Bessler’s Wheel vs Water Wheel.

This is somewhat speculative, but an argument against the oft-stated opinion that Bessler’s wheel will  have little real power.

There have been several attempts to estimate the potential power in Bessler’s wheel, but given the paucity of information about the internal workings, we are limited to using the dimensions, speed and a single estimate of the relative mass of one weight.  Even the size of the chest of stones proves little, as we don’t know the limit that could be lifted.  There is another approach which might give some useful idea of the inherent potential in Bessler’s wheel.

There is a restaurant about a mile from here which straddles the river Avon,  called the Saxon mill, records indicate it was a working mill back in the twelfth century.  The first reference to a waterwheel goes back to 4000 BCE and there are the remains of several Roman water mills throughout England.  According to the Doomsday book in 1086 there were no less than 5624 water mills in England.

My idea was to compare the size and speed of the old water wheels used in the mills and also take a look at the current thinking (sorry, cheap pun!) about modern commercial and diy water mills and try to get assessments of power output from wheels of comparable size and speed to  the Merseburg wheel. I’m sure I don’t need to go into the different types of waterwheel, there is plenty about them on google.  There are several varieties each with their advantages. There is also much about efficiency of modern turbines, but that does not concern us just now.

Much of what follows is gleaned from reputable google websites.

Most of the Roman water wheels were vertical and measured between 5 and 10 feet in diameter, not too different from the size of the Merseburg wheel.  In 1764 the first water-powered cotton mill in the world was constructed in Lancashire.  Below is a picture of an early textile mill, from 1770.   Note the huge size of the wheel, and the gearing used.

The principle challenge of the waterwheel is the low rotational speed, which means that significant gearing up is required to match generator speeds.  The same has been suggested as the problem with Bessler’s wheel. However high power gear units are widely available and have improved the economics of modern waterwheel power schemes up to 50kW and more. A 35kW generator is enough to power everything in a home. Water wheels are cumbersome and far less efficient than hydro turbines but the reason for this discussion is to try to get an idea of the kW output of a Merseburg size wheel.

The Merseburg wheel was about eleven feet in diameter and one foot thick and turned at 40-50 rpm. But the old water wheels turned much more slowly, 7 to 10 rpm was common.  The Lacey wheel on the Isle of Man is the largest working water wheel in the world. It is 72.5 feet in diameter and six feet wide.  It turns at just 3 rpm.  It has an estimated 200 horsepower which is about 150 kW. So back to the Merseburg wheel.

The speed and volume of water and height of its fall affects the power output of a waterwheel, but most can work from minimal amounts of each.

Eleven feet by one foot, turning at 40 rpm. Circumference is say, 35 feet. The rim is moving at 1400 feet per minute or almost 16 mph.  16mph is a strong breeze and if you were cycling at 16mph, you would feel it quite strongly.  How much power might be available from the Merseburg wheel?  No idea, actually because for one we don’t know how heavy the weights were, nor how many there were, but there is one thing we do know - the speed of the rim, 16 mph, and more when it turned 50 rpm, nearly 20 mph.

It reminds me of the feeling I had when I read the maid’s account of how she helped turn the Kassel wheel, I couldn’t prove she was lying, but I knew she was, and it’s the same here, the Merseburg had plenty of power and rotated at far higher speeds than any waterwheel.  Add high gearing and you could drive an electricity generator.  Bessler said his wheel could be scaled up providing more power, obviously this must be true, it’s a common solution to limited output in many machines.

I know, this is not scientific or practical or objective, but sometimes subjective feelings are all you have.

One more thing; there has been so much talk about Bessler’s use of pulleys to increase the lifting power of the wheel.  I have suggested that the slower Kassel wheel was deliberately designed to provide a slower demonstration, obviating the need for pulleys.  In the Merseburg demonstration, with an rpm of 40 or 50, each lift would have been over quickly.  We don’t have the height of the lift but it was described as ‘several Klafter’, each of which was six feet.  Several Klafter could be up to about 50 feet,  although I suspect less, which would use 100 turns of the wheel, and last less than two minutes.  Including the pulleys, extended the length of the demonstration.

The demonstrations took some organising and were observed by several people at a time.  Removing weights, translating the wheel, replacing the weights, making sure that as many people as possible could view the lifting process through the windows, plus of course, Bessler’s own brand of showmanship, would take time.  A lift of less than two minutes might even be missed by some and would be received with less interest and requests for several repeats.  The use of pulleys would help the demonstration.

NB. This, in my opinion, justifies the design of the Kassel wheel, which had two requirements.  Firstly it was needed to run slower for the demonstration, and secondly it had to be able to accomplish the lengthy endurance test. Bessler would have been aware of any wear on the Merseburg wheel bearings and made adjustments to the design of the Kassel wheel to slow it’s rotational speed without reducing its power.  If this assumption is not right, how else do you explain the slower Kassel wheel?  Don’t forget that Bessler stated that he could make wheels large or small with varying power output.

In my opinion Bessler’s wheel will prove to have more than enough power to provide useful amounts of electricity.

JC

Save Time and Money, Don’t Patent.

There has always been a question which haunts the back of the mind of the majority of seekers of a solution to Bessler’s wheel, and it is this - how do I earn some kind of financial reward if I succeed in designing and building a working version of Bessler’s wheel?

I know that some think it’s somehow immoral to seek to earn money for their work but it’s no different to earning money from any discovery.  Many researchers believe that a patent is the way to go, but I urge you to think again.  Patents are time-consuming, expensive and they don’t cover the whole planet.  They require policing to try to control patent infringements and these also have time and money costs.  So how do you get any return on all those years of trial and error?

My personal preferences is to make a reasonably good video of the wheel explaining how it works.  Post it on YouTube and select monetise it.  You need at least 10000 hits before you start to earn some money, but a video of this nature could swiftly get into millions of views. I won’t go into how you monetise a video, there is plenty of advice out there, but it is the way to go.  It takes a little effort to accomplish, but it’s much easier than getting a patent and it costs you nothing.

The result is that you have given away the secret to the world at large and made it impossible for anyone else to patent the design.  Someone will always find a way to improve a design and apply for a patent on the improvement, but that can happen even if you have already got the patent on your design.

Forget the patent route just finish a working proof of principle wheel then do the video.  Tell the world that you have significant potential improvement to the problem of climate change, pollution from fossil fuel burning and an alternative means of generating cheap clean electricity

Same instructions to self!

JC

Facts not Fiction, will Show the Way to Bessler’s wheel.

It seems to me that people are getting sidetracked into looking for clues in places which are not genuinely repositories for clues actually left by Johann Bessler.  The so-called clues identified by K. Behrendt in his book are not clues left by Bessler with the intention of guiding us to his design.  I say this with the utmost certainty because I have identified and interpreted enough clues to build his machine and it bears no similarity to the one that Behrendt claims to have discovered.

There so many errors and false assumptions littering the heavy prose which forms an enormous chunk of the book, that my heart quails at the very thought of identifying them.  In addition the author sketches ideas which become facts which supply sturdy support for his earlier erroneous assumptions.  His conclusions are so flimsy, based as they are on non-evidence that, one could drive a coach and horses through them and utterly destroy them

It may appear that I’m being unfair to Behrendt, but I’m actually trying to defend the truth and Behrendt’s truth is a mere shadow of the reality.  He has published books before on the paranormal, secrets of UFO technology, and numerous articles on time machines, extraterrestrials, the resurrection of the dead, the underworld, haunted houses, the oceanic depths.  The list seems endless, but I hope you get a picture of Mr Behrendt’s interests.  He is not a recorder of truths so much a purveyor of myth and imagination.

I am concerned at the number of people who are advancing Behrendt’s theories without concerning themselves with their origin.  You can have alternative theories and hypotheses, but not alternative facts. Facts that are successfully disputed cease to be facts, while theories that are successfully disputed continue to be theories.

It is for this reason that I continue to record my dislike and concern that people will assume that Behrendt writes with the tacit approval of those, like myself, who have spent most of my spare time throughout some sixty years in publishing only facts which are supported by documentary evidence.  I do not approve of anything which he has written in his book, ostensibly the truth about Bessler's wheel.  Even though some of it comes from my own research which he has by and large failed to acknowledge other than in the the most desultory fashion, but more, far more comes from his own vivid imagination, and you can form an accurate opinion on that by considering the other subjects he waxes enthusiastically about.  None of them are real, just a boy’s  imagination run riot.

JC

Bessler’s Wheel and the Orffyreus Code.

Apologies for putting this up again only I seem to have caught a cold, not  covivid-19 hopefully, and I’m not up to writing a blog.    I’ll return to the blog ASAP.       JC

The Legend of Johann Bessler’s Perpetual Motion Machine.

 The Truth Behind the Legend of Bessler’s Wheel and the Orffyrean Code

On 6th June, 1712, in Germany, Johann Bessler (also known by his pseudonym, Orffyreus) announced that after many years of failure, he had succeeded in designing and building a perpetual motion machine.  For more than fourteen years he exhibited his machine and allowed people to thoroughly examine it.  Following advice from the famous scientist, Gottfried Leibniz, he devised a number of demonstrations and tests designed to prove the validity of his machine without giving away the secret of its design.

Karl the Landgrave of Hesse permitted Bessler to live, work and exhibit his machine at the prince's castle of Weissenstein.  Karl was a man of unimpeachable reputation and he insisted on being allowed to verify the inventor's claims before he allowed Bessler to take up residence  This the inventor reluctantly agreed to and once he had examined the machine to his own satisfaction Karl authorised the  publication of his approval of the machine.  For several years Bessler was visited by numerous people of varying status, scientists, ministers and royalty as well as hundreds of  local inhabitants.  Several official examinations were carried out and each time the examiners concluded that the inventor's claims were genuine.

Over the years Karl’s health began to deteriorate and his sons decided that it was time for the inventor to leave the castle and he was given five years salary and accommodation in the nearby town of Karlshaven. Despite the strong circumstantial evidence that his machine was genuine, Bessler failed to secure a sale and after more than thirty years he died in poverty.  His death came after he fell from a windmill he had been commissioned to build.  The windmill was an interesting design using a vertical axle which allowed it to benefit from winds from any directions.  

He had asked for a huge sum of money for the secret of his perpetual motion machine, £20,000 which was an amount only affordable by kings and princes, and it’s no coincidence that this sum matched that being offered by the British Government as a reward for the invention of a way to establish a ships longitudinal position  at sea.  Bessler clearly believed his invention was equal in value.  Many people were interested in Bessler’s wheel, but none were prepared to agree to the terms of the deal. Bessler required that he be given the money and the buyer take the machine without viewing the internal workings.  Those who sought to purchase the wheel, for that was the form the machine took, insisted that they see the secret mechanism before they parted with the money. Bessler feared that once the design was known the buyers could simply walk away knowing how to build his machine and he would get nothing for his trouble.  He said that a bag of money should be put on the table and the buyer could take the wheel there and then.  He swore that if he was found cheating he should be beheaded, a not unlikely result if he was found to be a fraud and deceiving his ruler.

I became curious about the legend of Bessler’s Wheel, while still in my teens, and have spent most of my life researching the life of Johann Bessler (I’m now 74).  I obtained copies of all his books and had them translated into English and self-published them, in the hope that either myself or someone else might solve the secret and present it to the world in this time of pollution, global warming and increasingly limited energy resources.




This problem of acceptance by his potential buyers was anticipated by Bessler and he took extraordinary measures to ensure that his secret was safe, but he encoded all the information needed to reconstruct the machine in a small number of books that he published. He implied that he was prepared to die without selling the secret and that he believed that post humus acknowledgement was preferable to being robbed of his secret while he yet lived.


It has recently become clear that Bessler had a huge knowledge of the history of codes and adopted several completely different ones to disguise information within his publications.  I have made considerable advances in deciphering his codes and I am cautiously optimistic that I have the complete design.


Johann Bessler published three books, and digital copies of these with English translations may be obtained from the links to the right of this blog.  In addition there is a copy of his unpublished document containing some 141 drawings, his account of the search for perpetual motion - and my own account of Bessler’s life is also available from the links.  It is called "Perpetual Motion; An Ancient Mystery Solved?"  

Bessler's three published books are entitled "Grundlicher Bericht", "Apologia Poetica" and "Das Triumphirende...". I have called Bessler's collection of 141 drawings his Maschinen Tractate, but it was originally found in the form of a number of loosely collected drawings of perpetual motion designs. Many of these have handwritten notes attached and I have published the best English translation of them that I was able to get. Bessler never published these drawings but clearly intended to do so at some 


I and thousands of others around the world believe that Johann Bessler’s claim to have designed and built a perpetual motion machine, or a continuously rotating device enabled purely by gravity, was genuine.  The circumstantial evidence is compelling.  This device if reconstructed now, could potentially provide cheap clean electricity, and by reducing the need for fossil fuels, provide a huge step forward in reducing carbon emissions in a very short time.

For some ideas about Bessler’s code why not visit my web sites at

www.theorffyreuscode.com  and

www.besslerswheel.com      and

www.orffyreus.net.                and

www.orffyreus.org

For more information go to www.free-energy.co.uk

JC