A typical conversation about gravity-enabled wheels remembered.

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

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

"How do you know that?" I asked.  

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

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

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

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

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

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

"And another one?"

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

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

"Well yes but their interfaces are different."

"What d you mean?" I asked.

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

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

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

JC

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Bessler's Codes - what do they mean?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Whew!!!

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

JC

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

JC

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Random Thoughts and Events and Updates.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

JC

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