A simple mechanism? I don't think so.

I have been working on my attempted reconstruction of Bessler's wheel for several weeks, on and off, and I'm finding that the mechanism is more complex than Karls' comment about the wheel being so simple a carpenter's boy could make one, might seem to imply. I think seeing a mechanism operating as a finished item is understandable and you can copy it easily enough so you could say it was simple - but making it up as you go along with only the barest outline of how it works, coupled with an understanding of the basic principe is much harder.

Firstly I found that making and fitting the mechanisms was not too difficult. Secondly, during this process I checked and rechecked their range of movement to make sure they operated as I intended - and they did. But (you knew there was going to be a 'but'!) once you raise the wheel to the vertical position in which it will run and allow the mechanisms to take up their natural position under the influence of gravity, it's then you discover you haven't got it quite right!

The mechanism has to do a certain thing at a certain time and getting that right is the hard part - I understand why Bessler complained about his own difficulty in setting the mechanisms correctly in his two-directional wheel but that was more complex than the single-direction ones. It tells me that he was a much more highly skilled engineer than I am.

Part of the problem lies in the way the various parts of the mechanism interact with each other. In my case I have a two foot diameter backplate on which to attach the mechanisms, but they take up approximately two inches of depth - I mean that they stand out from the backplate about two inches. I have redesigned them or rather rearranged them so that one lever is now operating under another one instead of over it and this has meant that I have had to increase the height (depth) above the backplate of the weight. This does seem to have improved the action of the mechanism so I continue.

I know this is difficult to comprehend without a drawing but I think you get the picture - it's proving difficult but not impossible to complete this project and definitely taking longer than I thought it would.

One point occurred to me; Karl's reference to a carpenter's boy suggests that the mechanism was made entirely of wood other than the weights? So the levers etc would be wooden rods I presume. I always imagined that it would have steel or rather iron levers.

PS Sorry, I forgot to say why it was giving me problems. In the first place the weights were taking longer to react to their changed position than I had anticipated so they did not create the reaction soon enough. That is not hard to fix, but the other problem was that the weights were catching one of the levers as I crossed its path and that required a change of the arrangement of the mechanism as I described above. This is not a situation where the design does not work because it is wrong but because the design does not allow clean uninterrupted range of movement .

JC

Priorities, patents and publishing

The realisation hit me yesterday that I had got my priorities all wrong. How could I be sitting on the biggest discovery of my life and wasting time on other persuits, some related to Bessler's wheel and others not? Time passes at an alarming rate and it seems scarcely credible to me that I have understood the basic principle that lies behind Bessler's wheel for over a year and yet I have not yet completed a wheel that actually runs incorporating this principle.

The time has not been entirely wasted as new insights have come to me through building what I thought was what Bessler intended, however time is now the most important factor to me and I am going ahead with finishing what I started. All five mechanisms are finished and three are attached to the backplate but I ruined two of them by drilling holes in the wrong place and I am having to rebuild them because the cannibalisation of old parts which I have habitually used over the years has made some of the material I use - unusable!

Assuming that the wheel works, what then? Advice from a good and knowledgeable friend has made me rethink my decision not to patent. His argument being that I can still give the design away if I wish but at least I would retain some potential for future financial independence. That seems like sound advice but also raises its own concerns. Suppose this model works - do I announce it? Or do I say nothing and get the patent applied for? If I say nothing I will be chased by those many others also researching this subject and working on their own projects who are expecting me to say whether this model worked or did not.

If I announce it and also apply for the patent will I withstand the pressure to say nothing further until the patent process has made it safe for me to share what I know? Actually I think I have the answer now but I need to think carefully about it.

But then again, just like a hundred times before, maybe I'm fooling myself and it won't work - again!

In order to concentrate on the project I have removed much of the information I had published about the so-called code. The reaction to the publication of my speculations about Bessler's encoded information disappointed me and I realised that I have been too close to it to see it objectively. I may publish it again at a later date but I think it is best left safely filed away until I can reassess what I have written in the light of another day.

JC

www.theorffyreuscode.com

Following discussion about the pentagram which is hidden in some of Bessler's drawings, I have finally posted a web site (http://www.theorffyreuscode.com/) which details some of the pieces of code I believe I have deciphered. I'm sure that I have missed some elements of some of the pieces of code that Johann Bessler buried in his books and equally, I'm sure that other pieces will be discovered by other researchers - and some may be able to point to where I may have erred in some cases. I simply don't know at this point, so I welcome the new openess as I have been keeping to myself much that I had discovered over the last few years and wondering if others have also found stuff which they have held close to their chest as I have. Now I think that new minds brough to bear on the problem will help to increase the amount of knowledge we have about the codes.

It is plain to me that Bessler hid a large piece of information in text and that the number 55 (or 5 and 5) is the key to deciphering what he wrote. Discovering how to decipher this will, in my opinion, reveal the full details of his wheel, and allow us to reconstruct it - if I or some others who appear to be close to success, don't do it first!

As for my own reconstruction, it progresses with painful slowness because I have so many other calls on my time. I try to do something towards reconstruction each day, even if it is only for two or three minutes.

JC

There is a Pentagram in Bessler's wheel

Finally it happened! Yesterday someone published information about the presence of a pentagram on the besslerwheel forum. I had originally discovered this geometric feature some years ago and kept the information to myself, deciding to work at it slowly over the years in the hope of extracting the practical meaning of its presence in Bessler's drawing. I believe that I fully understand why it was placed there and have also discovered more information since then.

Strangely, the publishing of this information closely coincided with a decision I had already taken, to publish the same information myself - possibly as soon as this week, once I had completed my own final attempt to reconstruct Bessler's wheel. Sometimes chance seems to be guided; it must be six or seven years since I discovered the pentagram and yet yesterday the same information was published just days before I intended to publish it.

Anyway I'm glad the news is out and what other people may make of it, I don't know, but I do know that it took me years to make complete sense of it, but results may happen more quickly now that many are thinking about the meaning of it.

I really think that now a successful machine will be created, if not by me then by another member of the forum within a few months, maybe before the end of this year. They will discover that the concept which forms the basis of the operation of Bessler's wheel is closely connected with the pentagram.

JC

Reconstruction almost finished

I have made and assembled all the mechanisms required for my reconstruction and three of them are fitted and working as I intended they should. I only have to fit the remainder and see if it works.....?

I should be excited but I have been at this point so many times in the last thirty years that a working wheel would be something of a shock. Yet I have never been more certain that I have it right, so I shall approach the moment with at least some anticipation and some nervousness, but if it should fail... well that's that. I cannot spend any more time on reconstruction myself but must spread the information I have, as widely as possible and rely on my book to bring in some funds for my ensuing years.

JC

'Et In Arcadia Ego' and Bessler's wheel

OFF TOPIC

Going off at a tangent here; many who have studied the life of Johann Bessler will be aware of his portrait and its inclusion of certain objects. The vase, skull and book are usually representive, in works of art, of Memento Mori, to show the mortality of man. I was researching the history of this subject with a view to getting a feel for the times that Bessler lived in when I serendipitously made a small discovery unconnected with Bessler. It has to do with the phrase 'Et In Arcadia Ego'.

A subject that has attracted my curiosity from time to time but which had dropped from my field of focus, so-to-speak, has suddenly re-emerged. Several months ago I posted an extremely speculative theory relating to the books, 'Holy Blood, Holy Grail', 'The Da Vinci Code' and the legend of Rennes-le-Chateau and all that that entails, on an obscure web site which I use from time to time, to post ideas not necessarily related to Bessler. Imagine my surprise therefore, after several months of hearing nothing, to receive a commission from a magazine to enlarge on
the subject matter. Unfortunately I simply do not have the time nor it must be admitted, the inclination, to do further research, however if anyone is interested, they can read up on the small amount of information I have published at http://www.247website.co.uk/ and perhaps follow it up with some further research themselves. If you then wish to get in contact with the magazine in order to offer them an article on your research, you can email me at my usual address, and I will pass on your details.

The subject matter concerns the true meaning of the phrase 'Et In Arcadia Ego' used variously as a memento mori in some famous paintings. Even ignoring the dubious claims presented in many books concerning the history of the Priory Sion, the phrase itself seems to have no real provenance. I know this has nothing to do with Bessler but I originally posted the information to those forums which indulge in gossip about the legend of Rennes Le Chateau in the vague hope that it might attract additional attention to Bessler by leading them to my site. No such luck!

WHEEL RECONSTRUCTION PROJECT

Now, back to the workshop where I'm pleased to say the mechanism is finally right and working as it was intended to do. I have to make several copies, assemble them, and fit them to the backplate.

JC

Was the mechanism really so simple?

I was working on the mechanism I believe was used in Bessler's wheel, yesterday and it occurred to me that this construction was not as simple as we all believe.

The problem lies in the fact that when you see machinery working it is not always too difficult to understand how it works. You might see an animated schematic of a combustion engine working and understand how it works but few of us would even consider trying to make one. A skilled engineer with all the right equipment might be able to, though. In the same way I think that Karl, the Landgrave of Hesse, the only man allowed to see the interior of the wheel, described the wheel as being so simple a carpenter's boy could make one after studying it for a few minutes. A carpenter's apprentice would have access to all the right equipment and be able to copy what he had seen, but that does not mean it is easy to make; just easy to understand.

This is how I was justifying to myself that what I am building appears to be more difficult to construct than Karl's statement would imply. Bessler himself expressed concern that once seen, his wheel would appear to be too simple to justify the large sum of money he was asking for its secret.

I have concluded that the design is simple to understand once you see it in motion and it looks easy to make but perhaps not so easy to design well without the detail required to make it in the best way possible.

Bessler says he had a dream which revealed to him the answer; I suspect that knowing the principle and making a machine which follows the principle were two different things. Construction of the working wheel time took him many more weeks of laboured improvisation before he succeeded. I know the principle but I didn't think of it unaided and I am not as skillful as Bessler was and neither am I working as intensively as he did so things are unfolding at a much slower rate than they did with him.

In operation my design does indeed look simple, but it has not been simple to construct. Is it the right design? I don't know and I won't until I've got all of the mechanisms attached and tested. The only thing I know is that they do work according to the principle of the wheel's operation, as I understand it.

JC