Two countries divided by a common language? With thanks to Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw or possibly Winston Churchill.

I actually wrote this some time back but recent discussions on the besslerwheel forum prompted me to reread it, make a few changes and publish after all.

Recently I mentioned in passing the use of the word 'back-yard' in the USA referring to the land behind the house which we in England, call the 'garden'.  This is just one example of the many words we share which have different meanings for each country. According to Wikipedia, in England a back yard is a small space surrounded by walls at the back of a house, usually with a paved surface.  But in the USA it's a space at the back of a house, usually surrounded by a fence, and covered with grass which we call a garden.  There are too many examples to list but if the language we share has so many variations according to where you come from, how on earth can we understand what Bessler meant using an entirely different language in a different country and 300 years ago.

Not only that but we use idioms and according to wikipedia an idiom "is a combination of words that has a figurative meaning owing to its common usage. An idiom's figurative meaning is separate from the literal meaning. There are thousands of idioms and they occur frequently in all languages. There are estimated to be at least twenty-five thousand idiomatic expressions in the English language."  So, to add to the difficulties we are already aware of, Bessler used idiomatic expressions familiar to people at the time but some maybe incomprehensible to us now.  We know of some of his examples.

As I reminded people recently, Bessler was taught by Christian Weise, a man who enjoyed encouraging his pupils to act out his plays using what was termed 'robust language' which included swearing, slang and idioms.  Bessler wrote Apologia in rhyming couplets and obviously some words had to be 'bent' to fit the rhyme, hence it can be assumed that in some instances the sense was blurred to his readers, even at the time, and the more so 300 years later.

But there is more.  When I began to try to translate the German into English I had a relatively small German-English dictionary but subsequently acquired two ancient second hand dictionaries of huge size.  The reason was because some words did not appear or I could not recognise them in my small dictionary.  I also found that these early dictionaries had far more meanings for each sought word. Each book has over 600 pages and if I can't find a meaning that helps, in one of them, I can find it in the other. This suggests that there are far more meanings to these words than we might imagine, but I will give one example - the word Creuze (Kreuze nowadays) as used by Bessler; translated as cross-bar but actually my small dictionary gave the meaning as cross.  One large dictionary gives; cross; crucifix; crosier; cross-bar; small of the back; loins; rump; croup; club, as in cards; sharp, as in music; dagger; burden...etc etc.  That is just the single word, but once you add hiphenated words the list grows enormously, four columns in one book.  Then of course there are internet dictionaries some of which were compiled close to Bessler's time and offer other alternatives.

In the second dictionary I found, all the above plus ... peel, as in a to remove the skin of a fruit (definition corrected, thanks to the eagle eye of my good friend James); anchor -  and sword handle. I'm not suggesting that we should consider any of those examples because, as Mike Senior who did all the translating, said, you have to take into account the context of the sentence and despite the accusations many have thrown at the quality of his work he has done his best to provide the intended meaning and if people would stop pouring over each word as if it will give up a special meaning which will assist them in discovering Bessler's secret - and concentrated on the actual snippets of information he provided, then success may still crown the efforts of one or more of us who are happy to rely on Mike's work.

JC

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Bessler's wheel & reciprocating mechanisms - some more musings.

I should think everyone's heard of reciprocating engines, but put simply, each employs a means of converting rotary motion into linear motion or the reverse - using pistons and cranks for instance.  Although they achieved their pinnacle of achievment in the steam engines a couple of hundred years ago, they are used extensively today - and were also used by the Romans;  an early known example of rotary to reciprocating motion can be found in a number of Roman saw mills dating to the 3rd to 6th century AD, in which a crank and connecting rod mechanism converted the rotary motion of the waterwheel into the linear movement of the saw blades.  So it seems to me that we are seeking to convert the fall of a weight, linear motion, to make a wheel rotate, rotary motion.  Perhaps there are clues to be found by studying these ancient techniques and combining them with parametric oscillation, swinging or Kiiking, to achieve the impossible!

Reciprocating motion, is a repetitive up-and-down or back-and-forth linear motion. It is found in a wide range of mechanisms, including reciprocating engines, rack and pinion steering gear and pumps.  A crank can be used to convert circular motion into reciprocating motion, or conversely turn reciprocating motion into circular motion.

For example, inside an internal combustion engine the expansion of burning fuel in the cylinders periodically pushes the piston down, which, through the connecting rod, turns the crankshaft. The continuing rotation of the crankshaft drives the piston back up, ready for the next cycle. The piston moves in a reciprocating motion, which is converted into circular motion of the crankshaft, which ultimately propels the vehicle or does other useful work. The vibrations felt when the engine is running are a side effect of the reciprocating motion of the pistons.

I just included a couple of images, (see above) but there are many more but all include linear  and rotary motion.

So in place of the piston and its up and down movement, we need the weight to move up and down.  We have the down-movement powered by gravity, but we also seek to raise it through gravity, - that's not so easy.  One might think that the flywheel effect might contribute to the rotation but it doesn't because the force of gravity which provided the initial force to turn it has been used up.  In a combustion engine the force is continuous and more than enough to get the flywheel spinning faster and faster. However in Bessler's wheel the force is provided by weights working in pairs and perhaps one of them falls into an outer position thus overbalancing the wheel, and subsequently the second weight falls into a neutral position therefore having no effect on the balance of the wheel, but in doing so moves the first weight back to its starting position?

We know that in all seriousness we cannot expect the single second weight to lift the first weight upwards more than a fraction of its fall, but we can imagine it being able to just tip the first weight over sufficiently to begin the process again - can't we?  Picture a bicycle wheel spinning.  To keep it going requires a light flick of your finger on the top of it to accelerate it or just keep it spinning.  Or a hoop and stick; you just keep tapping it forward and it rolls along  All we need to do is get the second weight to push the first weight over that small hill which represents the loss due to friction/work between start and finish of each rotation.

JC

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or to put it another way.

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Update - the evacuation of the foxes - and my scrambled priorities!

I have got somewhat behind in my updates and there is a good reason.  Very little has been achieved over the last few weeks, not because I have failed in my attempt to use my theory to replicate Bessler's wheel but because other things keep intefering with my plans.  Those of you who are married, or have been married, may well appreciate the difficulties involved in persuing what is sometimes scathingly referred to as my hobby!  

My garden (backyard to our North American cousins), has been a centre for social networking for a number of foxes over the last few years and although the idea may seem attractive, the reality isn't!  At some point I attached eight foot high wire netting to the side fences because the fox can jump at least six feet - and also laid gravel along the foot of the fences because they can dig a hole of no more than 4 inches in height and six in width through which they worm their way.  The reason for their close proximity was revealed a few weeks ago when our neighbour, whom we had lived next to for some 16 years, sold up and moved out.  The new people discovered that their garden housed several abandoned kitchen units which, over a number of years, become steadily covered by leaves, conifer needles, grass-clippings etc, to become invisible to the casual observer - and so they proceeded to dig them up. Below ground lever the old kitchen cupboards were dry warm and provided a perfect lair for the foxes, invisible to the eye!

So now that the foxes have been chucked out, my ugly wire-netting fence is no longer required - not that it did any good any way, the foxes used it as kind of spring board  - so I have been requested nicely to remove it and replace the old knackered fence with a nice shiny new one!  Curiously, the departure of the foxes appears to have been welcomed by various local cats with the result that there are now a number of corpses of small birds caught by the cats and littering the garden which have replaced  the equally numerous corpses of pigeons which the foxes seem to have preferred.  Anyway I digress, all this fencing takes time, but the point to which I am intending to get to is this........

I have in my head, the complete design for the replication of Bessler's wheel, which could, if I was allowed to continue, solve the earth's energy needs, earn us a bit of money with which I can assist my family, and make a name for myself....at last!  But it seems this is a minor priority because no one believes me!  So I waste my time and money putting up a superb fence when I could be building my version of Bessler's wheel, saving the planet and making my fortune!

So, to date I have two mechanisms to complete and link in a certain way, and test to see if what I am certain will happen...will.  Then I shall proceed to step two which requires five such mechanisms.  During many nights of quiet contempletion I have created a concept I call the Bessler-Collins Principle.  It follows on from the secret I discovered that permits the wheel to makes use of gravity without requiring any fundamental changes to the laws of physics and which consists of some interesting geometry which has some surprising (to me) ramifications.  Nothing that may necessarily prove useful but which I feel certain no one has discovered before and yet is very simple - and I am in the process of writing a document for a video, describing the finds and which show that they are unarguably correct and simple to understand.

JC

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or to put it another way.

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Perpetual Motion vs Perpetual Emotion

One of the traits observable among people such as I, who have spent an inordinate amount of time chasing the shadowy mystery of Bessler's wheel and trying to find the solution, is the frequency with which we exclaim to the world that we have found the solution and it is only a matter of time before we are able to reveal the secret.  At which point we await with barely concealed excitement the moment when we can bathe in the adulation and excitement which will surround us in our moment of triumph. 

These revelations usually appear in the middle of the night and if they survive the cold light of dawn - which most don't - the lucky recipient goes on to work out the detail before launching a prototype to test the theory.  But the excitement generated by such revelations often refuses to allow us to be silent about our discovery and we cannot resist making public statements such as 'the wheel is only days away', or 'my wheel is getting ready to run'.  These premature announcements can create a certain amount of excitement among those who have had fewer revelations, and are thus ill-equipped to deal with such sensational proclamations, however the majority of old-timers such as myself, are all too familiar with the midnight manifestations which always, in the end, appear to fall foul of classical physics, with the wheels remaining steadfastly stationary.

It is all the more remarkable to me, that despite these continuing setbacks, optimism remains high and time and time again another new configuration occurs to disturb our sleep, launching us into yet another round of gleeful anticipation and premature declarations.  It is something of an emotional roller-coaster that we ride, extreme highs and corresponding lows ; one might almost call the subject Perpetual Emotion!

It seems not to occur to these self-publicists that practically every other perpetual motionist on the planet is also on the verge of success, needing just one small adjustment before success finally arrives.  I'm not blaming people for proclaiming their beliefs from the roof tops - been there done it myself and more often than I care to recall - but please understand that we all want success and just because we say nothing about current builds does not mean we are no longer building, designing, planning and still full of hope.

JC

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or to put it another way.

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