Could Bessler have found a better path in which to successfully sell his machine?

I was musing on the problems Bessler must have contemplated once he had first completed his wheel.  Considering his lowly position on the social ladder, he faced an uphill task to attract the right kind of attention to his new machine in order to find a potential buyer.  I cannot think of any other avenue which might lead to success other than the one he took, which was to display the wheel turning.

The reactions to this event were predictable, but he did not work out how to improve the effect, until he met Gottfried Leibniz, who visited him on two occasions and I imagine the discussions were roughly of this nature.

During the first meeting, having throughly examined the wheel and asked many questions and probably not received the politest of responses, Leibniz left to continue his journey, but returned subsequently with some helpful advice.  I say this about the second visit because there was no other reason for Leibniz's return.  He had completed his examination of the machine during his first visit and there was nothing more to be done other than to repeat the same tests.  

I think that the old man first told Bessler that showing a wheel turning, but not doing anything other than move some stampers wasn't convincing and he had to show it doing proper work, such as raising a heavy weight or turning an archimedes screw.  People had to relate the wheel's use to something who's value they could easily appreciate.

Secondly he told Bessler that having the wheel mounted on two sets of supports and demonstrating the wheel on first one then the other, while allowing examination of both sets before and after, would greatly improve people's trust in his claim that there was no trickery involved.

Thirdly he asked if Bessler could build a wheel which could turn in either direction, that would make the suggestion that it was driven by clockwork harder to make stick.

Fourthly, he suggested that an endurance test of several days, during which the machine was made to run continuously, would convince those who still doubted that it was worth the money being asked.  This arrangement would be best carried out in a princely castle where proper scrutiny could be arranged. This was suggested by Leibniz to Moritz-Wilhelm, Duke of Zeitz, a cousin of Karl of Hesse-Kassel, and a regular correspondent of Leibniz. His exact words to one member of the Court, "I advised him [Bessler] to arrange a test in which his machine would be run for several weeks with all possible precautions taken to exclude any suspicion of fraud."

Moritz-Wilhelm was unwilling to commit himself to overseeing an endurance test lasting some weeks but did agree to carry out an official examination of the wheel including three of Liebniz's suggestions.  Many important people were invited to the demonstration including Liebniz's former pupil, professor Christian Wolff.  This examination did expand the inventor's fame and eventually resulted in his move to Kassel where he came under the protection of Karl the Landgrave of Hesse.

I believe it that Liebniz's final suggestion was the most important one, which created the new situation.  He told Bessler that if he really wanted to be taken seriously he must allow an important prince to examine the interior of the wheel so that he could state unequivocally, "this machine is genuine and I have seen it and tested it and I say so with all the authority of my position and rank".  This prince, Liebniz said, had to have a reputation of complete honesty and be independently wealth, thus be beyond bribery.  He suggested Karl was the ideal candidate.

It becomes clear that Bessler followed the advice given him by Gottfrried Leibniz.  He designed the demonstration so as to rule out every possible accusation of cheating; made it run both ways to rule out clockwork mechanisms, had a second set of supports so that peope could examine each set; made it do proper work rather than just making it spin, by lifting a heavy weight, and turn an archimedes screw; and finally make it managed to arrange an endurance test certified by an honest host.  

I can see parallels in Bessler's life which might apply today.  Even if someone succeeds in reconstructing Bessler's wheel if he or she wishes to patent the device they are in effect sharing that information with an honest broker, just as Bessler did with Karl.  Of course if you don't wish to go the patent route - and myself and some others would prefer not to have to patent - then there is no problem with sharing your secret.

Was there anything Bessler could have done differently, given his low status and lack of funds, which might have helped him on to success?

JC

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Update and a 'kiiking' reminder.

I have finally made it into my workshop and spent an enjoyable a couple of days bringing myself up to date on my own version of Bessler's wheel.  Despite the cold - it's been at or below freezing for more than two weeks now and the snow has scarcely stopped falling, although it hasn't settled much here, thank goodness - despite that, I'll be back in again tomorrow and over the following days ... weeks ..... months .....! 

The levers I had assembled were too long and would have generated too much lift in the weight as I had designed them - if they could have lifted it at all - and I have radically altered their lengths and therefore their lifting power - it's a bit like changing down from top gear to first, but of course there are compromises to be taken into account and I won't know until the stiff-nuts are tightened and the levers tested for range of movement, how much lifting will be available.  The mechanism is set up on a test rig built for one mechanism at the moment, because I want get the action perfected before I go about constructing all of them and attaching them to the wheel itself.

I am still using the principle described on my web site at http://www.besslerswheel.com/  which mimics the action of a child on a swing.  I'm convinced that the principle in Bessler's wheel requires something different to the usual overbalancing system tried so many times over hundreds of years.  We know that he alluded to children's gamnes and the swing is one of the oldest.  I believe that the Estonian national sport of 'Kiiking', (about which you can read at my website at http://www.247website.co.uk/html/kiiking.html and which requires the rider to swing so high that he passes over the top of the swing) holds the solution.  Pictures of this sport can be found from before Bessler's time and it is believed to stretch back thousands of years.  My mechanism mimics the actions of the kiiking rider.

Sometimes I have so many ideas to post blogs about that I write them up one after another and often have two or three pending publication - and sometimes if I'm struggling for a subject to write about. I get some of my ideas from the besslerwheel forum, but that seems quite flat and devoid of ideas at the moment so I'm left bereft.  The things I'd like to write about I can't just now, my own project is for my eyes only until I can tell you something about with  supporting evidence.  My work on the code breaking proceeds steadily and I am rewriting my www.orffyreuscode.com site to include more material but that will not be ready for a few weeks yet.

I was looking at a copy of one of Bessler's panegyrics to Karl the Landgrave for the year 1719 and noted that although I have not had it translated yet, it contains sections devoted to 1819, 1919, and 2019 - how amazing and how prescient of him would it be to find that his solution was found in 2019.  I hope it's found before then, we need it today.

JC

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PM Archive?

The idea for this blog was sparked by a posting on the besslerwheel forum.  The author posted a thread listing some ideas he had, which he wanted to preserve digitally, rather than trusting to 'mortal flesh fast decaying'.  I wondered if there was anything available which might suit more accurately the author's needs.

There are many people all devoted to solving the puzzle of Bessler's wheel and it seems to me that if, perhaps, one of us was approaching success, but for the usual reasons had kept quiet about it until he or she had produced a Proof of Principle wheel - or perhaps, like Øystein Rustad, had deciphered a number of coded drawings by Johann Bessler and wished to complete their studies and first confirm them with a working device - then their sudden early demise might rob us of their work - and set progress back a while. Johann Bessler's option was to hide his solution within his published and unpublished documents. But for us less gifted in the field of steganography, one solution would be to write up the research in detail and place it somewhere on the internet, where it would remain private and remain so until after the sad passing of its author.

Perhaps the document could be stored on one of the many clouds offering a combination of services and only upon the author's death would it be shared among a few chosen people or simply released for public consumption. I could see that the problem of letting the server know that the writer of the document had died could be difficult to solve.  However, I'm sure that someone could write an App that confirmed to the server that the writer was still alive by verifying it each time the ipad/smart phone etc, connected to the internet.  If no connection was made for, say seven days, (or a preset period) then the server would ask for confirmation that the author was still alive and if none was received it would then share/release the document.  

However further research revealed a possible alternative solution.  For example there is a website at http://mashable.com/2010/10/11/social-media-after-death/ which reviews 'Seven Resources for Handling Digital Life After Death'.  These services are designed to allow people to leave messages after their death and these can take the form of emails, documents, wills etc, which can be sent to one or more recipients indicated in the signing up process.  One such site http://www.assetlock.net/ sums up the situation very well. There are some web sites offering a basic service which is free and although I haven't done a lot of research into what is available worldwide, I'm sure that there are a number of such services.

The ironic thing is that only a small amount of storage would be required and servers like Google, Apple and Dropbox, for instance, offer plenty of storage for free. So using one of these might allow you to preserve your information and make it available to those who follow, should you prematurely decease!  Perhaps out there is some entrepreneur who could custom design such a service?

I had thought of calling it PM Archives meaning Perpetual Motion Archive but it could as well stand for Post Mortem Archive.

JC

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Relate your breaks - but restrain your claims.

It's hard to come up with a snappy title!

The issues in the comments section of this blog tend to centre on people's theories about how they see Bessler's wheel working.  Many of us theorise about the energy source and how it can be used.  I have tried over a number of years to convince everyone that Bessler's wheel was genuine and have offered more than one theory about how it might fit in with current thinking in the world of physics.  I tried this method, as well as building wheels, in order to help those scientists who were willing to listen, try to accommodate Bessler's claims within the currently held views on the laws of physics.  

It seemed to me that getting an accredited scientist to support us was a good move towards finding a solution because funded research might be more successful than what we amateurs have been.  As I said in my previous blog this has proved unsuccessful and the chief reason for this has always been obvious to me and it is this.

Perpetual motion machines and gravity wheel are impossible according to the 'experts' and any suggestion that they might be wrong 'evokes the deeper fear that their whole, laboriously constructed intellectual edifice might collapse'. (Arthur Koestler, The Sleepwalkers [New York, 1959], p. 427)

Given that strong belief system, let us imagine that every time we claim to know how the wheel worked we gain the 'expert's' attention for one minute.  Subsequently we honestly admit that we failed, and the next time someone makes a similar claim their attention drops to half a minute, with each claim and failure their attention span reduces until they ignore us altogether and each claim that follows merely reinforces their already impregnable belief system.  So making unsuccessful claims is confirming them in their opinion and we are perceived as 'crying wolf'.

I often say there is only one piece of evidence that they will accept and that is a working model and that is what we must produce.  BUT...having said that I completely understand why people get so excited about their current ideas that they are working on.  I've been there many times and I am guilty as anyone for making public my strong belief that this time I have really cracked it, only to find that I was wrong.

There is another aspect to this that we have ignored so far and that is the excitement that such claims ignite in us.  I find it stimulating and exhilarating to read of other people's enthusiasm and optimism and I don't want the previous thoughts about 'crying wolf' to stop those claims but perhaps in some cases we could tone down the claims that we have cracked it, into thoughts that we think/hope we are on to something.  But I don't want to dampen people's enthusiam for telling us how they are doing, I'd prefer encouragement and positivity.

So keep us enthused with your optimism and belief and don't be afraid of admitting if you got it wrong this time, just keep trying, remember Dave Fishwick's, 'Never give up. Never, ever give up!'

JC

Where are those scientists who do go out on a limb to present radical ideas, despite peer pressure.

I have often remarked on the difficulty we face in convincing scientists that Bessler's wheel was genuine.  So it's quite surprising to occasionally discover some highly educated scientist with an excellent reputation who has gone out on a limb to profess his or her personal conviction about some subject or other, which, with any other person, we might be tempted to dismiss as arrant nonsense. Despite their seemingly bizarre opinions they are able to publish books expounding their off-the-wall theories.  I, on the other hand, with no celebrity status found it impossible to convince any publishers that my book was worthy of publication, not because it lacked journalistic skills, but because the subject was 'unsuitable', 'unproven', 'of doubtful interest' , 'it's been covered numerous times before' or 'everyone knows it's impossible' - and finally and unarguably, 'you are an unknown author" - Catch-22!

On the other hand sometimes we see that otherwise knowledgeable people have made public statements about the impossibility of something which have turned out to be possible after all - one thinks of the Lord Kelvin who said in 1895, "heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible" and there are many, many more.  But what of those who publish equally forthright material which many of us might be tempted to dismiss as rubbish but which turn out to be correct?

My own publications have received a good share of scepticim - and I have yet to be vindicated.  But there are some scientists commonly referred to as 'mavericks', because they take a view about something that does not fit in with current theory.  Although I convinced professor Hal Puthoff, sometimes described as a maverick, that Bessler was genuine, he is not prepared to go public with his support until it can be shown how such a device can work within the current laws of physics.  I don't blame him - he suffered plenty of scorn and derision over his 'remote viewing' experiments back in the 1970's.

I suppose there must be other scientists out there, of a 'maverick tendency', who might become equally convinced of Bessler's legitimacy and succumb to the temptation to publicly support research into this field - but none so far.  This particular 'limb' is a stretch too far, even for those who are said to have completely open minds.  But, oddly enough, the general population - those who are not 'professional' scientists - are far more willing to engage in serious conversation about Bessler's wheel. - and don't forget, some of the most important discoveries have been made by amateur inventors.

I have given up hoping to persuade anyone with the 'proper credentials' to support us and go public; its all down to us guys.  Good luck.

“The inertia of the human mind and its resistance to innovation are most clearly demonstrated not, as one might expect, by the ignorant mass--which is easily swayed once its imagination is caught - but by professionals with a vested interest in tradition and in the monopoly of learning.  Innovation is a twofold threat to academic mediocrities: it endangers their oracular authority, and it evokes the deeper fear that their whole, laboriously constructed intellectual edifice might collapse.  The academic backwoodsmen have been the curse of genius from Aristarchus to Darwin and Freud; they stretch, a solid and hostile phalanx of pedantic mediocrities, across the centuries.” (Arthur Koestler, The Sleepwalkers [New York, 1959], p. 427.)  [my underlining]

JC

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Review of Øystein Rustad's two videos on decoding Johann Bessler's Riddles.

I often receive emails telling me that this person or that person has decoded clues, knows how the wheel works, or wants to share what they know if I will only sign an NDA.  I've been aware that Øystein Rustad has been working on Bessler's coded clues for several years but until recently I did not know how much progress he had made.  He allowed me to view two videos he has made which show the decoding of two drawings from Maschinen Tractate and I have to admit I was stunned; I agreed to write a review of the videos, which follows.  I'm only sorry I cannot share their content now but it will be available at some point in the future.

Øystein Rustad kindly invited me to review two videos he has made which explain how he decoded two of Bessler's drawings from his Maschinen Tractate.

My first impression upon seeing the content within the videos is that it was presented in a clear, logical progression and is undeniably correct.  Bessler has, as usual, managed to hide within one piece of work, two and sometimes three parallel messages.  Each message is easily proven once you know how to decode it and this is what Øystein Rustad has achieved.  It has often been suggested that my own speculative attempts to extract some meaning from Bessler's codes relies too heavily on my subjective view of the apparent clues, and that they are in some cases imaginary; in these two videos the evidence that the codes are real and were deliberately placed there by Johann Bessler is beyond doubt.

The messages are partly geometrical with alphanumeric constituent parts cleverly incorporated within the drawings themselves.  The two videos relate to two of the Maschinen Tractate drawings but in these particular cases Øystein assures me that the clues in the videos that was shown to me, do not contain a description of the actual mechanism, although they apparently contain vital information regarding the way it is designed to function.

I understand that Øystein has so far decoded about ten drawings requiring more than an hour of video.  This is because he has found that some drawings require two or more stages of decoding and I assume it would be confusing to try to explain the process in one video segment.  I have not seen these other drawings decoded so I do not know if the process is as interesting as those I have seen already, but I’m assured they have been treated as rigorously as those I have seen.

I would like to say more about the videos but to do so would require that I detail some of the code and I have given my word that I would not give away any information about them. As is his right, Øystein has withheld information about the actual mechanism until such a time as he can produce evidence of its functionality, so I am unable to comment on the usefulness or otherwise, of the information he had managed to extract.

Øystein Rustad has made significant progress in decoding Bessler's extremely cleverly hidden messages and I look forward to when he is ready to reveal all of  it.

That's all for now but watch this space.  I intend to place the review on my web site at www.theorffyreuscode.com

JC

Could two people simultaneously discover the solution to Bessler's wheel?

It's not that unlikely. In the 1870s, two inventors, Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell, both independently designed devices that could transmit speech electrically, the telephone. Both men rushed their respective designs to the patent office within hours of each other, Alexander Graham Bell patented his telephone first. Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell entered into a famous legal battle over the invention of the telephone, which Bell won.

I must make a correction to an incorrect fact in the above paragraph, thanks to Jon Hutton's timely message.

"Italy hailed the redress of a historic injustice yesterday after the US Congress recognised an impoverished Florentine immigrant as the inventor of the telephone rather than Alexander Graham Bell.

Historians and Italian-Americans won their battle to persuade Washington to recognise a little-known mechanical genius, Antonio Meucci, as a father of modern communications, 113 years after his death. 

The vote by the House of Representatives prompted joyous claims in Meucci's homeland that finally Bell had been outed as a perfidious Scot who found fortune and fame by stealing another man's work. 

Calling the Italian's career extraordinary and tragic, the resolution said his "teletrofono", demonstrated in New York in 1860, made him the inventor of the telephone in the place of Bell, who had access to Meucci's materials and who took out a patent 16 years later." 

As I said to Jon, let us hope we too can right a wrong from history and place Bessler where he should be, in the hall of famous inventors and not on a list of infamous fraudsters.

Then there was the case of Herbert E. Ives and Frank Gray of Bell Telephone Laboratories who gave a dramatic demonstration of mechanical television on April 7, 1927.  In the same year, 1927, John Logie Baird transmitted a signal over 438 miles of telephone line between London and Glasgow.

Even Sir Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz became embroiled in an argument over who discovered calculus first.Even Sir Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz became embroiled in an argument over who discovered calculus first.

If only one man ever discovered the secret and no one else in the subsequent 300 years has succeeded, why now - and why more than one person?  There is a concept known as multiple discovery.  It suggests that most scientific discoveries and inventions are made independently and more or less simultaneously by multiple scientists and inventors. This is the reverse of traditional view - the 'singleton' or 'heroic' theory. Historians and sociologists have remarked on the occurrence, in science, of these multiple independent discoveryies. Robert K. Merton defined such "multiples" as instances in which similar discoveries are made by scientists working independently of each other. "Sometimes the discoveries are simultaneous or almost so; sometimes a scientist will make a new discovery which, unknown to him, somebody else has made years before."

The various Nobel prizes awarded each year in each field of study comprise not just one winner but two or even three, often because more than one person may have made the same significant discovery at more or less the same time.

Generally one can see how this might happen.  A particular subject is usually chosen by an individual because it has some relevance at the time or place of the researcher.  And if more than one should choose this because the circumstances of choosing are similar, then the subject has probably been discussed in at least both those places and perhaps more widely discussed and possible avenues of progress explored.  It is  but a short step to two or more researchers following up the same clues and reaching the same conclusions independantly of each other.

We here in the Bessler field of research certainly share some of the same attributes mentioned above, I think therefore, there is a real chance of two or more people solving Bessler's wheel at the same moment.  So if I'm one of them, who else it nearly there?  :-)

JC

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Common misconceptions about Bessler's wheel.

There are three comments made in connection with Bessler's wheel which recur regularly; 

Firstly that Bessler's wheel has been proven not to work;

Secondly that his wheel would go against the laws that Sir Isaac Newton promulgated; 

And lastly that even if the wheel is successfully built we will never know whether it was the same solution as Bessler's.

With regard to the first one, Hermann Helmholtz presented the original formulation of what is now known as the First Law of Thermodynamics, beginning with the axiom. "a Perpetual Motion Machine is impossible", therebye ruling out any chance of there ever being such a device admitted as a possibility.

He suggested that as no-one had ever successfully built one that worked, such machines must be impossible because of some natural law preventing their construction. This law, could only be the Conservation of Energy - his own invention.

Those who don't believe Bessler's wheel could have been genuine are quick to cite the Laws of Thermodynamics to disprove Bessler's claims. In fact, the argument is circular. The Laws of Thermodynamics do not prove that Bessler's machine is impossible. On the contrary, they are deduced from the "leap of faith" of first presuming it is impossible.  Thanks to Besslerwheel forum for the above concise explanation.

In the case of the second point, that Bessler's wheel would defy the laws that Sir Isaac Newton presented, that is also wrong.  To even suggest that if Bessler's wheel works it will throw out of the window everything that Newton discovered is uttlerly incredible.  It is perfectly obvious that Bessler's wheel would have to comply with the known laws of physics - the alternative is too big a stretch of credulity to accept.  So how would Bessler's wheel fit comfortably among Newton's laws?

I believe that I have the solution to that problem but it is not proven and until I have demonstrated what I believe will be the answer to reconstructing Besslers wheel I cannot say anything about the reason why it won't conflict with any of the laws of physics, Newtonian or later.  As some will know, I have condensed the solution into a single sentence which I include after every post in the form of an encoded anagram.

As for the last point, that we shall never know if our solution is the same as Bessler's, I would strongly dispute that.  If my own research results in a working wheel I shall be able to point to the method I used to develop the right design taken directly from Bessler's clues, both textual and graphic.

I have finally got my workshop back and will begin work on my 'solution' as soon as I practically can. :)

JC

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Gravity is constant and it makes things drop.

Ever since I became convinced that Johann Bessler's machine was genuine, I have been struggling to understand why it is that although such a machine would contradict the laws of physics, obviously his machine did not contradict them..

Instead of trying to understand gravity, I suggest we put the term to one side and instead, look at its effect, and the simple fact that a thing which has mass and is 'heavy', falls or drops, (due to the effect of gravity on it). 

When the weights are pulled downwards by the attraction between the weight and the earth, that attraction is  gravity. Gravity is the effect which appears to give 'weight' to objects of mass. The 'weight' or 'heaviness' of an object is what makes it fall.  

Bessler said that "these weights are themselves the PM device, the ‘essential constituent parts’ which must of necessity continue to exercise their motive force (derived from the PM principle) indefinitely – so long as they keep away from the centre of gravity". It seems perfectly logical, therefore, to assume that the weights were supplying the energy which turned the wheel - something all perpetual motionists have instinctively known for hundreds of years.  The movement of the weights was due to the effect of gravity. 

According to wikipedia, "In physics, a force is any influence that causes an object to undergo a certain change, either concerning its movement, direction, or geometrical construction."  Now you may have been told that gravity is not a force - but according to the above well-established principle.....it is!  Anything that falls downwards due to an influence that causes an object to undergo a certain change, ...concerning its movement, direction, is a force!

Wikipedia continues, "In other words, a force is that which can cause an object with mass to change its velocity (which includes to begin moving from a state of rest).."  If that doesn't describe the action of a weight being dropped from my hand then I don't know what does.

Anything which is moved by an external influence, (such as gravity), can have its resulting action modified by another influence. That 'other' influence can, under particular circumstances, also be attributed to gravity.

Bessler said his weights operated in pairs.  So if a weight falls and in doing so, moves another weight, the second one can overbalance a wheel.

Again this is the principle I outlined at my website at www.besslerswheel.com

(The title is taken from my poem at www.free-energy.co.uk/html/my_poem.html )

JC

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Bessler's wheel update - alone at last!

My temporary lodgers, my daughter, son-in-law and two grandchildren, have finally left to take up residence in their new home and we are slowly bringing our lives back to normal.  They were with us for four months in our home and we are still talking to each other, which is pretty amazing!  I love them to bits but they are so big and so loud! My workshop is now bereft of its two powerful motorbikes, four pedal cycles, two standing toolboxes, metal shelving, a cabinet full of leather motorcycling gear, helmets, gloves, boots which look like something from the the starwars movies propshop, and numerous appurtinances connected with motorcyling.  So now all I have to do is tidy up, rearrange the part of my workshop which was my wheel-building area and get back to work on my own personal wheel project. But first we must finish wallpapering some of the rooms in their new house!  Actually it's all but finished, so I could be in wheel action again next week, fingers crossed.

My wheel is still based on the principle I outlined on my web site at http://www.besslerswheel.com/  The design is aided by the clues I've found in Bessler's drawings.  There are confirmatory clues to support my conclusions but I'm experienced enough in this field of endeavour to know that I may be convincing myself and misreading those, oh-so-subtle clues - but I think not.

Although I can't resume work on the project until I can tidy up and make some room, I have a clear idea of the way ahead and I know exactly what is to be done next. It's so frustrating! I can see the work I've done so far, but there is a cross-trainer in the way and some cabinets and shelves which have to be moved back to their former positions, and until that is accomplished I can only stare at my wheel from a distance.

This hiatus has been useful.  Sometimes I think we get too close to the subject and we can't see the wood for the trees.  We need to see the thing as a whole, to understand the detail; we need to stand back; take a holiday.  So now I think I see things from a better perspective and I see where I maybe went off on a diversion that ended in a cul-de-sac.  Too many metaphors?  Yes I guess so, but you get my meaning.

Anyway back to things-Bessler with my next post.

JC

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Was Bessler's sales strategy wrong?

When Johann Bessler 'read that a thing to be prized more than a ton of gold would be the invention of a wheel which could turn of its own accord', it was after having spent a considerable amount of time and effort learning about all the different trades and crafts of his time.  He had travelled through Saxony, into England, Ireland and Scotland before returning to his homeland.

He had dabbled in treasure hunting, watch-making and medicine before comitting himself to the search for a solution to perpetual motion.  It seems to me that he sought wealth and fame from the very beginning but having found the solution to the perpetual motion machine, went about profiting from it in the wrong way.

Thomas Newcomen, who invented the first practicall steam engine  just a couple ot years before Bessler exhibited his first wheel, took a different approach to selling his invention.  He kept the secret within the membership of his family and they went around Europe building and installing their machines.  75 of them were in operation by the time he died.

That Bessler wanted riches is beyond doubt but his problem was the his machine required little more than standard ability to build and run, whereas Newcomen's was a far more complex machine requiring expertise and the training of its operators to function properly.  Even so Newcomen's engine cost about £1200 to buy - a huge cost in those days but compared to Bessler's request for £20,000 - a much better deal.

I think that Bessler could have offered his wheel at a much lower price and built and installed them himself.  If Newcomen, with the help of his family, was able to build and install 75 of his engines, before his death, I'm sure Bessler could have built even more than that and made a good living doing a similar service for people at quarter of  the cost of a Newcomen engine.  

Of course people would have copied them and built their own but I think the celebrity of having the original inventor build and install his machine would have generated enough sales to reach, say, 75 wheels at £250 each before he retired, and he would have earned money close to his desired £20,000.  John Rowley, Master of Mechanics to King George I, sold his Orreries for more than £500 each. Asking princes to commit to buying such an expensive machine as Bessler's was, with no chance to examine it's workings first was too much of a gamble for them.

Bessler was a born salesman, theatrical, passionate. and convincing.  I'm certain he could have succeeded and we would have the descendants of that machine with us today.

JC

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Is this the end?

I think this blog has come to the end of its useful life.  I've enjoyed writing and posting stuff but the lack of response now I've made it necessary to sign in to comment has stifled all communication (except for you kind diehards!) and I must now decide whether to give up now or revert to allowing anyone to comment without any control, other than my abiity to delete.  I could continue with that but there is also the problem of spam which requires deleting several times a day and I'm not sure I can be bothered with that.

I think the only thing I can do is open it up for anyone to comment for now and see what happens.

Wish me luck and thanks.

JC

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Bessler's alphanumeric and alphabetic-substitution clues.

Something I wrote in a comment was wrong!  I said that the two letter 'R's which, in Bessler's alphabetic substitution code, stands for the two 'E's, which are the initial letters in two of his forenames, could also represent the number 18, the base angle in a pentagon - because ithe letter 'R' is the 18th letter in the English alphabet.,  Oops!  Bessler's German alphabet consisted of only 24 letters, I/J and U/V being alternatives - which means the letter 'R' is the 17th letter not the 18th!  So it has nothing to do with the pentagon.

Johann Ernst Elias Bessler - J.E.E.B., through the ATBASH cipher transposes to W.R.R.O.  So, I think that the two 'E's can be taken as representing the letter 5, being the fifth letter of the alphabet and also because Bessler has used that same alpha-numeric code in numerous other places.  In addition I think he intended the letter 'E' to point to the letter 'R'  because he used alphabetic-substitution in many other places too.

His name, Johann, added at the time he added Elias, seems a mystery addition unless you accept that  with alphabetic-substitution Bessler meant to point us to the letter 'W', which also has no alpha-numeric meaning either, being the 21st letter of the German alphabet - but it is a useful pointer to the number 55. This is because of the way Bessler always wrote it - as two overlapping 'V's, as in Roman numerals, which he also used frequently.

So the letter 'J' itself, seems to have no underlying meaning but what about the the letter 'R'?  Maybe the 'R' does have a meaning.  Bessler always signed his name accompanied by a little avatar or logo.  It consisted of a circle with a dot in the middle supported by two letter 'R's each facing away from the circle

They are not complete 'R's but you can see that the two curved figures are meant to represent the letter 'R'. It looks as though there is no alpha-numeric meaning to be extracted from the 'R', but it does seem to have purpose, I think it shows a movement of a part or all of one mechanism. Here's another example from maybe 50 which I have and although there are variations in them most have the two 'R's and a circle.

But the letter 'J' really doesn't seem to have an additional meaning - unless I have missed something?

In summary, J = W = 55 and E = 5 = R = ?  Not much information there, and yet it's in such an important place, i.e., his name - it must be of importance.

JC

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King Richard III and Johann Bessler - their graves.

I watched a documentary on TV the other night about the discovery of the remains of King Richard III, the last of the Plantagenet Kings of England.   The burial was discovered just over two feet beneath the surface of a car park in Leicester.  A DNA test was carried out on the bones and compared to a 17th generation descendant, Michael Ibsen, a Canadian-born carpenter living in London, and found to be a perfect match.

Now you can probably see where this is going!  Bessler is believed to have requested permission to construct a family grave in his own garden at his house in Karlshafen.  There are conflicting stories about what happened to his body after his fall from the windmill in Fursteberg.  Local people say his body was buried in a grave in the forest which was apparently traditional in those days. The forest is about two hours  walk away and is apparently full of graves, some of them very old and with writing which is all but illegible.  However given his preparations for his burial in the family grave, and the existence of his wife and children plus their strong religious convictions most peope share my belief that he was buried as he requested in the garden of his house.

We know which house he lived in and the small town has hardly altered since his day and a correspondent who lived locally at the time carried out some research for me and came to the conclusion that the garden behind Bessler's house is now a car park!

I'm sure that when the solution to Bessler's wheel is found the local authority in Karlshafen will sit up and take notice, because they were very interested at one time in publishing my biography in German to encourage tourism, but they were in financial straits at the time and decided against publication.  Anything which will bring tourists to this little place will be welcomed by the town council and there is an antiquarain bookshop, right next to Bessler's house, whose owners will probably be happy to help foot the bill to dig up the carpark.

The reason I think it will be useful to try to find Bessler's grave is because, to me it is inconceivable to think he would not have taken the opportunity a grave gave him to leave a message for us.  He specifically requested permission for a grave to be placed in his own garden, something that went counter to local tradition.  He left a million pieces of clues about his machine and his encoded messages were spread throughout his papers, he sought post humous recognition for his wheel and what better place to leave it than on his grave.

One more thing.  Bessler's brother Gottfried was also buried in the same grave in 1765, twenty years after Bessler.  So it must have existed in its own right for many years.

JC

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My Birthday! Paragrams & cabbalists.

I'm 68 today!  I never thought, back in 1997, when I published my biography of Johann Bessler, when I was only 52, that I'd still be looking for the solution 16 years later.  I've been searching for 53 years so far and I'm still ..... not .... quite .... there ....yet!

One of the things that surprised me when I was looking at the stats for this blog a couple of days ago, was the information that there are so many visitors from Poland. You guys are in the top five countries represented here, USA first and Poland, France, Australia and the UK, in the next four.  I have an interest in Poland because my father, whom I never met, was Polish.  He was actually born in Vilnius, Lithuania, but moved to Poland in 1937 to join the Polish army and came to England shortly afterwards.  After the war he was repatriated and never returned.

I found my half-sister through the Red Cross and visited them in Gdansk where they lived.  Since then I have met other relatives and in the process traced my paternal family tree back to 1631, when that particular ancester, one of the Irish Wild geese, arrived in Poland as a soldier.

We are a mixed bunch we perpetual motionists, who dare to trespass agaist the law-givers (of physics) and try to trample on the opinion-makers who pass down their conclusions while ignoring the plaintive squeaks we emit as we seek explanations for those inconsequential side-effects demonstrated by such as Bessler's wheels.  Was that an example of perpetual prolixity, or limitless loquacity?

Sorry for my unseemly levity but it is my birthday, I think I've found a rather tenuous link between Christian Weise, Bessler's teacher at Zittau; David Heinicken, publisher of the  circle of fifths diagram (Quintenzirkel), otherwise known as MT137 if you've been to my web site at http://www.theorffyreuscode.com/html/mt_137_a.html ;  Johann Kuhnau, Heinichen's teacher and supplier of information about the circle of fifths; and Johann Sebastion Bach...and his number-alphabet.  More of which, when I have written it up.

So it's off to the Star & Garter for lunch and a drink or two with my delectable wife and then back to researching the curiously small, but exceedingly well-connected, world of scientific reseachers and cabbalists of Besser's era.

Cheers!

JC

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Another Bessler clue.

In Johann Bessler's Das Triumphirende (DT), he included a number of drawings, showing the external views of the wheels he built. Also he copied a cartoon published by one of his enemies, Borlach, commenting that 'they caused many copies of [this] scurrilous copper-engraving to be spread far and wide – quite contrary to all the admirable local laws against defamation of character'. And he copied, mockingly, a illustration of Christian Wagners's bratenwender, or roasting jack.

The first one depicting his wheel, shows the Merseburg wheel, complete with the mysterious pendulums whose appearance was not recorded by any of the witnesses.  The following four pages includes an explanation of the numbered parts shown in the diagram, in both Latin and German.

Immediately following this is the explanation of the lettered parts, also in both Latin and German, of the next diagram which shows the Weissenstein Castle wheel at Hesse Kassel.

There then follows a kind of double drawing of two views of the wheel, but instead of providing a list explaining the numbering of the various parts in the drawing, either in the preceeding pages or those following, Bessler has attached an explanatory list to the bottom of each half of the two drawing. The left one in German, the right in Latin..Those who have copies of the book DT, may not be aware of this oddity and I myself, attached no importance to it until a while back, I began to wonder if it was deliberate.  Why didn't he just put the list of parts on the following pages?  No reason that I could see.  The result is a complicated system of folded papers which get crumpled and torn when used too frequently, with each bottom part containing the list, folded upwards and tucked in between the two pages.  They are separated from each other in the lower portion but joined together where the illustrations are bound into the book..  There was no need for such a complicated arrangement..

This double drawing has been discussed at length on the besslerwheel forum but the discussion centred on the apparent intention of the inventor, to draw attention to the two wheels shown, by slicing off the right edge in a way that suggested the two drawing should be merged, or at least pulled together in some way.  Upon reflection I consdered the possibility that it was the two lists attached underneath, that were to be considered together in some way.

The presence of the triangular padlock which was used a datum point for a 72 degree line in the Merseburg drawing (5 x 72 = 360 degrees) should make us suspicious of its presence in the left hand drawing in this case.  As a piece of speculation I have lined up the 'W' of Weissenstein, as Bessler's favourite fraktur version of the letter, a pair of overlapping 'V's, with another of his favourite Latin characters, the letter 'M' in the list below (a single 'V' between two uprights) and note how the padlock aligns perfectly.

Notice that although there are other letter 'M's in the list, a line drawn from the exact centre of  the 'W' in Weissenstein and drawn through the exact centreof the point on the padlock, aligns perfectly with the centre of  just this 'M' and with one of its two sloping lines within its centre.

That letter 'M's is also a datum point and a carefully drawn line from it to a certain corner, plus another from the 'W' of Weissenstein, will reveal angles of 36, 54 and 72 degrees - those of the pentagram.   There is more of course but I leave it to your imaginations.  :).

JC

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Update on the Johann Bessler blog.

I was reluctant to add a step to allow access to commenting on my blog, but the amount of anonymous nonsense being posted has forced my hand.  It isn't just that though; the number of spam comments containing links to other sites has risen too much for me to waste time deleting them.  I have tried from the start of this blog, to allow anyone to comment as they see fit, with only a request for moderate language to be used, with no problem.  

The comments are restricted in length by blogger.com, and I think this is a reasonable requirement, there is still enough room to say what you want to say usually.  This restriction can be overcome by posting longer comments in two parts, but this is meant to be used sparingly, otherwise they woudn't restrict their length.

I thought that people would enjoy commenting on things I posted but I was quite happy for the comments to stray off subject, just as they do on the forum.  To me the important thing is for people who would like to discuss Bessler to have somewhere they can just comment or express a view or an opinion, as an alternative to the forum.

I shall continue to publish blogs as the mood takes me but I'm sure there will be a fall in the number of comments posted, but the visitors continue to run at over 150 a day, so I'm sure that people will still read my words even if they can't be bothered to sign on with their google password, so they can comment.  There have been 286,697 pageviews since I began, which is small beer for the professional bloggers who probably get that many in a day, but I'm happy with that - for the moment!

When I began this blog I never thought I would be able to find something to write about very often, but it's surprising how subjects pop up, sometimes through emails, or other comments or from my own research.

Looking at the stats I see that the vast majority of readers come from the USA, surprisingly Poland comes second and the UK third.  Australia and France more orless the same in next place.  I tend to use Chrome as a browser but surprisingly, the most popular browser used to visit my blog is Firefox, then Internet Explorer and then Safari.  Among the Operating Systems used, windows is the most popular but the use of the Ipad is increasing at a huge rate and the other tablet systems are right there just behind them so I guess this means that more and more people are accessing blogs through their iphones and similar devices.

Finally I'm sorry I have included the password step but I think it was overdue.

JC

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Why Bessler smashed his wheel to pieces.

I was asked recently why Johann Bessler was reported as having smashed each of his wheels, before leaving a town.  Bessler  said, for example, at Gera, "Soon I was being plagued by crowds of Sunday visitors, some of whom were fairly rough and boisterous, and I couldn't even eat in peace. I made a firm resolve that as long as I was in control of matters, no wheel would ever turn an inch on Sunday. Certain enemies of mine got to hear of this, and began to congregate outside in ever-greater numbers, shouting and jeering. It got so bad that finally, in a rage, I smashed the machine into a thousand pieces, and vowed to seek peace and quiet elsewhere".

And then at his next chosen venue, "somehow it all went wrong, and finally having to leave Draschwitz, I smashed my wheel to pieces".

Finally, in a scientific publication, Neue Zeitungen von Gelehrten Sachen, which was published by the Mencke family in Leipzig, in the April issue of 1722, page 344 it said, "In Kassel, Mr Orffyreus, who is Commercial Councillor to His Highness the Landgrave, has destroyed his Perpetuum Mobile that, prior to this, stood at the Landgrave's Castle of Weissenstein. He did this after he had suffered a serious illness, and after he had received a house in Karlshafen."

But it wasn't just Bessler's words, one of the Zeitz Councillors, Johann Zollman, wrote in a letter to Leibniz, "even in his anger he should not have destroyed his machine but should rather have dismounted and dis-assembled it."

This is a fair point and  I have previopusly suggested  that it was simply easier and safer to transport the wheel in pieces rather than trying to move it whole, because robbers might be tempted to try to steal it.

But this does not explain the words "smashed into a thousand pieces" - I thought at first that this was due to Bessler's sense of drama, included to show how thoroughly angry and upset he was at his treament by the crowds.  However on subsequent consideration I realise why he destroyed each of his wheels before moving on.

Travel over land in the 17th century was restricted to stagecoach, for those wealthy enough to afford such luxury, or horseback with the same proviso - you had to be wealthy to own a horse.  The alternative was .. you walked.  Bessler was only provided with transport when he was retained by Karl, the Landgrave, to move him and his wife and their belongings to Kassel - we have a copy of the charges incurred.  That distance was 151 miles from Merseberg to Kassel, but the distances Bessler had travelled between towns prior to his employment at Kassel was considerably shorter, Gera to Draschwitz - 21 miles, Draschwitz to Merseberg 25 miles.

If Bessler had to walk from town to town he could not have brought much with him, certainly not the wheel, even disassembled it would have been too big.  So he was forced to destroy each wheel when he moved, so that no clue remained to hint at how it worked.  The last comment   Each move was probably no more than a day's walk, maybe two, given the non-existance of proper roads at that time.

Confirmation, in a way, is supplied by the news item above which explains that Bessler destroyed the Kassel wheel after being given a house in Karlshafen.  He was leaving and the wheel had to be detroyed.

You might think it unlikely that people would routinely walk many miles to get somewhere, but an extreme example of the time was Andrew Hay, who travelled six times to Italy to buy up original paintings to sell on in London auction houses, twice walking all the way there and back!  He also walked to France and back fourteen times and retired in 1740 an extremely wealthy man.

JC

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Where have all the new Bessler fans gone?

On reading this back it looks a little like a narcicistic journey back in time (my time) and I apologise for this impression. I was mulling over the fact that far fewer new people come to investigate Bessler than did  years ago, at least not in the numbers they used to, and I wondered why.  I think the reason is that certain forums which existed then, have gone and there is now a surfeit of them on every subject under the sun.

When I first tried to get people interested in my biography of Johann Bessler, back in 1997, one of the first people I contacted was Jerry Decker of  http://www.keelynet.com/.  Jerry Decker has long been devoted to the quest for authentic free energy, gravity control and electronic health technologies for about 20 years.

KeelyNet began as a BBS (forum) in 1988 and moved to the Internet in 1994, having inspired many other websites along the way, as well as promoting the active sharing of useful and interesting information related to both orthodox and alternative science. His contribution was invaluable to me.  He requested a copy of my book, read it, loved it and went public with it in a way that I could never have dreamed of.  Mind you, it generated a lot of bad responses as well as good, from the establishment corner, but it toughened my attitude to negativity in a way that allows me to deal with the nay-sayers easily and ignore those who try to denigrate my contributions to the legend of Bessler's wheel.

The 'flame wars' started right at the beginning - see this:- http://www.keelynet.com/energy/orflame1.htm

And here's his brief moment of optimism in 1997! http://www.keelynet.com/orrmast.htm

Unfortunately Jerry Decker's forum has gone, although he continues to comment on twitter at https://twitter.com/zpeman and report on things that grab his attention.

The Nexus magaxine became interested - http://www.nexusmagazine.com/ - (Nexus New Times in the USA) and devoted a couple of issues to my book about Bessler.  Their aim was and is to present hard-to-get, ignored and suppressed information on the subjects of health, science, the unexplained, world events and history.  They too helped to spread the news about Johann Bessler.  See the item on page 53 of their 1998 Christmas issue below.

Then Infinite Energy Magazine came along in the shape of Editor-in-chief, Gene Mallove who I mentioned recently.  One of the world's foremost proponents of new energy was killed on May 14, 2004. Dr. Eugene Mallove was the founder and editor of the magazine Infinite Energy.

Issue 21 Review of Perpetual Motion: An Ancient Mystery Solved? (John Collins)

by Eugene Mallove, Mike Carrell, and Thomas Phipps.

Interview with John Collins by Susan Seddon

Bessler's Wheel - An Explanation? by Steve O'Donnell

Issue 23 Response by John Collins to IE #21 Reviews of his book Perpetual Motion: An Ancient Mystery Solved?

I also did about 5 Radio Interviews but they were broadcast within the UK, so resulted in little interest  outside of this country.  The Italian documentary has informed the Itallians but unfortunately the film is not so far available in English and until it is I doubt there will be much more than that.

Finally you can read reviews of my book by  Peter Lindemann, D.Sc., Brian O'Leary (former NASA astronaut), Eugene Mallove, former editor-in-chief of Infinite Energy Magazine and Hal Fox of New Energy News.

So I conclude that without the global news media such as Nexus Magazine, Infinite Energy Magazine and the Keelynet forum, there is little to be done to attract more new people to our cause.  Jerry Decker took part in the discussions on his forum which helped to direct attention to what ever took his fancy.  Not so with other forums and I guess we are just going to have to solve this ourselves!

JC

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Suggestions for Posts wanted.

Writing posts for others to read is an enjoyable past time for me, but am I writing about the things you guys are interested in knowing or discussing?

I would be interested to get some suggestions for subjects to cover so I can keep your interest and maybe gather a few more readers and commenters.

Let's have some ideas - please?  :)

JC

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