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