Bessler’s Illustrations

Accidentally deleted this one!  Trying to get the comments back.....

Here is the second of my Bessler code interpretations.

The first thing I realised many years ago is that if Bessler was serious about leaving clues for people he would have to use drawings to hide his information. Maschinen Tractate (M.T.) was never published, plus he had left suggestions that answers could be found in both Apologia Poetica (AP) and Das Triumphirende (D.T.)

On the frontispiece of his collection of drawings (M.T.) he scrawled a message, “ NB. May 1, 1733. Due to the arrest, I burned and buried all papers that prove the possibility. However, I have left all demonstrations and experiments, since it would be difficult for anybody to see or learn anything about a perpetual motion from them or to decide whether there was any truth in them because no illustration by itself contains a description of the motion; however, taking various illustrations together and combining them with a discerning mind, it will indeed be possible to look for a movement and, finally to find one in them."

This message has been routinely misunderstood, in my opinion. When he mentions ‘taking various illustrations together’, etc, he is not just talking about the drawings in M.T., he is including the other drawings in GB, AP, and DT. I wrote a blog about this on Wednesday, 15 November 2017, entitled ‘Johann Bessler’s drawings hold the key’. There are other instances where I have pointed out the sources I have found useful in interpreting information among Bessler’s works; one blog dated 8th June 2019 list several other examples.

In the beginning I thought that the illustrations in both Grundlicher Bericht (G.B.) and D.T. were unnecessary. I assumed they were added to make his books a bit more interesting, but then I began to examine them in more detail and discovered the pentagram. The drawing which is from DT has been shown at the top of this blog for a long time.

To save space I shall try to limit the number of drawings I include, and also my interpretation of the clues will be brief as I’ve already almost completed a book about them and I don’t want to repeat that lengthy process with each page.  There are more than fifty clues interpreted and it’s  ok in book form, but there are too many illustrations to post here.  I apologise for this but time is limited and I’m sure you will understand the clues.  I am including some in this blog, see below. This first illustration will turn out to be the most important of all Bessler’s illustrations. It will become a most highly esteemed work of art mixed with mechanical engineering, once people begin to appreciate the huge amount of information which is hidden within. See below.


In the drawing above, the red line follows the path of the rope which passes behind the wheel. A second line, green, is drawn from the centre of the wheel at right angles to the first line. It terminates at the full stop, or period after the second ‘x’ or etc, in the title line at the top of the picture. It grazes the top of one of the pillars numbered 12, and the edge of one of the weights on the left end of the crossbar on the T shaped pendulum. The two ends of the red line and the point on the circumference of the wheel where the green, second line, the perpendicular one, crosses it, mark three of the points of a pentagram. The remaining points, in yellow, are easy to find. Note that the hatching lines on the wheel align with the lower left yellow chord of the pentagram. The blue line crossing from an alignment with the left side pendulum runs through the centre of the wheel and crosses the right side of the wheel to mark another point on the pentagram. The bottom of the main pillar completes the five markers.

The pentagram is not there as a symbol, it is designed to guide you into understanding the construction, but it requires additional help. This help involves the other illustrations in DT, and also there are some vital pieces of information embedded in the text of AP and DT. The Toys page in MT contains what I would describe as back-up clues which can only be seen to fit after you have solved most of the established clues.

More implications of the importance of the number 5 follow



Above are two illustrations demonstrating two ways to find a pentagram in the AP wheel. In addition the three white segments measure 24 degrees, which divides into 360 degrees, 5 times.





In the two drawings above the one on the right is MT137, but the one on the left is a modern version of design by Johann David Heinichen a contemporary of Bessler’s who lived in the same town at the same time, which he invented as an aid for musicians. It was known as a Circle of fifths

JC

Bessler’s Use of the Orffyreus Codes.

I will begin to post Bessler’s clues and my interpretation of them, in my weekly blogs.  As each new blog appears, I will copy and post my previous one in the ‘pages’ which can be accessed at the top of the panel on the right side of the blog. This will provide easy access to each blog-page and none of the ‘pages‘ will have comments, although the blogs themselves will still allow comments, which will save time for anyone who wishes to read the earlier blogs. I’ll add a copyright notice to each of the ones in ‘pages’.

What follows is my take on why Johann Bessler decided to embed numerous clues in his publications, even though no one was supposed to decipher them before the inventor had received payment for his device

When Bessler set out to discover how to design and build a Perpetual Motion (PM) machine, he had read that such a device would be ‘worth a ton of gold’.  But during the long years of research he  also spent time in considering how to actually obtain a large amount of money for the secret of his machine, should he be successful - sound familiar?

His first and over-riding concern was to keep the secret of his wheel’s construction secure, until he had won his ‘ton of gold’.  Once he had constructed his working wheel he approached a number of wealthy persons of high repute, but he would not share his secret for fear of being cheated, which fact prevented him from obtaining documented verification of his claim. Eventually, as we know, he submitted to the demands of Karl, the Landgrave of Hesse and permitted him access to the interior of the wheel, upon the swearing of an oath. Karl verified the machine and Bessler’s claim.

I believe that for many months both before and after his first successful wheel, Bessler planned a publication extolling the virtues of his machine and later a more impressive account of his journey to success.  This was designed to provide a printed back up of his machine’s design which he could call upon as evidence of the priority of his claim, should the need arise, but he embedded the information within a number of clues.

I think he had already decided on placing coded information about the wheel in his books, long before he decided to allow Karl to see how his wheel worked. This would explain why he put so much time and effort into developing and inserting his coded information, even though he had had his claim validated by the highest authority - before Karl verified his claim, his only guarantee that he could prove his priority lay within the coded information.  He seems to have considered the possibility that he might never sell his machine and thus die without ever receiving acknowledgement for his achievement, so it had an additional purpose although not one he would have expected to happen.

He had become familiar with codes during his time in Prague, and had learned much about several different ciphers.  If he needed to pique someone’s interest about the codes in case of illness, death, imprisonment or some other incapacitating event,  he devised a straightforward clue to initiate the curiosity of a knowledgeable person with the right credentials who would wish to dig deeper, and so he adopted the pseudonym, Orffyreus.

This he created from his name, Bessler, using a well-known mono-alphabetic substitution cipher called atbash,  originally used to encrypt the Hebrew alphabet.  The Caesar shift cipher was similar as is the modern algorithm known as ROT13.  The pseudonym was further refined by the addition of two extra forenames, Johann Ernst, in addition to his given name, Elias.  To the curious eye with some knowledge of the atbash cipher, the three initial letters of his forenames, J.E.E., might spark the idea that here was another cipher but this time it was an alphanumeric one.

Initially one can see that E is the fifth letter and J the tenth. I’m aware of the argument that in Bessler’s day the German alphabet consisted of 24 letters rather than 26, but in our case it doesn't affect the findings of the atbash cipher. JEE becomes WRR, using atbash, which does not seem useful, however we know of another cipher in which letters can represent Roman numerals. The letter W if seen as two ‘V’s, can also represent 5 and 5.  But R is either the seventeenth or eighteenth letter of the alphabet, which doesn’t matter because Bessler decided that the atbash equivalent of E was R, which makes R the 18th letter, so he used the 26 letter alphabet.  The reason for this, as we shall discover is that all these numbers are key angles within the pentagram, and 18 is the base number, but more of that later.  The letter ‘R’ also has another role to play, hence it’s inclusion in the Bessler’s logo as seen above.

So Bessler showed his knowledge of several ciphers and implied that he would be using each of them, plus some others which have not yet been deciphered, in his publications.

Bessler created numerous chronograms which were popular at the time.  One chose certain meaningful quotations from the bible, which contained suitable letters within the text that could be read as Roman numerals.  These when added together gave a relevant date. They were often written above the entrance to a building, to provide an establishment date. This technique was also used by the inventor.

Description

The presence of ciphers was meant to inspire someone to search and find and then decipher each clue. But they could not be made too simple in case someone deciphered them too soon, before the inventor got his money. I have no documentary evidence of this but it was said that Bessler requested and was granted permission for a family vault to be built in his garden at Bad Karlshafen. It seems reasonable to assume that this vault might provide pointers to the hidden information and offer some additional help in deciphering them, to aid those who came after his death, looking for clues about his machine. Unfortunately his vault has never been found. But fear not for I have identified enough clues and deciphered enough of them to reconstruct Bessler’s wheel!

I have posted pointers over the years to the places I looked and found and deciphered clues, and I’ll discuss the specific clues which led me to the solution, with illustrations in the future blogs and this will hopefully spur me on finish my construction, which I have to do in order to prove two things; firstly that this wheel is of the same design as a Bessler’s and secondly the clues I’ve found and my interpretation of them is correct.  As I’ve said before, if the wheel fails, I will continue to post my clues because I believe they are correct.

On that point, I have often said that the mechanism is complex and difficult to build, but on the other hand Karl said it was so simple a carpenter's apprentice could build one if he was given time to study it.  It is difficult to build, at least for me.  If you can see a finished product with all parts in their correct place and all the measurements accessible to you, then yes it could be accomplished more easily.  But working from a huge variety of clues which take time to interpret and then you have to build with a certain amount of trial and error, it is not easy.  The concept is easy to understand and perhaps this was the initial action that Bessler found which encouraged him to keep going.  But getting that action without other actions cancelling out any advantage is a little more difficult.  So even when you think you know the secret you’re only half way there.

Please note that there are no suggestions of links with Rosicrucians, FreeMasons, Numerology, Hermeticism,  Kabbalah, or any other cults, religious factions or other weirdness, they are not required to solve the clues.

‘til next time then.

JC

After a PoP Demonstration, Peer Review and Acceptance.

I think that when Bessler’s wheel actually works and is developed into what ever is proven to be its best evolution, it will confirm the opinion of many of us, that it will herald the future of a world with greatly reduced pollution; very cheap electrical supply; all-electric cars, trains, electric boats and ships.  Not sure if electric aircraft would benefit, but I understand there are some efforts being made in that direction.

Conversely, the cessation or severe reduction of the manufacture of all fossil fuel burning vehicles, boats, aircraft and generators etc, may eventually happen, and not necessarily because of Bessler’s wheel, but because pollution, global warming, rising sea levels - not to mention the increasing cost of pumping oil - demands it. But what a welcoming opportunity for the entrance on to the world stage for Bessler’s wheel.

I know that many here doubt the effectiveness of Bessler’s wheel as an electricity generator, but it seems to me that, in the simplest terms, a rotating device, powered only by the effect of gravity on weights, which can rotate another connected device, no matter how weakly, is capable of being scaled upwards to the point where it can be an effective replacement for all electricity generators. It may appear large or cumbersome, but compared to the many solar panels covering much of the roofs of houses in the U.K. it will seem invisible and far more effective!   But I do not believe it will prove to be as weak as most people predict.

What about all the alternatives means of producing electricity presently in use if the above scenario should happen?  Windmills, tidal generators and nuclear energy, can all be proscribed.  But there are others that I think may still have an important role to play.  Hydroelectric energy, geothermal energy and solar power seem likely to have long term use, but all of the above will benefit from the ongoing development of cheaper and more effective batteries or other electrical storage devices in which to store excess power, or as a backup utility.  Biomass is regarded as renewable energy but still produces CO2 when burned, but there are other ways of extracting energy from it, some of which can be directly converted into electrical energy via electrochemical oxidation reduction reaction (redox).

But above all these, in my opinion, Bessler’s wheel triumphs for its simplicity, cleanliness,  low cost, low technology and therefore reliability.

JC

Johann Bessler - Misunderstood, Reviled, but a Genius.

The search for the answer to a perpetual motion machine has been going on for hundreds of years if not thousands, and yet we seem to be no nearer a solution now then anyone else has been, apart from Johann Bessler’s machine.  How come he succeeded when no one else, as far as we know, even got near?

According to the man himself, he had two things things in his favour; firstly his extensive practical knowledge in the various trades commonly practised in his day; and secondly his freedom to work on the project all day, every day for as long as it took.

While I accept his expertise and probably his skillset in numerous trades was far in advance of the majority of people today, I’m not sure that that would give him much of an advantage over today’s wealth of information garnered from the internet. But there was one advantage he had over the rest of us and that was that each trade he learned required a hands-on approach, there was no way of learning from books or in a classroom, and I believe this gave him a unique practical knowledge not available to anyone else.  He claimed expertise in each trade but I doubt that each of his mentors would have assessed his work as exemplary, although it could have been adequate, and he could have made good use of the knowledge gained.

Clearly Bessler had a quick and clear understanding of each of the crafts he learned and this stood him in good stead. But to return to the  second advantage he claimed, that of being able to work exclusively on his project, he wasn’t married then so he only had to feed and house himself, but he had to acquire raw materials with which to build his mechanisms, which he would have to pay for, just as we do today. He still had to find ways to earn enough for all his needs and  he had a reputation for having good medical knowledge, another skill he learned during his wandering years, and which  he was called upon occasionally to practice, thus earning himself some income. He also claimed to be able to repair watches, probably mainly pocket and fob watches. With his experience in many areas of life, he had the means to earn enough for his purposes.

So when it comes down to it, his chief advantage seems to have been his experience in physically working in these trades.  But later he decided to adopt the trade of organ maker, learning from his younger brother, Gottfried.  This was a complicated and quite technical device but it used numerous items which Bessler found useful and adapted for his wheel. He did build some organs but it was only  as a means to an end, and gave him knowledge not necessarily accessible elsewhere.

By reading the above you might think I have trivialised his skills as nothing more than those of a journeyman, but far from it.  I believe he had a huge breadth of knowledge specific to his needs and the skills to apply them, but above all he had the intellectual ability to work out how to design and build a working model of his wheel.  Following numerous trial and error experiments he gradually found his way to the correct mechanical arrangement.

His interests were not limited by his desire to build a perpetual motion machine.  As we all know he died while constructing a windmill, but as was typical of Bessler he introduced the idea of a windmill with a vertical axle, allowing it to take advantage of the wind from any direction.  He designed a carillon and wrote the music for it.  He devised a submarine which could be moored under water with an air supply from one of his gravity wheels.  He offered to design and build a leather tanning factory.   He offered to build a fountain driven by his gravity wheel for “the amusement of gentlefolk”.  There is so much more but these examples demonstrate the breadth and depth of his knowledge.

And when you see the true ingenuity of his coding system you will have no doubt that this man was no simple peasant but a misunderstood genius

PS - Don’t forget my granddaughter Amy needs your help, if you feel like donating to her crowdfunding site, your kindness will be gratefully received.  My thanks go out to those generous people who have already donated.  She is improving and our most fervent wish is that she can walk out of the clinic under her own steam, so-to-speak, hopefully before the end of this year.

Look at this 
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And this https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-our-amy-to-walk-again

JC