.

My frequent conversations with strangers usually produces outright rejection of the very idea that such a machine might be feasable, but on hearing the evidence they appear to become more open-minded - at least while in my presence.  I suspect that later conversations they might have with others would proabably be met with the same scornful hilarity as is regularly shown to me, thus I do not blame them if their open-minds slam shut!

So all I can do until I, or some other poor obsessed soul, produces a working wheel is encourage you who happen by chance upon these words, to read my book about Bessler.  I called it, 'Perpetual Motion; An Ancient Mystery Solved?'  I included the 'question mark' to suggest that although I appeared to be claiming that the problem had been solved, I was asking the question, 'was it solved once?'

It details all the evidence I found during some thirty years of research.  I also produced, in an effort to provide more information, three of Bessler's self-published book, each with its own English translation.  You can find links to each book to the right. of thios page.

Good luck and don't give up - ever!

JC


10a2c5d26e15f6g7h10ik12l3m6n14o14r5s17tu6v5w4y4-3,’.

Saturday 7 September 2013

ACRONYM for Bessler technology anyone?

Thinking up an acronym, such as RADAR and LASER, to describe the new Bessler technology might be an interesting project, as suggested by Bill Mothershead in a comment recently.

In the early days of the internet, I formed a research group along with half a dozen others from around the world, which we called BORG, "Bessler Orffyreus Research Group".  We have long since gone our separate ways although some of the members are still active in this field.  I had also spent many moments considering options to describe this technology, just as Bill suggested, and I was unable to come up with anything as simple as the above acronyms.

LASER stands for "Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation", which is a good if extremely brief description of the concept, but not the details required to build it. Similarly RADAR stands for "RAdio Detection And Ranging", another brief description of the basic concept.

So in our case we need a brief description of the concept which needn't include any description of how it is achieved.  At its simplest we need just the simple description of what it is designed to do, which, to those of us who believe Bessler's wheel was driven by gravity alone, means something along the lines of "Gravity Impelled Rotation GIR and you can add an 'O' for Orffyreus to make GIR-O but the term is too commonly in use for other things so no good.  We need a word not currently in use

You get the picture - it's not as easy as it looks.  Any suggestions welcome.

JC

Tuesday 27 August 2013

Taking a break is good for a relationship!

Being away from the workshop and unable to do any building has been quite therapeutic.  

I have always maintained that the only route to success in the matter, requires constant wheel building or at least mechanism construction, but the opportunity to ponder upon the subject without access to building materials forced me to go over in my mind the path I had taken to this point; the moments of inspiration; the assumptions and false assumptions I had made ...and the discovery of two principles that I believe have to be taken into account in the design of the machine.

So for me, maybe only this time, I think that the time away from the physical act of designing and building, clarified things to the point that I could not wait to get back to work on the model I'd been working on previously, because things have become clearer to me.  However the truth of this subjective feeling will be tested in the next few weeks, but as I said before I left, 'confidence is high'.

There are many among us who enjoy these moments of supreme confidence that we have solved this enduring puzzle, only to have the rug whipped out from under us, and yet for me, despite these moments, I have never been persuaded to give up but rather, encouraged to tackle the proble with renewed energy. This sounds a bit like religious talk, and in truth I suppose it is a kind of belief system; a matter of faith that we, or at least one us, will discover the truth and make all those who derided us in the past for our crazy talk, eat humble pie!

JC

10a2c5d26e15f6g7h10ik12l3m6n14o14r5s17tu6v5w4y4-3,’.

Tuesday 20 August 2013

Update -from Florida


I'm still away, but I thought I'd write a blog update about where I am with regard to finishing the wheel.  I'm writing this on my mini ipad, so it's not so easy to write as on my PC at home!  I'm posting this to try to show why I'm reluctant to give any information about my work to date.

A principle that I discovered more than a year ago has so far failed to aid me in reproducing a working version of Bessler's wheel, however my efforts to try to incorporate it  has led to the discovery of another principle which lies at the root of Bessler's wheel. Both principles are essential ingredients to the successful completion of the wheel.

One is required to settle the angles through which the levers operate and the other is that most important configuration that overbalances the wheel.  I hesitate, these days, to make any claims to know the secret, but I do know and understand why these two principles are so important to the successful conclusion to a working wheel. 

When I discovered the first, I set to, building what I was certain would be the successful wheel,  however subsequently the second principle revealed its importance...and explained Bessler's comment that one side is full and the other side empty.

I may not be able respond to any comments prior to my return but I will read them and respond when I can.

JC

10a2c5d26e15f6g7h10ik12l3m6n14o14r5s17tu6v5w4y4-3,’. 

Thursday 1 August 2013

The solution to Bessler's wheel is in sight

I'll be away for a week or two but I'll keep the blog open and read any comments as usual. So before I go, these are the facts as I know them...

Johann Bessler, also known as Orffyreus, invented a perpetual motion wheel. Despite the arguments both for and against, we know that it required the presence of weights to work and that it drew its energy from gravity.  I know this is taught as a violation of the laws of physics however the evidence that it worked and Bessler's own words convinces me that in certain situations or under special circumstance the assumptions within those laws can be circumvented and their usual established consequence may be changed - this would be the window perhaps, or a chink in the armour, to a working wheel mechanism. (I owe thanks for much of the phraseology in the previous sentence to Fletcher, a stalwart of the Besslerwheel forum)

I won't rehearse the arguments yet again, they are available on my websites and on the besslerwheel forum, but I have very good reasons for thinking that I know the answer to the invisible 'chink in the armour' of scepticism that holds us in its unrelenting grip.  I have been working towards this particular solution for several months and I'm know I'll get there soon.  I have to be away for a brief period so work on my wheel will stop 'til my return, but, as someone said in the movie, "The Day After," "Confidence is high. I repeat, confidence is high!"

Good luck to everyone involved in this project and I'll write again on my return.

JC

10a2c5d26e15f6g7h10ik12l3m6n14o14r5s17tu6v5w4y4-3,’. 

Thursday 25 July 2013

Johann Bessler's small world of paragrams and chronograms.

It was while seeking for corroborative evidence that Bessler's MT 137 was derived from David Heinichen's circle of fifths (see my page at http://www.theorffyreuscode.com/html/mt_137_a.html ) that I found a thesis describing how JS Bach, a friend and colleague of Heinichen, had included in his works a system known as alphanumerics; the subject of numerology and the old Hebrew system of Gematria involved the use of similar alphanumeric manipulation ..and of course so did Johann Bessler.

In 1947 Friedrich Smend, published the first of four studies in which he presented his theory that Johann Sebastian Bach had used a alphanumerics to incorporate significant words into his music as part of a grander scheme of compositional number symbolism. Smend collected historical testimonies and musical examples which confirmed his theory,

By the seventeenth century, alphanumeric were known about in many parts of Europe. They seem to have been most popular in German-speaking countries, where they were most frequently used as a means of solving mathematical puzzles,decoding cryptographic messages, in cabbalistic gematria and in the poetical paragram. It is common knowledge that Bessler was fascinated by paragrams and used them extensively throughout his works, most obviously in the form of chronograms.

These paragrams were described by a certain professor Christian Weise, in one of his many publications. He was headmaster of the school In Zittau that Bessler attended. He became Bessler's mentor and his teachings had a profound effect on him.  Professor Christian Weise was famous as a German writer, dramatist, poet, and teacher.  Although he was Rektor of the Zittau school, he had previously worked at the court of Duke Augustus at Weissenfels.  Following his success at designing, building and exhibiting his perpetual motion machine at Gera and Draschwitz, Bessler had moved to Wesenfels in 1714, where he worked on the new two-way version of his wheel.

JS Bach applied for the position of the organist in Weissenfels but failed to obtain the post then, although he wrote works in praise of the Duke later, so there was no bad feeling between them. In 1717 David Heinichen became a colleague of Johann Sebastian Bach and in 1721, Heinichen married in Weissenfels where he had been born and where he lived for much of his life. I continue to believe that Heinichen passed on to Bessler his ideas on the circle of fifths because they all lived and worked in close proximity to each other and their fields of interest, music and organs overlapped, but I suspect that the alphanumeric system so popular in Germany at the time was also discussed.

It seem to have been a small world in which Bessler lived.  His headmaster worked for many years in Weissenfells, where JS Bach and David Henichen also flourished. Bach used some of Weise's poetry in his operas.  He wrote his own version of the circle of fifths which, although it bore no similarity to Heinichen's was based on the same theory.  Weise wrote knowledgeably about paragrams and it would seem unlikely that Bessler would not have leaned all about these popular number-alphabets directly from his mentor.

I'm writing a longer article examining these paragrams as they may hold one of the keys to deciphering much of Bessler published te xts. I'll publish it later on one of my websites.

PS the above information I culled from a varierty of web sites too numerous to mention, other than wikipedia.

JC

10a2c5d26e15f6g7h10ik12l3m6n14o14r5s17tu6v5w4y4-3,’.

Thursday 18 July 2013

A typical conversation about gravity-enabled wheels remembered.

I was talking to a physics teacher yesterday, a man of some years experience teaching at a fee-paying school and we got to discussing my research into Bessler's wheel.  

"Of course you do realise that he was a fraud, don't you?" he said.  

"How do you know that?" I asked.  

"Surely you know that gravity is a conservative forece and as such it cannot be used to supply energy continuously to drive that wheel of his,"  was his response.  

"But, " I replied, "the evidence that his claims were genuine is overwhelming and the numerous witnesses  none of them fools, nor easily misled.  Many of them were scientists, teachera and engineers themselves and looking for the signs of fraud."

"I'm sorry, my friend," he replied, "but you must face the facts, it's impossible, and I'll tell you why. To make the weights move in and out to cause overbalance, they will travel on different paths - right?"  I nodded because I knew where he was going with this.

"A conservative force is defined as one where  the work done in moving an object between two points is independent of the path taken, so even if they move inwards and outwards according to whether they are rising or falling...makes no difference."

"Yes I am aware of that",  I said somewhat sarcastically, "gravity is a conservative force but just as a matter of interest, can you name a non-conservative force?"

"Yes of course, friction is a non-conservative force."

"And another one?"

"Well, right now I can't think of any others, but that is not the point," he said.

"But that is the point" I replied, "there are no others worth mentioning because almost all forces are conservative and although you may technically be correct I simply cannoit regard friction as the same kind of force as all the others.  Let me ask you this; is the wind a conservative force?  Is a current of water a conservative force?"

"Well yes but their interfaces are different."

"What d you mean?" I asked.

Gravity acts on the molecules constituting the weights, while those in the wind and water act on the external surfaces of the blades."

"Sorry," I responded, "that doesn't make any difference if, as you say, the path they take doesn't matter with a conservative force. Yes the shapes of the interfaces alter, but you can't say that that excuses the fact that even though it's a conservative force the wind can still be used as an energy source - or a stream of water.  They are conservative forces and yet they demonstrate the fallacy of your argument.  Maybe I can make the path of the weights make a different shape depending on whether it's rising or falling, just like the two surfaces of the windmill sails for instance."

"You are wrong my friend, science has taught us that gravity is not a source of energy, other than for the time it takes for a weight to fall, for over 300 years, but if you can prove them all wrong, I'll eat my hat!"

JC

10a2c5d26e15f6g7h10ik12l3m6n14o14r5s17tu6v5w4y4-3,’. 

Friday 12 July 2013

Bessler's Codes - what do they mean?

This blog is sub-titled, "A blog about Johann Bessler and the Orffyreus Code and my efforts to decipher it", so it should come as no surprise if I occasionally actually discuss the codes I've been working on.  It has always puzzled me that few people discuss my efforts at decoding Bessler's works, other than an occasional mention in passing.  I assume that it is either because the codes reveal little of interest other than continual references to pentagons and the number 5 - or the argument I put forward in explaining the codes does not convince.

Despite the lack of anything of substance being revealed, obviously Bessler thought that anyone interested enough to find just the clues I've decoded, would seek to use the information to look for the real information so clearly hidden in all of his books.  Just because I have failed so far does not mean that someone else might not succeed and I hope that there are those out there working at the puzzle in an attempt to tease out what it was Bessler wanted us to know.

On my chief decoding site at theorffyreuscode.com I have provided brief but logical descriptions of the codes I've fathomed, and they are only the ones where the proof of their existence is irrefutable. There are others which are more speculative and I am reluctant to detail them because of that very fact; they are hard to prove.

But the real question that absorbs me is what do these many references to fives and pentagons signify? I always believed that he meant that there were five mechanisms needed, but my own experiments and his comments about having just one crossbar hardly made the wheel turn at all, implies that five is not necessary although it could be the optimum number.

Considering my findings about chapter 55 in his Apologia Poetica,  which you can read at http://www.orffyreus.net/html/chapter_55.html you can see that this part obviously contains a coded message, and the reinforcements of this message, 55 verses  etc, confirm this.  The only drawing in Apologia Poetica, the Apologia wheel as it has become known, contains a pentagram above the words, 'do you still not understand?'  Surely this book but not this drawing is the place to start looking for an answer?  

What of Das Triumphirende?  There do not appear to be any mysterious Xs, nor blanks in place of certain words - but there are drawings full of mystery and intrigue.  And even his Maschinen Tractate contains at least pentagram... where,,,why number 55 of course!  Also MT137 an apparently random drawing thrown in to confuse has as its basis, not just the pentagram, but the 'circle of fifth's, well-known in musical instruction but not so well, outside the profession.  I speculated that it was the 'circle of fifths', because that particular invention is attributed to Johann David Heinichen, who coincidentally lived in the same village as Bessler did, at the same time, when he (Heinichen) was an aspiring musician, composer and teacher, and Bessler was making church organs for the same people.  The circle of fifths is built up from a simple circle within a square and the resulting points are connected at every fifth point producing the dodecagram familar to both MT readers and musicians.

So here are all the firmly decoded clues available for all since at least 2009 and yet barely a single comment about any of it.  What puzzles me further is that  there are people still trying to build wheels based on the Apologia wheel which I've demonstrated is no such thing but merely a pointer to a pentagram.  

Others ask questions which they could easily find the answer to, if they only look, or they make  assumptions  based on inaccurate information which lead to utterly erroneous conclusions because they did not take the trouble to study the information both here and on the besslerwheel forums.

Whew!!!

Meanwhile my wheel building continues and I hope to finish it before I take a break in about three weeks.

JC

10a2c5d26e15f6g7h10ik12l3m6n14o14r5s17tu6v5w4y4-3,’. 

Saturday 6 July 2013

"...is it really a wheel, for it does not have the normal type of rim."

I had an idea about the above comment of Bessler's while considering something unrelated to it. My current build has one mechanism and I was considering how, in a future build, I would fit five mechanisms onto the face of the wheel and realised that it would be easier use the other side or face of the wheel as well.  Then I fell to wondering if that's how Bessler did it.

I have always assumed that his wheel consisted of two discs firmly connected together with all the mechanisms installed between them, but in fact it would be much easier to build the whole thing on a single disc, using each side.  This would explain the need to cover the two faces of the wheel with oil cloth.  I thought it strange how the reports described  the look of the wheel and could not see why he needed oilcloth to cover the sides, if two discs were underneath and therefore covering the insides.  But in fact a simple frame attached to the single central disc would suffice to support the oilcloth, or the thin deals described in another report.

Then we come to the above quote; the word used for 'rims' is 'Felgen'.  There is no other possible translation, however 'rims', these days, in relation to wheels are the outer edges of a wheel, holding the tire (tyre).  They make up the outer circular design of the wheel on which the inside edge of the tire/tyre is mounted.  Before rubber was invented, the first versions of tires were simply bands of iron that fitted around wooden wheels to prevent wear and tear. In the 1st millennium BC an iron rim was introduced around the wooden wheels of chariots.

So when Bessler says it looks like a wheel but it has no rim, he means that it can be described as a wheel but it wouldn't be any use as one because it has no rim or tire/tyre.

Note - Apparently the word 'rim' relates to Old Norse, 'rime, rimi, a raised strip of land, ridge'.

And from the online etymylogical dictionary - 'tire (n.) late 15c., "iron rim of a carriage wheel," probably from tire "equipment, dress, covering" (c.1300), a shortened form of attire. The notion is of the tire as the dressing of the wheel. The original spelling was tyre, which had shifted to tire in 17c.-18c., but since early 19c. tyre has been revived in Great Britain and become standard there. Rubber ones, for bicycles (later automobiles) are from 1870s.

JC

10a2c5d26e15f6g7h10ik12l3m6n14o14r5s17tu6v5w4y4-3,’.

Sunday 30 June 2013

Random Thoughts and Events and Updates.

There are times when I can't think of anything to write and others where I have to store pages for future publication.  But I notice that the number and quality of comments both here and on the Besslerwheel forum have dropped off. So in the face of  my own 'writer's block', or as it is sometimes called, 'Literary Constipation', what is one to do? Looking to the wisdom of those who came before me; I should take a break, write something entirely unrelated to the usual stuff. 

Someone asked how my work on Bessler's wheel was going and why did I say nothing about it?  I don't say much because there isn't much to say.  I could describe the many hours I spend designing and building new configurations and also the many times I've eventually dismissed them as unworkable, but there is little of interest there.  I don't post images because if I did, and the design worked I'd have given it away, on the other hand once a design fails I cannibalise the parts so there's nothing left to see.

I have a number of different tasks associated with Bessler's wheel and I have to fit them in with my more mundane chores such as keeping the garden tidy and responding to my wife's pleas for a new tree here, dig up one there, clean the gutters, paint numerous parts of the house and outbuildings, everywhere.  Not to mention removal of the bees which have invaded our attic and found their way into the bathroom via the downlighters!  The final indignity was when one of them stung Mrs C!  These particular bees are bumble bees and quite large, hairy and scary.  You're probably familiar with the venerable line about scientists having proved that a bumblebee can't fly which appears regularly in magazine and newspaper stories, but it's not true, however I can tell you from direct observation that they are incompetent fliers, bumping into each other, tumbling about and missing the hole in the wall etc etc!  Really quite funny - funny, but a nuisance - of course in this country there are laws against killing bees - and foxes and squirrels for that matter, each of which think our garden (backyard) is their personal residential play area.

In the act of getting closer to the bees by climbing onto the flat roof of an adjacent building, in order to see how they were getting in, I happened to observe that the gutters were full of dead moss, leaves and the occasional small bird; and so I've bought a stand-off extension to my ladder so that I can get at the gutters and clean them - never mind the fact that I have a fear of heights and shall have to overcome it to do the job!

We also have a small bird-bath outside one of the garden windows, which is shared by a blackbird and a robin.  I never realised that robins love to bathe six or seven times a day and make a great show of splashing everything around! He bathes even if we are sat four of five feet away - magic! I also have a photo of my feet resting on a foot-rest in the garden, a glass of wine in one hand and the robin perched on the end of my foot watching for worms and grubs to appear in the grass, what a cheek! 

As for my Bessler project, I have completed my tests on a test-rig and my mechanism does what it is designed to do, (I'll say no more for now, on what that might be) and I've cut two MDF discs for use as the basis for my final wheel and a spare, incorporating the mechanisms.  I'm starting with just one mechanisms and will then advance to two, three and finally five to try to discover what difference if any, the numbers make.  Everyone knows that I think five is the optimum number but Bessler seems to suggest that fewer will provide enough stimulus to rotate the wheel, just - so, we shall see.  My chief problem in have five mechanisms is how to fit them all in.  I anticipate that squeezing them all in will be a bit like herding cats and prove equally impossible.

I have finally completed my book to follow up and update my previous one which came out in 1997!  I'm not going to self-publish it this time, but will wait until either I or some other person has succeeded in building Bessler's wheel at which point hopefully someone else (a publisher!) might be interested in taking on all the work involved publishing.  If not I'll offer it as a digital download at some point in the future.

I hope this was not too random and uninteresting.  These ordinary accounts of everyday activities make a break from the serious stuff.

JC

10a2c5d26e15f6g7h10ik12l3m6n14o14r5s17tu6v5w4y4-3,’.

Thursday 27 June 2013

It's not just MIBs; it's commercial interests that want your discovery too.

The news about Edward Snowden, the whistleblower who exposed the NSA’s PRISM surveillance program and also implicated the British security service and others, is one thing - and knowing the paranoia that permeates the minds of those who continue to research Bessler's wheel, I'm not surprised if my fellow researchers are dismayed to get confirmation of this governmental facility - but there is another scandal brewing which should cause futher alarm and despondency to us.

According to the Independent newspaper a previously supressed report reveals that law firms, telecoms giants, and insurance companies routinely hire criminals to steal  information on business rivals and members of the public.  Of course we all suspected that has been going on but now an official report has surfaced which appears to confirm it.

According to this report the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) knew six years ago that these large firms, were hiring private investigators to break the law and further their commercial interests, yet the agency did next to nothing to disrupt it.

One of five police investigations reviewed by SOCA found private detectives listening in to targets’ phone calls in real-time. The report said a “telephone interception specialist manufactured several devices which were physically attached to the target’s landline at the relevant signal box by a British Telecom-trained telecommunications engineer.”

Illegal practices identified by SOCA investigators went well beyond the relatively simple crime of voicemail hacking and included live phone interceptions, police corruption, computer hacking and perverting the course of justice.

Despite the widespread criminality uncovered by Project Riverside between 2006 and 2007, none of the suspects identified in the report was charged with criminal offences until after the phone-hacking scandal four years later. Police were finally forced to act after the scandal that caused the closure of Britain’s biggest-selling newspaper ( Murdoch's News of the World), the resignation of two Scotland Yard police chiefs and the establishment of the Leveson Inquiry.

Forget MIB's and government snooping, it's commercial interests that will be hacking into your computer to retrieve your records on solving Bessler's wheel. Should anyone of us be approaching success it seems that the safest option might be to commit everything to paper, lock it away and wipe the computer clean of all records of your work - otherwise your patent applicatiuons will be worthless.

JC

10a2c5d26e15f6g7h10ik12l3m6n14o14r5s17tu6v5w4y4-3,’. 

Sunday 23 June 2013

The Trials and Tribulations of Translating.

The Besslerwheel forum has again debated the accuracy of the English translations I provided in the Bessler's books I publish.  I don't need to rehearse the many arguments I put forth in support of the work of my friend Mike Senior, but there is another aspect to this subject which is worth bearing in mind.

I refer to the change of meanings in words over a period of time, or as wikipedia puts it, "semantic change is the evolution of word usage — usually to the point that the modern meaning is radically different from the original usage. Every word has a variety of senses and connotations, which can be added, removed, or altered over time, often to the extent that cognates across space and time have very different meanings. The study of semantic change can be seen as part of etymology, onomasiology, semasiology, and semantics."  - some words there, I've never encountered before!

There are numerous examples which I needn't repeat here but you can read the article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_change - my point is this; consider the words of William Shakespear written over 400 years ago, many people find it hard to uderstand some of his writings, but if you think they're confusing, you shoud try reading Geoffrey Chaucer writing over 600 years ago!  So what are we to make of Bessler's words written only 300 years ago?

Samuel Johnson, a contemporary of Bessler's and famous for publishing the first English dictionary wrote numerous articles and books, wrote for example, ""He that has much to do will do something wrong, and of that wrong must suffer the consequences; and, if it were possible that he should always act rightly, yet when such numbers are to judge of his conduct, the bad will censure and obstruct him by malevolence, and the good sometimes by mistake."  It's easy enough to understand but the sentences are long and convoluted and you can doubtless imagine trying to translate that into German, for instance.


But there is another aspect to take into account and that is Bessler's use of slang.  He was taught to use robust language in his poetry, by Christian Weise his teacher, and he did so with enthusiasm.  We therefore have to take into account the use of slang and try to understand its relationship to modern meaning.  One way to appreciate the difficulty with this is to consider just the differences between British English and American English - and we reputably, speak the same language, imagine the difference between English and German slang, separated by 300 years!

Finally there is Bessler's use of metaphors in his writing.   Metaphor is a figure of speech that describes a subject by asserting that it is, on some point of comparison, the same as another otherwise unrelated object, and it compares two objects or things without using the words "like" or "as".  How are we to always understand that he is using metaphors in his descriptions of things?  Sometimes it's obvious, but not always.

Bessler described a land where"roast pigeons fly into your mouth," not likely but an agreeable metaphor.

JC

10a2c5d26e15f6g7h10ik12l3m6n14o14r5s17tu6v5w4y4-3,’. 

Sunday 16 June 2013

Write without slight - and hearsay evidence is not persuasive.

It's funny how we each believe from time to time that we have solved Bessler's wheel - or at least have taken a significant step along the path to success. Our path, to what seems like a valid conclusion at the time, is filled with moments of revelation interspersed subsequently with the inevitable realisation that we got it wrong. Often these 'discoveries' don't always appear to have been arrived at through a logical chain of reasoning, but are often regarded as instant revelations when the solution seems to jump out at us and we know that we have found the answer! The power of this personal conviction is of an intensity which is so powerful that the urge to share our good fortune is almost irresistible.  Is this certainty a part of a psychological flaw in our make-up, or evidence of a talent for imaginative cognitive scientific research that finds ingenuity to be essential in human reasoning?

I have had a number of these so-called revelations which supply a surprising and previously unthought of piece of artistry in a particularly dramatic way.  Many of these come in the middle of the night and lead to sleeplessness - until dawn sheds her harsh light of truth and reality and on the  subject and what seemed like a momentous revelation turns out to be a momentary lapse of reason.  Those that arrive while I'm at my workbench seem much more logical and worthy of exploration.

I completely understand why some people occasionally wax enthusiastic about the latest lightening bolt of inspiration that's hit them and make announcements which have no basis in fact - to everyone else it is nothing more than hearsay, a feature of the justice system which is not even generally admissable in court.  I tend to empathise with those who make premature announcements - been there, done that - and abusing them for doing so does not help and neither does the growing trend on the besslerwheel forum for being disrespectful to others. It's commonly advised that you shouldn't write anything to or about anyone that you wouldn't have the guts to say to their face.  But as well, the effect of the words may be softened in the presence of the recipent, by the body-language of the person uttering them.  Unfortunately the body-language element is missing on the internet and therefore the words may appear more abrasive than they seemed to the author.  Please think before you write, it may cause a slight. (definition of slight - a deliberate discourteous act usually as an expression of anger or disapproval)

JC

10a2c5d26e15f6g7h10ik12l3m6n14o14r5s17tu6v5w4y4-3,’. 

Friday 7 June 2013

Gravity - or the force of heaviness.

I've discussed this before but it seems an apt moment to mention it again, following comments on the Besslerwheel forum.

Many people search for the word "gravity" in Bessler's writings and some suggest that since he didn't use the word he did not ascribe the energy which drove his wheel to gravity.

Sir Isaac Newton described gravity, but he didn't use that word either.  He wrote his book, 'Philosophiæ naturalis principia mathematica', entirely in Latin, because that was the language used by the learned, and many books on academic and scientific subjects were written in Latin so that they could be read by people in all the European countries regardless of the reader's own native language. The name "gravity" comes from the Latin word, "gravitas", which means "heaviness". 

"Gravity" is a force that's exerted between heavy bodies that had what Newton called mass, Newton was saying that weight shouldn't any longer be regarded as simply a property possessed by a "heavy body", but that a body that seems to be heavy is in fact being attracted by another body with mass, in this case, the earth.

The fact that Bessler used all kinds or words to describe gravity is simply because the word, "gravity" had not yet been recognised in its own right as a name for the force of attraction Newton was describing.  He describes it as a heaviness, out of balance, preponderance, etc etc.

"Principia" came out in 1687 and took many years to become known throughout Europe and it's unlikely that Bessler ever had access to the book, but even so the word used was simply "heaviness" in Latin, and was not generally understood as an attraction between two masses.

So accept, as I have always done, that Bessler's wheel derived its energy from gravity - or the force of heaviness.

NOTE - you can read Newton's Principiua on line at the Cambridge digital library.  The website is http://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/PR-ADV-B-00039-00001/1

JC

10a2c5d26e15f6g7h10ik12l3m6n14o14r5s17tu6v5w4y4-3,’. 

Monday 3 June 2013

Update - and problems encountered along the way

This is partly an update and an account of my thoughts during the current build and the problems I'm encountering.

Bessler once commented in his Apologia Petica, "If I arrange to have just one cross-bar in the machine, it revolves very slowly, just as if it can hardly turn itself at all, but, on the contrary, when I arrange several bars, pulleys and weights, the machine can revolve much faster...'.

Now I have always believed that Bessler had five mechanisms in his wheel (and I could supply convincing evidence that this was the optimum number) and that anything less was a waste of time, but it is obvious that just getting a wheel to turn continuously, no matter how slowly, would be a perfectly acceptable proof of principle and a major achievement.  So what's the problem?

I recently decided to build just one mechanism on a test rig and try to perfect it before building more for the wheel itself.  But instead of then assembling four more mechanisms and attaching them to the wheel, I realised that the next logical step would be to test the wheel with just one mechanism - which isn't the same thing as building a single one and then making the wheel with however many I designed it for. Having designed mechanisms which operate as one of three, four or five, I see a problem in designing a wheel using just one of my mechanisms. With more than one, they are intended to operate in conjunction with each other, but with just the one, I'm wondering how to use it effectively.  Do I add one or more weights at certain points to counter the missing mechanisms and their weights?  Should I reposition the mechanism so that it is more central?  I depends on how big it is relative to the wheel's size and more importantly, how it is designed to work.

So now I have a mechanism that appears to do what I want it to do, but it is hard to fit five of them on a wheel, which means either making each smaller, or using a larger wheel.  Much better to try to adapt the single mechanisms to operate on its own in driving the wheel "very slowly,just as if it can hardly turn itself at all!" Of course another option is to build it with more than one, maybe two,three or four mechanisms, I'd have no problem fitting two or three on the existing wheel

The mechanism works according to the concept I have encoded at the end of each blog.  I know that some have suggested that I should include pictures of my work, but I can't yet until I know that it won't work.  I will try to post some pictures of my failed design using the 'kiiking' principle, unfortunately I cannibalised the parts to make this next desing, but I may have some parts remaining.

JC

10a2c5d26e15f6g7h10ik12l3m6n14o14r5s17tu6v5w4y4-3,’. 

Sunday 2 June 2013

Google login now required - sorry anons

Sorry guys, but the comment section has turned into a sordid mess of foul language, tantrums, vicious retorts and tit-for-tat recriminations, which has nothing to do with Bessler or the blog.  Against my wishes,  I must require a log in to at least see who is commenting.  Why people resort to moronic name-calling I don't know; why they consistently refer to slang names for actions and parts of the human reproduction system I don't know either.

It seems to me that the people who are interested in solving Bessler's wheel are intelligent, reasonable and capable, so it cannot be they who persist in demonstrating their inadequacy by resorting to schoolboy taunts more suited to the children's playground than to intellectual persuits such as we enjoy.

The use of swear words is usually done for gratuitous effect and is often associated with stress in an individual, but it also demonstrates a lack of imagination and imagination is one of the chief requirements in Bessler research - and a lack of it is not something you could ever accuse Bessler of..  In his words, "Oh - be gone!, you evil hornets, you prattlers swollen with poison, you envious wretches who have so vilely debased me! Only your lap-dogs will be enticed by your poisonous crumbs!"

JC

Johann Bessler, aka Orffyreus, and his Perpetual Motion Machine

Some fifty years ago, after I had established (to my satisfaction at least) that Bessler’s claim to have invented a perpetual motion machine...