Johann Bessler left Clues both Textual and Graphic.

It has always seemed obvious to me, that if Johann Bessler was genuine he would have wanted to leave precise information in a publicly accessible place, about how his wheel worked, otherwise without a sale, he could never dream of final acknowledgement of his amazing achievement, even if it was after his death.  The options are limited to placing such information in one or more of his published works, leaving it for post humous discovery, either connected in some way with his private vault, or in his papers which had not yet been published, including private notes, letters and of course his Maschinen Tractate (MT) which he never got around to publishing. He obviously intended to publish it but his circumstances prevented it.  We already know that some important information had originally been included in his MT because he says so on the frontispiece, that he has burned or buried some pages which reveal the secret but a careful study of the remaining ones may eventually lead to the solution.

This short piece of handwriting on the front of the manuscript, with its strong hint that the secret is available to those with eyes to see, has tempted many researchers to study the 141 drawings, some of which have short notes attached.  For me the secret has so far remained too well hidden, apart from the final page, curiously numbered 138, 139, 140 and 141, as if this page replaces the four he removed.  It does offer some interesting pointers, but more is needed I believe, before sense can be made of the odd collection of items, which I labelled the 'Toys' page, in my original biography of Bessler, 'Perpetual Motion; An Ancient Mystery Solved?'

The MT is also full of other pieces of code which seem to hint at hidden information, but although these can be readily identified, what information I have been able to interpret seems too scant to be of use. But there is another researcher (O) who has made some astonishing discoveries within the MT.

But with or without the mysterious MT to guide you, there are ample other areas suitable for study, which were clearly intended to lead the determined researcher to the solution.  Apologia Poetica, was Bessler's personal account of his long search for the secret of Perpetual Motion.  It contains a number of  different encoding methods, all of which appear to be legitimate and carry a hidden message.  I'm not going to go into them all in detail here but you can learn about some of them by visiting my other web sites all of which are listed on the right side of this page.

Logic suggests that somewhere there must be drawings which were intended to help us get to the secret of the wheel, because all the words in the world will never be equal to some graphic explanations. The only problem is that the drawings must be extremely cleverly disguised.  KB has claimed that he has managed to extract much encoded information that he says he discovered within the two portraits Bessler included at the front of his last and most professional publication, Das Triumphirende.  I cannot comment on what he has found as I have no idea what it is. Das Triumphirende, was a selling aid or advertisement for his wheel.  It is written in both German and Latin, which was  clever because all lectures at universities were carried out in Latin, so it would seem that he was appealing to the more intellectual members of society in the hope of gaining some credibility among those elite.

Within this book are a number of drawings which depict his wheel from various viewpoints and positions and these were very carefully drawn.  Again there are a number of what I would call, discrepancies, apparent errors, which litter the drawings, which might give the impression of carelessness, but a closer look shows how precise the drawings are.

JC

5th February - 72 today! Update

It's my birthday today so I thought I'd write something a little different.  First an update.

Building work is drawing to a close on my house.  My log cabin which is now known fondly, in my family as Bessler Research Activity and Inspiration  Nerve centre (BRAIN!)  is finished and has all my drawings, computer files etc in it, but actual hands-on work is now possible in my somewhat truncated garage.

I think I'm in pretty good health but I remember back in school reading George Orwell's book, 1984, and wondering if I'd make it to that date!  So far so good! That phrase reminds me of Steve McQueen's comment in the film, "The Magnificent Seven", when he said, “It reminds me of that fellow back home that fell off a ten story building. As he was falling people on each floor kept hearing him say, "So far, so good."'

Two people known to me suffered brain aneurisms last year, one was only 40 and survived thank goodness - it was touch and go; but the other, who was in her seventies died.  So it is not sufficient to assume good health is enough, you need some good luck too, to avoid these invisible weaknesses which can manifest themselves at any moment without warning.

So my new year resolution is to publish my research this year pending success or failure in my wheel building.  Now that I have my workshop back and the workmen are about to leave us in peace, I can get on with it all.

One of the unavoidable consequences of this research which is full of documentary information is that the information is ambiguous.  It is all presented in a 300 year old foreign language, it apparently includes encoded information, but no one is sure what this information is designed to reveal; will it be Bessler's last laugh, tying us up in knots in our attempts to extract real information, which is only the inventor showing us how he fooled everyone, or will it contain actual instructions for building his wheel?

This ambiguity leads to numerous false starts, and the dissemination of inaccurate or just plain wrong information presented as fact.  But as time goes by I see also a faint light at the end of a very long tunnel.  It is my firm belief that Bessler strived to leave sufficient information after his death, to allow us to work out his discovery and reconstruct his wheel, but he also had to find a way to prevent those people in his day from working out his secret.  These two requirements were and are incompatible. This makes our job doubly hard.  Are we in the 21st century any cleverer than those of Bessler's day?

People such as Blaise Pascall, Sir Isaac Newton, Gottfried Leibniz, Leonard Euler - the list in endless, that tiny sample of people of Bessler's day demonstrates that the human mind was at least as ingenious as any today, so how do you go about leaving information encoded in such a way that people of those days could not decipher the message and yet others of a later age could do it?

I came to the conclusion mnay years ago that Bessler must have left something in his family grave which would point the way to full disclosure.  We know he obtained permission to be buried in his own vault in his garden.  I and another reseacher sought details of the burial site and came to the conclusion that the site was covered by a carpark, and was probably destroyed at some point prior to its construction.  The only other potential site was the windmill from which he fell to his death; but this did not belong to him and he must have built it assuming that he would return to his home and garden once that commission had been completed.  It is therefore most unlikely that that anything of value would be found there.  I have also visted the windmill which is still in existance although in a somewhat ruinous state.

To my mind that is the most likely method he might have chosen to direct those who searched for a solution after his death.  Nevertheless, I remain confident that my own research will provide a lead in the right direction if not the complete reconstruction and it will be apparent this year.

Cheers

JC

Bessler's Workaround - a method for overcoming a problem or limitation in a program or system.

Given that the search for the solution to Bessler's wheel has gone on for what seems like for ever with no real sign of any progress, and that all apparent alternative means of lifting the fallen weights has drawn a blank.....maybe its time to consider the impossible?

Despite the scornful comments which this post will doubtless engender, from those who (understandably) believe what they have been taught, that gravity cannot be used to drive Bessler's wheel, - and indeed see no convenient loophole which could accommodate my suggestion which follows -  I remain convinced that Johann Bessler found a workaround that allowed him to do just that. I will try to explain why, so please read on.

In the first place much has been made of the vagueness of his statements regarding his probable assumption that gravity drove his machine. The first, and final, impression that I got when reading Bessler's words was that he believed his wheel was driven by gravity.  He implied that it was the cause of the weight's movement. But..... .subsequent analysis by those who search for such nuances of expression, believe that he was not suggesting that gravity alone,  was the source of his wheel's energy, but some additional other unidentified agency.

Having considered the idea that gravity was the prime initiator of rotation, and also the cause of continuation of such motion, someone such as Bessler would have considered every conceivable method to achieve continuing action, including the use of gravity and/or some other agency to relift the fallen weights at the opportune moment, just as we who research this subject have continued to do so since before Bessler and after him.  He states that it was following a dream that he attacked the problem with renewed vigour and enthusiasm, which culminated in success.

This dream seem to have confirmed something he was considering, and the end result was success.  So what could have so inspired him to contimue his research with so much confidence?

This other agency has been extensively sought, and suggestions made as to its nature, but no one has come up with a convincing story.  The truth surely is that if a suitable energy souce had existed, it would have been found by now, and since it hasn't I must conclude that the other agency is the same as the one which caused the weights to fall, i.e. gravity, and that he devised a workaround to avoid the problem.  I'm not sure if Bessler was aware just how impossible his claim to have invented a machine which was driven exclusively by gravity was regarded by the establishment, but I doubt he believed it, even if he had been told many times.  In which case he just persevered with the search instictively searching for a workaround to access gravity  for all his wheel's energy needs.

We know that he was aware of the wall of scepticism around him, but was he aware of exactly why he was not believed?  Why gravity was utterly rejected as a potential sole power source?  He made his discovery before he became notorious and it is likely that he succeeded because he did not know in those early days, why it was impossible!

There were even fewer alternative forces available to Bessler than there are today, and to assume that he found some additional energy to lift the weights, due to changes in ambient temperature, magnetism, air pressure, steam, static electricity or some other force, begs the question why not take the simple route?  Use Occam's razor - when you want to explain something, make no more assumptions than are necessary.  Assuming that some additional source of energy was found, for which there seems to be no evidence, seems to me to be complicating an already puzzling problem.

To find the answer I think we have to dismiss the idea that there is absolutely no means of using gravity to be the sole source of energy for Bessler's wheel.  I believe that there is a workaround that will work, and when it is found it will be very simple in concept, but not so easy in design.  As some of you may know I believe I have found what seems to be that simple concept, which is why I continue to argue that gravity can be used to drive the wheel around for as long as the wheel and its components remain within the field of gravity, subject to certain design elements.

As long as we continue to deny the possibility that Bessler found a way of using gravity to drive his wheel, we shall fail to replicate his machine.  We must bite the bullet and seek a workaround for Bessler's wheel.

JC

Johann Bessler - A Man Before His Time.

Johann Bessler's timing was unforunate; Thomas Newcomen installed the first working steam engine at a coalmine in Staffordshire, England, in 1712, the exact same year that Bessler produced his first working gravity-enabled wheel.  When Newcomen died seventeen years later, over 100 Newcomen engines had been built throughout England and Europe.  Bessler had sold none.

Newcomen's engines were proven; loud, dirty, inefficient but reliable, and using coal in a coalmine made fuelling them easy, even if consumption was high.  Bessler's wheel was an unknowm quantity; even though Newcomen kept the details of his machines secret everyone could see what they were capable of.  Bessler also kept the details of his machines secret, but their power appeared to be extremely limited, in comparison.

In addition he promoted a principle which even then, was loudly rejected by the scientific community whereas steam power had already undergone a series of proven inventions by Denis Papin, who published a study on steam power, including a number of new ideas.  So Bessler's invention was ignored for the same reason it has been ignored ever since; it's premise that it acquired its energy from gravity was proscribed.

But ..... if Bessler had been born today and posted a youtube video of his machine working, with all the parts visible in detail - surely he would have been in the same position as we find ourselves in today, if we were able to replicate his wheel?  It seems curious that he made the discovery back in 1712 when Thomas Newcomen was about to ignite the Victorian industrial age.  Bessler's wheel was far more suited to today's world, than the early 18th century, in my opinion.

It's almost as if he was out of time with his invention;  300 years premature!  Even if the scientific community of Bessler's time had accepted his claims to have used gravity to drive his wheel, the competition from Newcomen would have killed his invention stone dead.  

Despite various claims that Bessler's wheel is too limited in its ability generate usable energy, I do not accept this view.  To me it seems obvious that his wheel can be scaled up to provide sufficient energy for many modern uses.  We have discussed this before on this blog, so I'm not necessarily inviting discussion on this point, but I wanted to reiterate the importance of not dismissing Bessler's wheel as a useful and practical invention at the start of the 21st century - and that it's time is now.

JC