Johann Bessler’s (aka Orffyreus’) Maschinen Tractate.l

The publication mentioned in the title of this post, Maschinen Tractate, was never published by Bessler but was found in his possessions after his death. I have producedca digital copy and a printed version available from the side panel of this post. It includes an English translation of Bessler’s handwritten notes, which were difficult to read, but still useful.

Bessler’s Maschinen Tractate (MT) consisted of 141 illustrations designed to lead one to the discovery of Bessler’s Perpetual Motion machine. Originally intended to provide material for his planned school for apprentices, it unfortunately lacks the final illustration depicting the solution. I called the final page, ‘The Toys Page’, because it includes a brief reference to ‘children’s games’. This final page has the numbers 138, 139, 140 and 141 added to the bottom left of the picture. The page immediately before the toys page was numbered MT137, which was the logical number for the preceding page.

There is a possible explanation for the inclusion of those numbers. Firstly 141 is only divisible by 3 and 47. Euclid’s 47th proposition shows how to construct a pentagram and I’ve shown that most his construction method can be seen in his two pictures of his Merseberg and Weissenstein wheel. 

But interestingly adding together all four numbers written at the foot of the ‘Toys’ page produces a total of 558, and 55 we know is one of Bessler’s most favourite numbers, but the 8 is not so easily explained. However adding these three numbers brings the total to 18, the key number in the pentagram. So here we have a typical Bessler move designed to make us think and seek an explanation - suggesting the pentagram again.

As I have pointed out previously MT137 contains the musical ‘circle of fifths’ diagram, a guide for musicians. It takes the form of a dodecagram, a twelve pointed star. See adjacent picture of MT137.

Some of you may be aware of the work I've published on www.theorffyreuscode.com .Three of the pages refer to the dodecagram on MT 137. I wrote that Johann David Heinichen, 1683-1729, a German musician, introduced the concept known as the ‘circles of fifths’ in 1711 (he called it Quintenzirkel). I suggested that MT 137 being similar to his quintenzirkel was designed to point to the circle of fifths, thus being another pointer to the number five.

I was drawn to this illustration, MT137 because it looked like a random addition but I knew that nothing in Bessler’s books was devoid of purpose. We know that Bessler was fascinated by the history and the relationship between numbers and letters and their hidden meanings and of course all the popular codes of the era, and it seemed to me that he had included the number quite deliberately, even if it was somewhat roughly executed. I believe that he added the Toys page later in life and replaced some of the existing pages which gave the secret of the wheel. My guess is that he also added the MT 137 at the same time.

MT 137, is the only illustration in the MT which doesn’t appear to show any mechanisms. One reason for this was, as I suggested above, to provide a hint towards the circle of fifths, but as Bessler usually included two or even three pieces of information in each of his clues I felt there could be something additional, that was invisible to me. 

I was intrigued by the possibility that the number 137 was recognised to have special properties in Bessler’s time. There are websites devoted to such things as the properties of the three main pyramids which allude to the number 137, plus the Kabbalah, numerology, Freemasons, etc. I’m inserting an interesting link about the number 137, the GOD particle.

“Leon Max Lederman is an American experimental physicist who received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1988. In his book, “The God Particle”, he writes:

“One hundred thirty-seven is the inverse of something called the fine-structure constant.”

https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-africa/hidden-message-khafre-s-pyramid-what-were-builders-trying-tell-us-008646#google_vignette

But I discovered that Bessler was hinting at the relationship between 137 and the golden angle or the golden mean, well known to the ancient Egyptians and the Greeks who called it phi, after the Greek sculptor Phideas. Phi, the golden ratio, is equal to 1.618, plus an unending succession of numbers. Plato discussed the subject at length in his Timaeus and of course there are the Leonardo Fibonacci series of numbers, and the laws of nature also dependant on the gold mean!

In geometry, the golden angle is the smaller of the two angles created by dividing the circumference of a circle according to the golden ratio, thus creating two arcs so that the ratio of the length of the smaller arc to the length of the larger is the same as the ration of the larger arc to the full circumference of the circle.

I must thank Trevor, a long time correspondent for pointing out the error in the above illustration.  360/1.618 is of course 222.5 and not 225.5.  I originally posted the illustration back in 2020, but nobody noticed then, me included. 😃

This provides two radii with angles of two particular degrees. The golden angle is 137.508. I suspect that using the number 137 for his dodecagram seemed like a good idea to the inventor, but he couldn’t name it MT 137.5, that would be too obvious. Bessler used the golden ratio routinely in his drawings and it was more commonly integrated in works of art than it is today. 

If you use two radii to divide a circle according to the golden ratio it yields sectors of approximately 137° (1.618, the golden ratio) and 222°, hence it being the numbered 137. 

To be accurate 360/1.618 = 222.5 and 360-222.5=137.5 Curiously 1/137.5 = 00727272727 etc. and 5x72=360, the basic numbers of the pentagram again.

But it is also interesting that 137.5/55 = 2.5 exactly because in his musical circle of fifths Heinichen explained that the circle of fifths gets its name from the fact that you travel across the circle from one point to another 5/12th away, or 2.5 segments away, in order to find circle of fifths. This is a way of organising pitches as a sequence of perfect fifths. 

In the above illustration the circle with its 137.5 degree angle also mimics a clock at five o’clock, which is a good pointer to the circle of fifths. But in truth with the hands showing five o’clock the angle would be 150 degrees (5x30) not 137.5. To show the angle as 137.5 with the hour hand at five, the minute hand is in fact closer to the number one on the clock, or 12.5 degrees nearer, 

Check out my web site at www.theorffyreuscode.com

JC

Update on My Bessler’s wheel.

Over the last few months I’ve received several emails and messages asking for news about my project to replicate Bessler’s wheel.  Many people in this area of research are aware of my own contribution to it but I stopped posting blogs about Bessler a few weeks ago preferring to promote my books in order to try to defray the ongoing costs of maintaining my six web sites. I intend to return to posting more details of the information I’ve recovered from Bessler’s books.  For info on my web sites see below.

http://www.free-energy.co.uk/

http://www.besslerswheel.com/

http://www.theorffyreuscode.com/

http://www.orffyreus.net/

http://www.orffyreus.org/

https://www.gravitywheel.com/

and a YouTube video I made several years ago!

https://youtu.be/5BWVKtpuzn0

___________________________________________________________________________

This is my current position concerning my efforts to build a duplicate of Johann Bessler’s perpetual motion device.  I dislike the term perpetual motion because it has such unfortunate connotations and is inaccurate - I prefer gravity-enabled continuous motion.

I know how Bessler’s wheel worked, and in fact I have known for all this year and some months last year, since I awoke one morning with the simple design open in my mind’s eye, having dreamed of it during the night.  Following the revelation I drew many pictures of it to examine the concept and immediately realised that it was correct.  In fact it was obviously the solution and I set to work designing a physical model to demonstrate it.  I decided not to publish explanatory drawings because it’s my belief that without a working model few if any will believe me and my past experience confirms this.  I think a video of an actual model working, showing the interior in motion is the best way to present a convincing explanation of the way it works.

So I’m still assembling a proof of principle model and I hope that this will help in my efforts to bring this device to the world’s attention.  In my opinion it’s a vital discovery which could offer a cheap clean alternative to the current energy sources.  You know the sources? Solar, nuclear, wind, fossil fuel, tidal and all the other multitude of expensive, wasteful, polluting methods.

So work on completing this model is made a little more difficult with my arthritic hands but not impossible.  I will continue to build and I won’t stop until I’ve proved I’m right!  I’ve never been so confident as I am now but even though I can see and understand the concept there are minor obstacles to overcome first. I know the exact concept but relative sizes of the various parts are not certain and I’m using old parts from former builds and some individual pieces maybe too small or too large but I am modifying them as I  go building them into at least one mechanism.  Then I’ll know for sure which works best.  It will be a crude model but it only has to prove the principle is  correct.

My enthusiasm to continue with this project has returned in full flood, but occasionally, there have been times when I lost some of my passion for this project to build yet another model, but even then I remained utterly convinced that Bessler told the truth. In those times I lost the energy to try yet another build without having a clear and convincing hypothesis explaining a workable concept

I know that losing some of your enthusiasm in life, losing some of the passion projects that you were once so excited about, losing your enthusiasm for your dreams - that could be disastrous. I wouldn’t say I’ve ever suffered from a lack of personal conviction that Bessler told the truth about his machine, but years of scornful dismissal can make a serious dent in your dreams and maybe you begin to think that perhaps your belief in Bessler’s perpetual motion machine was misguided or just plain wrong. Add the years of failed attempts to replicate his device and your thoughts begin to question that belief. But those years of research where I sought the truth about Bessler returned, buttressed my belief and that’s when the dream rescued me from my doubts.

So I will continue to the finish. I like to imagine the extreme delight I shall experience when I can present a working model to the world which I can prove is exactly the same as Bessler’s. How wonderful to silence all those doubters and naysayers who penned such scornful, derisory comments about me and my work.

So visit this site from time to time to check on my progress, and when I’ve finished it and it works, Bessler’s wheel will be revealed.

JC

Johann Bessler, aka Orffyreus. His Codes - What Do They Mean?

I wrote this post in July 2013 and I thought I’d repost it because it seems little has changed.

This blog is sub-titled, "A blog about Johann Bessler and the Orffyreus Code and my efforts to decipher it", so it should come as no surprise if I occasionally actually discuss the codes I've been working on.  It has always puzzled me that few people discuss my efforts at decoding Bessler's works, other than an occasional mention in passing.  I assume that it is either because the codes reveal little of interest other than continual references to pentagons and the number 5 - or the argument I put forward in explaining the codes does not convince. 

Despite the lack of anything of substance being revealed, obviously Bessler thought that anyone interested enough to find just the clues I've decoded, would seek to use the information to look for the real information so clearly hidden in all of his books.  Just because I have failed so far does not mean that someone else might not succeed and I hope that there are those out there working at the puzzle in an attempt to tease out what it was Bessler wanted us to know.

On my chief decoding site at theorffyreuscode.com I have provided brief but logical descriptions of the codes I've fathomed, and they are only the ones where the proof of their existence is irrefutable. There are others which are more speculative and I am reluctant to detail them because of that very fact; they are hard to prove.

But the real question that absorbs me is what do these many references to fives and pentagons signify? I always believed that he meant that there were five mechanisms needed, but my own experiments and his comments about having just one crossbar hardly made the wheel turn at all, implies that five is not necessary although it could be the optimum number.

Considering my findings about chapter 55 in his Apologia Poetica,  which you can read at http://www.orffyreus.net/html/chapter_55.html you can see that this part obviously contains a coded message, and the reinforcements of this message, 55 verses  etc, confirm this.  The only drawing in Apologia Poetica, the Apologia wheel as it has become known, contains a pentagram above the words, 'do you still not understand?'  Surely this book but not this drawing is the place to start looking for an answer?  

What of Das Triumphirende?  There do not appear to be any mysterious Xs, nor blanks in place of certain words - but there are drawings full of mystery and intrigue.  And even his Maschinen Tractate contains at least one pentagram... where? In number 55 of course!  Also MT137 an apparently random drawing thrown in to confuse has as its basis,  not the pentagram, but the 'circle of fifth's, well-known in musical instruction but not so well, outside the profession.  I speculated that it was the 'circle of fifths', because that particular invention is attributed to Johann David Heinichen, who coincidentally lived in the same village as Bessler did, at the same time, when he (Heinichen) was an aspiring musician, composer and teacher, and Bessler was making church organs for the same people.  The circle of fifths is built up from a simple circle within a square and the resulting points are connected at every fifth point producing the dodecagram familar to both MT readers and musicians.

So here are all the firmly decoded clues available for all since at least 2009 and yet barely a single comment about any of it.  What puzzles me further is that  there are people still trying to build wheels based on the Apologia wheel which I've demonstrated is no such thing but merely a pointer to a pentagram.  

Others ask questions which they could easily find the answer to, if they only look, or they make  assumptions  based on inaccurate information which leads to utterly erroneous conclusions because they did not take the trouble to study the information both here and on the besslerwheel forums.

PS Since I wrote this particular post more than ten years ago I have made a lot of progress in deciphering Bessler’s many clues and I now know exactly how Bessler’s wheel worked.  I’m building a proof of principle wheel which I hope to finish before my 80th birthday, early next year. 

JC

Johann Bessler’s Use of the 24 and 26 Letter Alphabet

In Germany and elsewhere in Bessler’s day it was customary to use a 24 letter alphabet and it has always been assumed that Bessler too, stuck to that tradition, but there is evidence that he used both forms of the alphabet.

It is clear that he was familiar with an old Hebrew albam code as this was self evident in the way he obtained his pseudonym, Orffyreus.  This system was also used extensively throughout history and was also known as the Caesar shift, and in modern times ROT13. ROT13 is a simple letter substitution cipher that replaces a letter with the 13th letter after it.

The image below demonstrates how BESSLER became ORFFYRE, which he then Latinised to become ORFFYREUS as was customary in his day.

In the above image matching alphabetic substitution letters share similar colours. Notice that the 24 letter alphabet includes two alternative letters I or J, and U or V.  But you have to work on the assumption that the two alternatives pairs of letter each have to remain in their number position as above.  If you use a 26 letter alphabet you get the pseudonym ORFFLRE instead of  ORFFYRE. This appears to confirm that Bessler used the 24 letter alphabet.

But at the same time that he adopted the pseudonym ORFFYREUS, Bessler added two more forenames to his Christened names.  He was born Elias Bessler, but added Johann Ernst to the former ones. So his new initials went from EB to JEEB.  Why?

Taking into consideration his use of the Caesar shift for his new name, when applied to JEE reveals itself as WRR, whether you use 24 or 26 letter alphabets. To explain this further we need to examine another code system.

In addition to alphabetic substitution Bessler also used alphanumeric substitution where each letter is replaced with its corresponding position in the alphabet.  For example A=1, B=2, C=3 etc.  in this case JEE becomes 9/10, 5,5.  WRR becomes 21, 17, 17.

In his first illustration in his book DAS TRIUMPHIRENDE (DT),  which shows an image of his wheel, Bessler, numbered all the parts from 1 to 24. This seems to confirm a 24 letter alphabet, at first sight.  Further examination of the image reveals the twelve hours of a clock with the eight o’clock line labelled with two 8s.  The labelling seems over generous leading to the suspicion that a specific number is sought.  Adding them together gives the total of 660.  When 660 is divided by the twelve hours of the clock, the number 55 appears.

This number is repeatedly indicated by Bessler and of course we just met it for the first time when we looked at the alphanumerical JEEB.  The two Es are the fifth letter in the alphabet, but what is the relevance?

I searched for the meaning of the number 5 and 55 within his books and this led to the discovery of some pentagrams hidden within some of Bessler’s illustrations.  The reason we can be sure of these conclusions and future ones is because Bessler always provided two or three ways of getting to the same solution through different ciphers, codes and clues. The number 5 is embedded in numerous places, too many to list here, but clearly it was important to him to make us aware of it.

I’ll leave the significance of the pentagrams for now, my aim in this post is to show why I think Bessler used both 24 and 26 letter alphabets.

There are four illustrations included in DT, we saw that the first one included a hidden clock face, the next one shows the wheel attached to an Archimedes pump, see below.  This illustration is also over labelled.  The letters when converted to numerals and added together total 324.  The number of letters actually used is 18 as we shall see in a moment and 324 divided by 18 equals 18, the basic pentagonal number.  Every angle in the pentagram is either 18 or a multiple thereof. 

But there is a curious feature used within the above image.  There are three letters which appear to be ‘W’s but could also be 10’s - and in fact in the list which accompanies the image they are listed as ‘10’s which is strange because all the other labels are alphabetical. The letter ‘J’ is omitted and the letter ‘T’ is the last letter used and therefore U and V are absent leaving just the W/10.  In the above picture I red ringed the W/10s. Why would he appear to use the letter W to blend in with the other letters when he meant the number 10?  Why not use the letter J if he meant 10 anyway?

The number of letters used is 17 and T is the last letter used and is the 20th letter, but you can add the W and get the 18 you need. So yes, 324 divided by 18 gives 18.

 

Bessler omitted the U and V, by stopping at T.  And by the including the letter ‘I,’ as the 9th letter he reached 17 letters.  If he had included the J to get it to 18, it would have appeared to be the alternative letter to ‘I’, therefore not part of the count of all the letters used.  By calling the ‘W’ by the number 10, it enabled him to reach his desired total of 324, but also by making it appear as a W’ he could add it to reach his desired 18.

You would be forgiven for thinking this is far too complicated and fanciful but I can assure you that this method of providing clues to the importance of the pentagram and its associated numbers is repeated in each of his illustrations as I can prove.

Bessler was telling us that he used both alphabets sometimes and there is one excellent reason why he did this.

Remember his use of the Caesar shift for his new name, when applied to JEE reveals itself as WRR, whether you use 24 or 26 letter alphabets. Remember that in addition to alphabetic substitution Bessler also used alphanumeric substitution where each letter is replaced with its corresponding position in the alphabet.  For example A=1, B=2, C=3 etc.  in this case JEE becomes 9/10, 5,5.  WRR becomes 21, 17, 17.

If we change to the 26 letter alphabet a familiar piece of information is revealed JEE becomes 10, 5, 5, and WRR becomes 23, 18, 18. Why is this important? Due to Bessler’s insistence on the importance of the pentagram and the number 5 and its associated number 18, we must assume that his intention was to draw our attention to it.  

It’s not easy to see but a careful study of the logo at the top of this page shows the ‘O’ of Orffyreus which also represents his wheel is supported on either side by the letter ‘R’ which means that the number 18, or the pentagram supports the wheel.  Notice also that the wording works in either direction just as his wheels did. RATH on the left side is written backwards.  It reads ‘RATH ORFFYRE’, Councillor Orffyre, his title when under the patronage of Karl, the Landgrave of Hesse Kassel.

Summary

At first sight there are most of the letters of the 24 letter alphabet present except both U and V are missing and J is also missing, although it’s atbash version is there masquerading as a ‘W’, but representing the number 10.  ‘i,’ is also present, representing the number 9.

In my opinion Bessler was telling us that he used both versions of the alphanumeric alphabet as well as the atbash cipher.

He used the name Johann to gain the J, this gave him the atbash version ‘W’.  Why was this significant?  He used the double V or interlocking Vs, to give in Roman numerals (which he also used frequently) two 5’s again.  There are other reasons which I won’t go into now for the need to show the letter W.

Of course he could have used the letter ‘I’, and used for example Ivan for his first name, but he needed the W and both ‘I’ and ‘J’ link to ‘W’, but in the 26 letter alphabet it is J that is the alphanumeric version which is needed, not I.

The letter R mimics part of the action in his wheel, as does the letter W. The ‘W’ as double ‘V’ represents the so-called ‘cross-bar’  but actually means the ‘cross’ or scissors mechanism.

Just to be clear there were five mechanisms in the early wheels.  Each mechanism had one weighted lever.  Each weighted lever worked with an adjacent weighted lever. Hence the obsession with the number FIVE, the pentagram, and its various angles all multiples of 18.

PS All of the above information has been posted in my blog over the last ten years but little notice is taken because almost everyone dismisses the idea that there were five mechanism required.  The reason for five mechanisms is simple.  With Bessler’s particular configuration he could get five mechanisms in the wheel which ensured a smooth rotation with no hesitation in each action.

JC