Bessler's wheel was just a scientific toy to Karl.

When he asked his minister to approach Bessler and find out if he was genuine, I thought Karl, the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel, was considering the possibility of employing Bessler's wheel to pump water to the top of a new ornamental cascade he had built in his Castle gardens. However there was always going to be the problem of how he could actually pump the water.  An archimedes screw couldn't do it and there was no system available at that time that could raise the water more than a few feet.  

So, I wondered, why did Karl go ahead and build the cascade if he had no way of pumping the water up to the top once it had fallen?  The answer is simple and I saw it in action when I visited the famous Chatsworth House in Derbyshire, England where they have an almost identical cascade.

Chatsworth's cascade, built at exactly the same time as the Kassel cascade is set in the 105-acre garden of Chatsworth House, Derbyshire, the Duke of Devonshire's family home.  The cascade, finally completed in 1701, is fed by four man-made lakes.  The Cascade drops down over 200 vertical feet. All the waterworks in the garden are gravity-fed, with water piped from the lakes which are 400 feet higher than the house.  The water flows down over the cascade to an ornamental lake where it powers a fountain with a jet of water approaching 300 feet in height! 

Work on the Hesse-Kassel cascade began in 1701, inspired by Landgrave Karl's visit to a Villa in Italy. Just as at Chatsworth, the water runs down the cascades, a fall of about 300 feet, before pouring into a lake by the castle, to feed another fountain about 150 feet in height. This whole system is fed from reservoirs of rainwater and relies on gravity. Both these systems have been in place for more than 300 years.

So the reason for Karl's interest in Bessler's wheel was simply personal curiosity, just as he enjoyed Denis Papin's experiments on the lake near his castle in earlier times. In 1705 Papin developed a second steam engine with the help of Gottfried Leibniz, based on an invention by Thomas Savery, but this used steam pressure rather than atmospheric pressure. Details of the engine were published in 1707.  During his stay in Kassel in Hesse, in 1704, he constructed a ship powered by his steam engine, mechanically linked to paddles. This made him the first to construct a steam-powered boat (or vehicle of any kind).  [Thanks to wikipedia and others]

I think that Karl thought that, with Papin gone, similar scientific experiments might be made using Bessler's wheel.  It also explains why Karl was not interested in buying the wheel - he had no use for it.  He was well-known for his interest and understanding of the latest scientific theories and experiments.

JC

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What do you do when you've done it?

On the assumption that I think I will succeed in this venture and finally make  a gravity-enabled wheel turn continuously, what then?

I don't mean, do I patent it, release a video of it on youtube or sell it on ebay!  No, I mean what is the actual next step?  I wouldn't want to immediately announce it on besslerwheel forum or stick a video of it on youtube; no, the question is hard to answer until you are in that actual position (I'm not, yet.)

I have a rough plan which involves telling a few highly respected guys I have known for many years, simply that I have done it - no details at that time.  

The next thing is to consider discussing it with two other guys who I'm equally certain I can trust; one is a film producer and the other... well I mustn't give too much away or he'll recognise himself.

Professor Hal Puthoff was very supportive of myself and my book for many years, and offered to bring wealthy philanthropic investment to assist in the development of the machine once it was proved.  I could contact him to see what his response was.  But there are suspicions about his responsibilities - US Government energy advisor, ex-CIA.  Seriously, I doubt there is a problem but one should weight up each case and only decide after a careful assessment of the pros and cons. 

At this point I look at my hopelessly cobbled-together machine and think to myself, 'do I really want the world to see this monstrosity as the first of its kind since Bessler's? No I answer, I must make a new model with nice shiny parts and some fancy paintwork - and none of the thousand or so unused holes!'

Now this all takes some time to deal with, and so I guess that if I were the lucky one, I might just go silent for a week or two in order to try get everything in order before the s*/!/t hits the fan.  Maybe it would take a month who knows? Should I remain silent or just keep rabbiting on about life and the wheel .... and say nothing to anyone?  I really don't know and perhaps I won't need to if some else gets there before me.

Of course if I do go quiet, I doesn't necessarily mean I've found it - it means I can't think of anything sensible to say - like today!

  

JC

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Did Bessler invent two different designs for his gravity-wheels?

In the middle of the night before last, I awoke and had a revelation or perhaps a sudden inspiration. I had thought of a way to drive a gravity-wheel using a different design concept.  I studied it in my mind, turning it this way and that, and I thought it looked liked it would go and was a winner... and then I fell asleep.  Of course in the cold light of dawn I recalled it and thought how silly, this won't work at all!  The idea that came to me was a completely different way of making Bessler's wheel work.  My secret principle was irrelevant to the working of this new design and the whole thing appeared to be an utterly different configuration to the one I've been working on for the last eighteen months.  But I dismissed it as unworkable, although the odd thing was that all of Bessler's clues still fitted perfectly!

Now at this point I was going to use this so-called revelation to demonstrate how easy it is to fit Bessler's clues to our preconceived ideas, misleading us and taking us up the garden path on the trail of red herring and sending us on a slow boat to China (I love mixing my metaphors!).  BUT....this morning I was considering for the umpteenth time, Bessler's (and mine) obsession with the number 5 and suddenly a thought occurred to me why he felt it was so important.

This thought suddenly brought back into focus my dream from the previous night and with five mechanisms I could see how it might work after all.  I need to do some tests to confirm that my idea is either useless or the key to an alternative version of his wheel - and perhaps prove a theory that crops up from time to time, that the clues that we all study, refer to two different concepts and that is why we have failed so far - but I will post more details soon.  

The version I have been working on all this time has yet to prove to my satisfaction that there has to be five mechanisms, but I can see immediately why this latest concept needs five, and I will just say that this one is so simple, anyone could make it, even me!

JC

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Newton's gravity shield and the potential for inertial thrust in Bessler's Wheel

People may recall that in my biography of Johann Bessler, "Perpetual Motion; An Ancient Mystery Solved?", I described a paper from Sir Isaac Newton's notebook in which he speculates that "gravity (heaviness) is caused by the descent of a subtle matter which strikes all bodies and carries them down. Whither ye rays of gravity may bee stopped by reflecting or refracting ye, if so a perpetual motion may bee made one of these two ways." Adjacent to these words, Newton added two sketches of perpetual motion powered by the 'flux of the gravitational stream'.  I included this information in support of my argument that gravity could ultimately be used as a source of energy - if it was good enough for Newton then it was good enough for me.

"The term gravitational shielding refers to a hypothetical process of shielding an object from the influence of a gravitational field. Such processes, if they existed, would have the effect of reducing the weight of an object.  However experimental evidence to date indicates that no such effect exists. Gravitational shielding is considered to be a violation of the equivalence principle and therefore inconsistent with both Newtonian theory and general relativity."  Thanks to wikipedia again.

There is an irony in the last sentence of the above paragrah, 'gravitational shielding ....... is inconsistent with both Newtonian theory and general relativity,' seeing that Newton himself suggested that gravity shielding might be possible.

I was suprised to discover that research into this concept continues. The consensus view of the scientific community is that gravitational shielding does not exist, but there have been occasional investigations into this topic, such as those funded in 1999 by NASA.  Scientists Ning Li and D.G. Torr at the University of Alabama, Huntsville, wrote several papers in major journals on the relationship between superconductors and gravitation. And there are the "gravity shielding” experiments at Tampere University in Finland carried out by Dr. Podkletnov.

This of course has nothing to do with my own suggestion that a successful Bessler's wheel might be adapted and driven to provide directional, or inertial thrust ...sideways and upwards!

JC

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