The Legend of Johann Bessler's Wheel.

I have replaced my usual blog with a brief account of the legend of Bessler's wheel.  I'm currently unable to maintain the frequency of my blog due to commitments which are keeping me exceedingly busy!  Once I have found and bought my house, I shall return to the blog plus I shall have published my interpretation of a large number of Bessler's clues, none of which relate to Bessler's portraits.

4th April 2016

JC

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

2016 Update

Still working on my wheel in the garage, despite the imminent move from this house to another one.

Recent discussion on BW forum mentioned, once again, that  nothing on paper will convince anyone of any claims to have found the solution to Johann Bessler's wheel.  This has been my stance for many years and now I find myself having to (possibly) eat my words!  I have some how convinced myself that I know how the wheel worked blah blah blah!  

So making the wheel would obviously be the next step, but all sorts of excuses are available - the house-move is restricting my time and access to the wheel; my workshop tools are out-dated, suffering like me from old age; my drill has seized up and I should buy a new one but I borrowed my father-in-laws old one which has been lying in a pool of water for the last seven years and I am nervous about plugging it into the electricity, so it continues dry out on a radiator!  Its too cold to work out side at the moment . . . . .and so on and so on.  

All of these excuses are real (Really! Honestly!) so I am considering the other ways of getting my design verified.  I have an idea which way to go, so please don't feel the need to advise, I have plans but in the mean time I must try to continue the build and hope for warmer weather, and do not worry I shall not be testing the water-logged drill, I shall dump it at the earliest opportunity and buy myself a shiny new one.

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I wrote this a couple of weeks ago and since then I have made my decision about my next step.  I left the above as it is because I think we all go through these procrastinatory steps and I thought it worthwile to describe it for the benefit of those lucky people equipped with superb workshops and all the right equipment and no lazy habits which lead to dilatory outcomes.

In the end I have solemly promised that, come what may, my theory will be published this year, wheel or no wheel.  And because a paper hypothesis would be ignored I am taking steps to marshall some impressive supporting evidence for my hypothesis which hopefully will not be ignored.  But in the end a wheel must appear.. . this year.

JC

It's About Time for Bessler's Wheel to make an Appearance.

As I'm sure you all know, I'm Bessler's biggest fan, but I think that when he set out to market his wheel he must have found it difficult to list the many benefits he hoped it could offer.  He suggested raising heavy loads up the sides of high buildings; pumping water out of flooded mines; driving a carrilon; pumping air into a submarine; crushing rocks etc.  Not a real attention-grabbing list! The truth is the wheel represented little more than a novelty item, mostly attractive to rich princes and just the kind thing that Andreas Gärtner - his number one enemy - had made a career out of, making novelty toys for his ruler.

Bessler's wheel could never have pumped water out of the mines.  Thomas Newcomen's beam engine had it beaten before it started.  The Newcomen Beam Engine at Elsecar in Yorkshire, England, ran from 1795 until 1923 when is was replaced by Electric Pumps. It also ran briefly in 1928 when the electric pumps were overwhelmed by flooding. At its peak it could draw 600 gallons a minute from a depth of almost 200 feet.

Newcomen's engine were heavy users of coal at around 12 to 20 tons per day.  Cheap enough when it was used in a coal mine but expensive to run in Cornwall's copper and tin mines.  But although the running costs were prohibitive they were regarded as a worthwhile expense.

Besslers's wheel, on the other hand, equired an enormous initial cost and then no return to speak of, regardless of how large it was.  The implication was that a larger version of his wheel would do even more work than the Kassel wheel. In fact some people regard Bessler's suggestion that his wheel could easily be built to 20 feet and more in diameter and have several wheels in series on one axle, with considerable scepticism.  They think that that was too big and could not be built at the time, but consider John Rowley's tidal wheel for pumping water from the river Thames to Windsor Palace which measured "twenty-four foot diameter and twelve foot broad; for the new brass engine with brasses to the crank, forcing rods," etc, and of course the mighty Newcomen engine itself, whose balance beam measured, in some cases twenty feet or more in length and over a foot thick, with a weight of several tons.  The whole thing housed in a specially built and strengthened building.  That was large.

So Bessler was, as we have noted before, some 300 years ahead of his time.  There was no point in producing a machine for which there was little demand. Newcomen's machine were made in their hundreds all over Europe in the 18th century and despite their heavy consumption of coal regarded as  indispensable for removing flood water from mines.

The truth is there was no real interest in buying Bessler's wheel, disregarding the fact that it was suspected of being a scam, it is hard to think of any genuine use for it at that time - but things have changed  - turned full circle (apologies for an obvious pun!) - no longer is the potential for a gravity-enabled wheel zero. Bessler's time has come.

The obvious use is to generate electricity, maybe not on a large scale - who knows - but certainly by household or by street.  There is no need to enumerate the potential for alterntive uses.

The materials that Bessler could use were limited to wood, iron, brass and lead, but now the range is enormous and there may be some with properties that might work perfectly with an electric wheel. Changes in the design, taking into account the special configuration necessary to obtain continuous rotation, might result in huge improvements to output, just as the Boulton and Watt improvements to Newcomen's engines in Cornwall in 1778 resulted in an increase in depth to 300 feet in mining and 75% less fuel consumption.

There are two major advantages in developing Bessler's wheel; free energy anywhere on the planet - and no pollution.  Certainly worth striving for.

JC

HAPPY NEW YEAR

SUCCESS THROUGH INTUITION AND EXPERIMENTATION IN 2016

Mathematics in our world is a vital tool for invention but Michael Faraday had no use for it, in fact he believed that the subject could actually be a hindrance to successful experimentation. He worked intuitively and experimented with new ideas until he had exhausted all possibilities.

I have little use for maths in my search for a solution to Bessler's wheel.  I read with a glazed expression the discussions about varous forces and formulae and I continue with my experimentation.  I leave aside simulation and animation, possibly because I am not au fait with much of it, but also for me it would be too easy to overlook something that only becomes apparent when you have the parts in your hands. Handling parts, moving them manually, altering the range of movement, moving and adjusting the positions and sizes of the weights - all of these things help to visualise the potential new configurations that would not be visible in simulations if only because all of these things have to be fed into the computer to see what happens.

That is why I ignore statements which deride our efforts here.  It has always seemed to me that gravity holds the answer to Bessler's wheel, but I learned long ago that I was not supposed to regard gravity as an energy source and I always try to maintain that stance in public, but actually I still think of it as an energy source and that gives me an advantage over all those people who persist in looking for another energy source.

Bessler clearly (in my opinion) took the same view and that is why he succeeded where everyone else failed.  I know that in 2016 the solution to Bessler's wheel will be published.

And here's another thing - people have questioned whether planet earth completely covered in gravity-driven wheels would have some detrimental effect on us, the earth or some other facet of our lives.  To me the answer is simple; no it won't have any detectable effect.

Gravity is basically a non-contact force so any collisions resulting from its attraction are secondary, it has simply been the vehicle in which mass rides.  In a car crash we don't blame the car engine for driving us at speed into a wall and causing terrible damage.  The resultant damage is simply the effect of stopping suddenly.  If we hadn't hit a wall, the work being done by the speeding engine would have continued onwards as before.  So when a weight falls, regardless of whether we use the fall to raise another weight or rotate the wheel  a little, gravity does its thing in making the weight fall and then continues on its merry way looking for something else to make fall.

Bessler’s wheel was driven by the reaction of falling weights to the force of gravity. No-one can argue that the energy is not free to us even if at some nano level it is paid for throughout the universe. I'm satisfied that nothing we do on earth here using gravity as our energy source can effect anywhere in the universe by any detectable means over any period of time you care to consider.

So onwards with enthusiasm, optimism and hope!

JC