" Bessler's Wheel" or "The Wheel of Orffyreus".

I have replaced my usual blog with a brief account of the legend of Bessler's wheel.  I'm currently unable to maintain a daily/weekly blog due to commitments which are keeping me exceedingly busy/  Hopefully the situation will return to a more amenable status and I can return to sharing some of the many clues I have deciphered and applied to my continuing efforts to reconstruct Bessler's wheel

JC       15th October 2015

The legend of Bessler’s Wheel began on 6th June 1712, when Johann Bessler announced that he had invented a perpetual motion machine and he would be exhibiting it in the town square in Gera, Germany, on that day.  Everyone was free to come and see the machine running.  It took the form of a wheel mounted between two pillars and ran continuously until it was stopped or its parts wore out. The machine attracted huge crowds.  Although they were allowed to examine its external appearance thoroughly, they could not view the interior, because the inventor wished to sell the secret of its construction for the sum of 10,000 pounds – a sum equal to several millions today.

News of the invention reached the ears of high ranking men, scientists, politicians and members of the aristocracy.  They came and examined the machine, subjected it to numerous tests and concluded that it was genuine. Only one other man, Karl, the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel, was allowed to view the interior and he testified that the machine was genuine. He is a man well-known in history as someone of the greatest integrity, and  the negotiations between Bessler and Karl took place against a background in which Karl acted as honest broker between the warring nations of Europe; a situation which required his absolute rectitude both in appearance and in action.

There were several attempts to buy the wheel, but negotiations always failed when they reached an impasse – the buyer wished to examine the interior before parting with the money, and the inventor fearing that once the secret was known the buyer would simply leave without paying and make his own perpetual motion machine, would not permit it.  Sadly, after some thirty years or more, the machine was lost to us when the inventor fell to his death during construction of another of his inventions, a vertical axle windmill.

However, the discovery of a series of encoded clues has led many to the opinion that the inventor left instructions for reconstructing his wheel, long after his death.  The clues were discovered during the process of investigating the official reports of the time which seemed to rule out any chance of fraud, hence the  interest in discovering the truth about the legend of Bessler’s wheel.

My own curiosity was sparked by the realisation that an earlier highly critical account by Bessler's maid-servant, which explained how the wheel was fraudulently driven, was so obviously flawed and a lie, that I was immediately attracted to do further research. In time I learned that there was no fraud involved, so the wheel was genuine and the claims of the inventor had to be taken seriously.

The tests which the wheel was subjected to involved lifting heavy weights from the castle yard to the roof, driving an Archimedes water pump and an endurance test lasting 56 days under lock and key and armed guard.  Bessler also organised demonstrations involving running the wheel on one set of bearings opened for inspection – and then transferring the device to a second set of open bearings, both sets having been examined to everyone’s satisfaction, both before, after and during the examination.

So the only problem is that modern science denies that Bessler's wheel was possible, but my own research has shown that this conclusion is wrong.  There is no need for a change in the laws of physics, as some  have suggested, we simply haven't covered every possible scenario in the evaluating the number of possible configurations.

I have produced copies of all Bessler's publications, with English translations.  They can be obtained by clicking on the appropriate links on the right.

JC

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Some of Johann Bessler's Clues shared and discussed.

I believe that I am running out of subjects to write about on this blog, so I have decided to bite the bullet and follow suggestions which might hopefully make this blog more interesting.  Obviously the whole reason for this blog was to write about Johann Bessler and his clues and the latter have been markedly absent, for which I apologise.  Blame the lack of discussion of clues on my paranoia! Afraid that I will accidentally give the game away and lose out to someone else?  Yes and yet what if I should die tomorrow?  All my work would become as nothing - which of course it might still do, but at least others will get a chance to decide for themselves whether I am completely nuts or perhaps I do have something to share.

All I ask is that I get credited with any of the ideas discussed here which it can be seen, clearly originated here.  I have a copyright notice at the bottom of this page but some people do not seem to recognise the requirements this places upon them.  Having said that, please feel free to discuss my ideas anywhere, just be fair and credit me as the author of them.

The first and most important clue for anyone who does not know is that the drawings in Das Triumphans, those done by Bessler, plus the one in Grundlicher Bericht and of course the Apologia Poetica wheel provide you with 90 percent of what you need to construct Bessler's wheel, BUT... each clue is skillfully camouflaged.

In addition the most vital piece of information without which your wheel will remain as stationary as mine has, is to be found in the text of Apologia Poetica, again cunningly disguised.  Despite my inclusion of a clue of a textual nature, most of those clues remain undeciphered despite identifying many, and obviously illustrations, no matter how cunningly contrived, hold the best hope of understanding what Bessler wanted us to see, and I shall include illustrations in future posts

Almost from the beginning of my first encounter with the legend of Bessler's wheel, I thought that the inclusion of the drawings in Das Triumphans, seemed strangely irrelevant and quickly came to the conclusion that they had another purpose, that they contained information about the mechanisms inside the wheel, but cleverly disguised - and so I began to compare them.  The number and succession of anomalies quickly grew and seemed disconnected, but then I realised that Bessler used multiple methods of disguise but by isolating them I eventually exposed two, different methods of concealment, which seemed to act in confirmation of each other.  Others followed in confirmation of this technique, but so slowly that it has taken me almost my whole life to get to grips finally with his system.

I have spent the least amount of time studying Maschinen Tractate simply because it was never published, although clearly it was intended for publication.   I have written about any findings I have made in Maschinen Tractate on my other websites, although the Toys page has given me some insights which I haven't shared to date but will do so soon.

Specific clues will follow but for those who have not visited them my web sites at http://www.theorffyreuscode.com/  and specifically the chapter 55 in Apologia Poetica  contain some of the clues I have identified and to which I have added my speculations

The clues discussed here in this blog will be only those I know are correctly identified and whose meaning has been clearly revealed.

JC

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© 2015  John Collins All Rights Reserved

Johann Bessler was Born 100 years Too Soon!

Johann Bessler promoted his wheel as a solution to flooding in mines and also for pumping water for use in 'Gentlemen's pleasure gardens' and other uses in various manufacturing processes.  It has been suggested that Karl might have been considering the wheel as a means of returning the water to the top of his famous water cascade. In fact it is extremely unlikely that he harboured such thoughts given his years overseeing the experiments of Denis Papin which concerned a number of steam-related inventions.  He was familiar with the shortcomings of such constructions and it is doubtful that he thought Bessler's wheel was capable of pumping anything without the aid of steam or some other unrelated discovery. The unpleasant truth is that Bessler's wheel would not have been capable of providing a solution to either the mining problem nor the cascade and would have been of limited use to the other suggestions.  At that time it would just have been a novelty.  Today we see potential in a number of areas, particularly in the generation of electricity, which opens up its potential to an enormous degree.

In spite of the above negative aspects there were plenty of rich princes who would have paid a lot of money to have the machine to display to their visitors.  Andreas Gartner's whole life involved designing and building intricate machines for the entertainment of his wealthy patrons, for which he was well-paid, so I think Bessler could have sold his machine if only he had found a way to negotiate a settlement .

By making it drive an archimedes screw Bessler hoped to demonstrate its potential as a pump, but in reality it isn't a pump so much as a water lifter, and a limited one at that.  They were used in Holland to assist in draining water from land and everywhere for irrigation, but they were man or animal-powered.  Nevertheless, I think he might have had a market there, where low lifts were needed.   

Karl's cascade measured  almost 600 feet in height and it needed about 92,000 gallons of water to flow from the Hercules monument at the top all the way down to the big lake by the castle, where a fountain pumped water over 160 feet into the air. This whole system relied on natural pressure from reservoirs at the top of the hill and underground pipes whose locks were opened manually.  Once the reservoirs were empty the cascade dried up, so could only be operated occasionally once they were refilled by rainfall.  One can see the potential benefit of finding a way to return the water to the top but I don't think even today there could be an easy or cheap solution, and certainly not with an archimedes screw!

Today during the summer, twice a week the cascade is allowed to run for a few minutes.  That is to conserve enough water for another display of the cascade,in case of drought, and the same applied in Karl's day.

The competitor for Bessler was Newcomen's beam engine which was first run about 1714.  This machine devoured coal ravenously and produced huge clouds of smoke but it did work and many mines installed them.  It drew 10 gallons of water per stroke and ran at approximately twelve strokes a minute, so pumped about 120 gallons a minute, good for draining mines but obviously still inadequate for Karl's cascade.  A rough calculation suggests it would take about 64 hours of continuous pumping to replenish 92000 gallons and that would only lift the water a quarter of the height needed.

Newcomen's engine could pull water up from a depth of about 140 feet,   Bessler's wheel attached to an archimedes screw was limited by the length of the screw, a few feet.

So Bessler's wheel could have been little more than a novelty at the time but not so today and were he here he could rightly ask for a trifling £100,000 and more for the secret and the machine.  He was born too soon, but what if he had sold the wheel?  For several years it would have remained a toy-thing of the rich, but eventually someone would have taken hold of his wheel and attached it to an electrical generator and history would have been made - perhaps Michael Faraday in 1821, would have recognised the potential in Bessler's wheel and made the connection.

JC

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Could Bessler's Wheel be made More Powerful than we Thought?

Here is a little hypothesis which might generate some discussion.  Many people are convinced that Bessler's wheel will never be more than toy; a novelty, with insufficient power to be of any practical use.  I disagree; I am convinced that a way will be found which makes Bessler's wheel a really valuable and practical alternative to the current methods of generating electricity.

Let us suppose that Bessler's wheel has been solved and we have the working model available for all to see, on the internet.

If the wheel is driven by weighted levers in a special configuration, any attempts to squeeze more power out if it will be limited by the confines of the wheel, and the mechanism.  Lengthening the levers to get more drop will only result in some additional height being required to raise them again - a no-win situation.  Increasing the size of the weights will also be self-defeating because they too will be harder to lift again. Depending on which configuration we use there may be other possible increases incorporated but still, they will have to be paid for in one way or other.  But perhaps there is  another way to increase the power output?

Suppose the output of the successful wheel is very small, as many have suggested both here and on the besslerwheel forum, how can we increase it? Assume that the wheel produces just enough energy to rotate itself continuously and lift a relatively light weight.  If we add another wheel to the same axle, we shall double the output, because the second wheel will simply add its energy to the first one which is already rotating the axle.  

Why not add ten wheels to the same axle, each wheel adding its own small energy to the total?  In other words mount ten wheels each containing five mechanism (or however many you believe were contained within the wheel) on to the axle to create up to ten times the original power output.

This, it seems to me could be a real method of increasing power. Bessler himself stated in his Apologia Poetica that "I can, in fact, make 2, or 3, or even more, wheels all revolving on the same axle", so I suggest that was in his mind when he wrote it.

No need to increase the number or size of the weights or the levers, just build several Bessler's wheels in series all on the same axle.

JC

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