Simulators versus Hands-on Building for Me

I have taken a long hard look at sim software but I have reluctantly come to the conclusion I’m too old to start learning how to use a new piece of software just now when a solution is urgently required.  I hope people don’t think I didn’t take the task seriously because I did and I read many of the comments about simming on Besslerwheel forum.  I was initially determined to take the advice offered but in the end I realised it was going to take too much time to understand and learn to use it and trust what I was seeing. I think my time would be better spent building my new wheel.  Despite the seeming setback that wubbly’s sim presented I am still feeling positive and optimistic that I can succeed in this venture. 

Those of you who build will probably know how, at one or more points during a build, you may be considering two or more options about how to proceed.  Which ever path is taken can sometimes prove wrong or not as efficient as the alternative one you dropped.  Which ever path you take can lead to more choices to make.  In my case I followed one path which led me via several branches, to the wrong conclusion literally, resulting in my faulty sim.  My selfconfidence over-rode the analytical part of my brain and in hind sight I can see where I went wrong......I hope!

So hands-on building works for me, well I enjoy it, even if it hasn’t worked yet. Someone suggested it’s the journey I enjoy, but I’m not sure I agree, I look forward to reaching my goal and not having to work with pieces of metal and wood that have been used many times.

Back in mid 1990’s, having spent more than ten years researching his life, I was writing my first book, a biography of Johann Bessler called, “Perpetual Motion; An Ancient Mystery Solved?” I wrote it on an early Amstrad, a nightmare of utter slowness but it was incredibly popular and I thought it was just amazing at the time.  We played computer games on the ZX  Spectrum which was basic compared to a calculator today, Jetset Willy I remember fondly.

My point is I had to teach myself about computers, publishing and subsequently self publishing, the internet, print on demand and arrange radio and magazine interviews at a time when all of the above was just beginning.  Such information was hard to find, usually in the local library.  All this, while holding down my job at Rolls Royce Aero-engines, but although I’m getting older, I still have all my faculties, and I’m sure that after I’ve finally solved or stopped trying to solve Bessler’s wheel, I’ll take a more leisurely look at the sim software, and learn all about it.

I would understand if many people think I’m deluding myself because I believe I can still solve this puzzle and that’s fine, I have a number of tricks up my sleeve that I shall explain later, but for now I must press on and finish this wheel. I’m also still writing my book detailing all of the clues I have actually deciphered. I accept that there may be some scepticism about my interpretation, but my previous post about the pentagon hidden within the Apologia Poetica wheel certainly seems to have gained acceptance for the logical explanation even if not my interpretation of its meaning.

I like to busy and ever since I began writing my bio of Bessler I used to get up at 5 am to write for an hour or so before getting ready for work.  Unfortunately that habit of waking at 5am has never left me, so I still wake at 5 every morning, and have done so ever since.  Plenty of time for thinking!

JC

The Meaning of the Apologia Poetica Wheel.

What I love about this blog is the way it has transmogrified into a kind of catch-all discussion group which occasionally mentions the subject heading but then meanders off into various side issues.  But hey, I don’t worry as long as people keep commenting and we get some useful exchange of views.

There has been much discussion over the value of Bessler’s clues and, dare I say it, ‘fake clues’. My own efforts don’t seem to have garnered much interest but plenty of scepticism, but in my opinion they are real, not fake.

I have been asked many times for examples of the clues I claim to have found and deciphered, so even though some of them are available on my other websites I’m going to post several here from time to time, in the hope of generating some interest. I’m not going to show those that give too much away to start with, but I plan to share them all as my efforts to replicate Bessler’s wheel proceed - and I do have a design I’m working on.

There is a multitude of pieces of coded information, buried in this publication, Apologia Poetica, but the Apologia wheel drawing at the end of this book interested me initially because it looked so simple and because of the intriguing and mysterious hint in the accompanying text, “Jesus said, ‘do ye still not understand?’

I measured the angles at the inner end of the white segments and discovered, as others have found, that the angles are ambiguous – a bit too vague to measure accurately. I noted that the angles in the white segment formed a point outside the inner circles and that the black segments did not in fact form any measurable angle unless you extended them to a point which came somewhere beyond the centre of the wheel.

Due to the way things were printed in those times the exact sizes of the angles were difficult to establish.I felt that there must be another reason for the inclusion of this diagram with its cryptic comment above, and Bessler must have made allowances for the irregularities of the printing techniques of his time. If he knew that the angles would be hard to measure then perhaps the exact measurement did not matter, but it seemed safe to assume that all three angles were equal. I measured the white angles again and established that they were variously somewhere between 23 degrees and 27 degrees.

I added together each set of the same three numbers forming each of the three angles to see if the sum of the three numbers had any meaning. Using the angles as measured between 23 and 27 degrees, I ended up with several possible totals between 69 and 81. I divided the resultant totals into the 360 degrees of a circle and there was just one number which divided equally into 360 and that was the first real advance in deciphering Bessler’s code.

Three times 24 degrees comes to 72, and 360 degrees divided by 72 is 5. A circle, which can be divided by five, is a pentagram or a pentagon (a pentagram is a pentagon inscribed within a circle). So, I decided that Bessler might be indicating that his wheel had five divisions, which might indicate the use of five mechanisms – or it was a clue to further decipherments.

During my research I have discovered that Bessler rarely, if ever, missed an opportunity to include two or more hints or ways of deciphering a clue, within each item that held a clue and the above Apologia wheel is no exception. For those who remain unconvinced that the above diagram does indeed hold a hidden pentagram the following will go some way towards convincing them of this fact.

The above drawing is virtually self-explanatory. Draw a line from ’A’ to ’B’ as in the drawing. Drop a perpendicular through the centre of the wheel from ‘C’ to ‘D’. The length of the chord from ‘A’ to ‘C’ and also ‘B’ to ‘C’ is equal to one chord of a pentagram. Using a set of compasses set to the length of the first chord, simply fill in the remaining chords to complete the pentagram. Examples of this system of double clues abounds in Bessler’s work and is a way of confirming what initial findings appear to indicate.

There is an additional clue hidden in the curiously drawn axle in the centre of the Apologia wheel. It consists of a white dot denoting the centre, surrounded by a solid black circle. Surrounding this in turn is a white circle which is itself surrounded by a thin black circle and finally another white circle but one divided by three terminations of the three white segments. Just decoration? No.

In the next figure notice the same red lines as in the drawing above. First I drew the red horizontal line (as AB above). Next I drew in the two almost vertical red lines, which begin at the lowest corners of the bottom white segment and rise, deliberately skimming the edge of the inner black circle. Note that they meet at the upper edge of the circumference, indicating the same point as ‘C’ does in the above figure. This allows you to draw in the two upper arms of the pentagon

Now observe the two blue lines; starting from the only two points left on the circumference which don’t have lines starting from them, draw two lines skimming the edge of the slightly larger black circle to the far circumference. These end points define the other points of the pentagon.

The edge of the solid inner black circle provides the two datum points for the nearly vertical red lines which define the top of the perpendicular line through the centre. The thin outer black circle provides the two datum points for the blue lines, the lower ends of which define the remaining pentagon points

This not only explains the reason for the elaborate centre circles but also proves the presence of the pentagon. He gives us three ways to decipher the meaning of this wheel; once with the three 24 degree angles, numerical, and twice with different sets of geometrical lines defining the pentagonal feature.

Earlier I mentioned the curious quotation from the Bible which accompanies the Apologia wheel, “.... and Jesus said, do ye still not understand”. The implication is that there is something to be understood which is not readily apparent to the eye. It will be noticed that the quotation is from the Bible and takes the form of a chronogram. Chronograms were particularly popular in Germany in this period and were often used on buildings to establish the date of their construction.

Taking the several Latin uppercase letters D, I, D, V, C, C, V, V, D and I, from the first line of the quotation, and assuming they also represent Roman numerals, added together they total the figure 1717, the year of AP’s publication. D = 500, I = 1, V = 5, and C = 100. It will be noticed that the last line of the quotation has a couple of blanks, easily ignored but which represented omitted letters. The missing word is in fact, ‘teufel’ meaning ‘devil’. The letter ‘U’ and the letter ‘V’ are interchangeable in German so, applying the same technique as above and replacing the letters with numbers where possible we get ‘teVfeL’. Using the V and the L, indicates the number 55 - the number 5 again but repeated this time. 

Returning to the wheel diagram, there is the numerical pointer to the number 5, plus two geometrical features pointing to two 5s. This mimics the two 5s in the missing letter blanks in the quotation. This next is arguably coincidence, but the year 1717 can be read as 17 x 2 which equals 34 degrees, one of the main angles in a pentagram.

This is such an ingenious way of transmitting information, and is typical of the rest of Bessler’s clues. What information is he offering? To me it is obviously the basic wheel needs to have five segments, and the duplicated number 5 relates to the two way wheel, but it may also to mean 5 weights in 5 segments, or two sets of 5 weights!

These clues, with my interpretations, seem a lot more convincing than others which have been published.  I have strived to find and unravel clues which are simple to see and understand.  My solutions are logical and it seems to me that it is the solution I offer which is received with scepticism not the way I deciphered it.  This example above suggesting the importance of the number 5 is widely dismissed and the reason seems to be because  Fischer von Erlach described hearing the sound of about eight weights landing on the side towards which the wheel turned, in the Kassel wheel.  But the sounds were muffled by other noises, there could have been more of them in a two way wheel, and some could have been muffled or silenced.

JC

Johann Bessler’s Non-Stop Gravity Enabled Device.

I know I’ve been banging on about this for years, but here I go again!

I am continually surprised that some people are still arguing about the energy source of Bessler’s wheel.  I’ve been seeing the same arguments posted on the Besslerwheel forum since it began, 2003 or thereabouts, and despite the strong circumstantial evidence that Bessler was genuine, we are still being told that we are wrong and that we don’t seem to understand that science has proved that gravity is not a source of energy.

But we do understand!  It is science which is missing the point! Johann Bessler with help of no lesser person than Gottfried Leibniz, designed a number of tests to be demonstrated in front of a gathering of the highest ranking statesmen, princes, university professors and celebrities of the day, which would prove the legitimacy of his claims. This was accomplished on more than one occasion, plus there were several demonstrations for others of a less exalted status who were nevertheless capable artisans.

No one has ever been able offer a convincing suggestion explaining how Bessler managed to cheat so many people over several years ... if he was a fraud as the world of science would have us believe.  It is clear from documentary evidence that many of those attending the demonstrations were determined to show evidence of Bessler’s duplicity, but they failed and became convinced of his sincerity.

Given the evidence of Bessler’s tests and the many eyewitnesses who attended them, not to mention the inventor’s suggestion he should have his head cut off if he should be found guilty of making false representations, surely the initial logical conclusion is that the experts are wrong.  

But it’s true, gravity is not an energy source but the fact remains that it makes things fall and this means   that the fall itself, of the object of mass, has inherent energy of a potential or kinetic kind. It is how that energy is used and the action replicated that counts. 

Whether you call gravity an energy source or not, or whether it does work or not, it isn’t depleted because it’s  always ‘working’, making things of mass weigh a certain amount, sat on the floor or falling towards it. It’s continuous and it is the ultimate and only logical answer to perpetual or continuous motion. There is no alternative.

JC   (Dum spiro spero - the motto of my family for hundreds of years)

Update for October 2020

 Decided to post this little update just to draw a line under the last blog which was getting longer and longer and looooooooooonnnnnnnnggggggeeerr.......But I love lots of comments so keep them coming!

I think some people will think I’m depressed or dejected after wubbly's sim showed me my design would fail, but far from it.  No matter how confident of success a design may seem, in ones own mind, there is always the possibility that it will fail.  You can’t build prototypes for 50 years and not meet failure on an almost weekly basis, and get used to it.  I was always good at acrostic crosswords and the harder the better, it’s no fun if it’s too easy and I think that underlies the attraction in trying to find the solution to Bessler’s wheel.

Although I have a clear idea in my mind and on paper, of the direction my build should go, I have been co opted, (is that the right word?) by my wise and wonderful better half, to remove a thirty year old fitted wardrobe and repair and repaint the wall prior to assembling a new wardrobe to take its place.  She has a list of small jobs (she said, “it’ll only take a day or two to get these done!”) to finish before I can return to my wheel.  The onus is on me to hurry it up.

My design was perhaps more complex than it needed to be so I’m keeping that in mind as I build the new wardrobe, and my mind is awhirl with new ideas as I work. 

I should thank wubbly twice over, because not only did his sim reveal my error, but it gave me fresh impetus to solve this long standing puzzle. Pun?

For several years I have believed that Bessler’s logo, often used as his signature, held a simple rough copy of the design within his wheels.  You can see it at the top of this page. 

JC