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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Maschinen Tractate - the TOYS page, some thoughts.

I thought it was time to talk about clues again, so today I'm looking at the 'Toys' page in Bessler's so-called Maschinen Tractate (MT).

The Toys page was the last page  in my version of the book MT which, by the way, was found as a pile of unbound drawings lying in a box.  I believe that subsequently the pages have been re-photographed in a slightly different order resulting in the Toys page not being the last one.  In any case it is the last numbered page, having 138, 139, 140 and 141 handwritten in the bottom left corner.  I have always imagined that it was inserted by Bessler to replace four pages he removed at the time of his arrest when he wrote on the cover;-

 “N.B. 1st May, 1733.  Due to the arrest, I burned and buried all papers 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.”

This action must have been carried out with the intention of providing some kind of clue in case MT was never published for some reason.  If publication had been achieved then the original pages would have been reinserted.

Did he suspect that he might be imprisoned?  Possibly, and then his records would be available to the anyone of rank, so he replaced them with something less revealing.  My research has shown that he was being subjected to considerable pressure from his in-laws and feared that there was a conspiracy to either force him to reveal his secret or to frame him for some illegal dealings.

I have inserted a clarified version of the Toys page which has the four page numbers omitted on the bottom and also the short piece of text which was written next the the spinning top which reads, “5. Children's game in which there is something extraordinary for anyone who knows how to apply the game in a different way.”   

The letters run from A through to E, five letters!  But there are six drawings including the top, so why does he write 5 in front of the text?  Note my red lines which align the separate parts of each drawing, there are five!  Could he be telling us - yet again! that there are five mechanisms?

I think the letters are written in anticlockwise order to show which drawing should be interpreted first.  Note that A aligns with B but note that the latter is twisted - the small blobs on the left end of each horizontal on A are shown alternately on the left and right of the vertical line labelled B

The pantograph shape of C and D is similar to that  part of A. As B is twisted perhaps C and D should likewise be twisted?

Thereare two Cs and two Ds which suggests that there are two items from the each drawing required for the mechanism.  A hammer/axe or weight might be one, and the pantograph shape another.

The later addition of the spinning top was probably an attempt to hint that the 'toys' shown, relate to something that spins?

That's enough for today, I think, but I will just say that despite appearances in y opinion the item A has no connection with the Jacob's ladder toy.

 JC

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