A simple design and a parallell course?

I returned from Spain and found that there were 450 postings on Besslerwheel forum in my short absence! But here's a confession; I am so convinced that I know exactly how Bessler's wheel worked that I have kind of lost interest in other people's theories, and I couldn't face the prospect of going through all 450 postings, so I just looked at the subjects that seemed most attractive to me. I may have missed some interesting comments but it is my impression that most of the ideas which surface there have been discussed previously and more than once.

I suppose this sounds egotistical, but its just a subjective feeling and if I think I'm right then I guess I'm going to think that way. I shall continue to read most of the posts and be interested in any that appear to be closing in on my own ideas, and I'm not so conceited as to think that no one else is working on a parallel course to my own.

Now I'm back I need to concentrate on finishing my proof of principle wheel. It's not as simple as Karl seemed to think, not to build any way, although I'm sure the equivalent of a carpenter's boy today, could make it if he was allowed to study the design for a few minutes. If you can see a finished mechanical system laid bare so all its parts are visible, then I'm sure that in most cases it is easy to understand how it works, but devising the best mechanical arrangement with nothing more than the basic concept to guide you is not so easy. Where in the length of a lever is the best point to attach a pivot? How wide should the angle be that a lever moves through to gain the most mechanical advantgage? Is there a point at which the advantage gained is cancelled out by other reactions? But if all this has been worked out correctly and results in a working model, then to an observer studying the movement, it might indeed look simple and easy to copy.

I have no fear that anyone will gain any insight into my design from the above rhetorical questions, although they apply to my design I don't think that anyone will just stumble on the correct configuration from those few words - unless of course they are on that parallell course!

JC

Leave no stone unturned - or the wheel will remain unturned!

It is a strange affliction that drives us to seek the solution to a device which science tells us is impossible. This obsession has driven me to visit places I would never have otherwise gone to; visiting museums, libraries, archives of ancient books, historic sites, demonstrations of ancient machinery, and communicating with as diverse a bunch of people as it hard to imagine. I've given lectures on Bessler at a crop-circle convention, inspected ruined windmills of many kinds, attended an opera based on the life of Bessler, met people from all walks of life and from different countries, done several radio interviews, the most bizarr being one for the palace of the paranormal! I've assisted in an attempt to remotely view Bessler's wheel, allowed someone to try psychometry on a book handled by Bessler, dowsed for his hidden grave and been invited to a spiritualist church in case he had a message for me - he hadn't!

My obsession (I don't think anyone could call it just an 'interest'!) has led me down paths I doubt I would have been interested in or even become aware of without the need to find the key that unlocked the secret - the Jesuits, the Masons, the Pythagorians, the Jewish Kabbalah, Bible codes, alphanumerics, Trithemius' codes, etc etc. This journey led me to the discovery of Bessler's codes and the interpretation of many of them. I was aware that I had discovered some for which I was unable to find the key; I was also aware that I was doubtful about my own interpretations in a small number of cases, but there was one in particular that I was convinced that I had extracted everything there was to find in it.

But....I was reviewing my latest construction and comparing it with my conceptual drawing based on the coded information I had found and I had one of those too rare flashes of inspiration. I was considering an alternative interpretation because of a single tiny apparent superfluity which had bugged me for a long time and for which I had made up interpretations to explain away. As someone on Besslerwheel forum said, manipulating the facts to fit my theory instead of the other way around. So why was this extra little bit there? Once I had asked myself this question, looking at my drawing at the same time, it suddenly became clear why the extra bit was there and it was at that moment that I realised that Bessler had alluded to it several times and I had missed it.

So my wheel is complete, only it doesn't work. The reason being that everything is there except for the inclusion of the connectedness principle which I thought I understood, only I didn't get the whole picture! It is so easy to fool yourself that you think you understand something and yet there is always an element of doubt without the vital unambiguous instructions to inform you. I slipped up, but now I understand what should have been obvious to me some time ago, as it has been in front of my eyes for several years and since I have been posting my discoveries on my web sites, also in front of everyone else's.

So, I can do no more for now because I'm off to sunny Spain,. More when I get back.

JC

Wheel update

I completed the 'improved' version of my wheel and I thought I'd got it, as it began spinning of its own accord . It completed five turns before stopping and reversing a little. I found one of the mechanisms had 'overshot ' its stop and become locked. I freed it and repeated the experiment and it turned the five or six turns before it locked again. My design concept seems ok but delivery is not so hot. I'm redesigning the way the mechanisms work. They will accomplish the same end in the same way but the rotation of the mechanism allows to much lateral sway and the stops don't always capture the moving levers and stop them.

I know you haven't the faintest idea what I'm talking about but I thought I'd let you know that it still doesn't work, but I'm on the case and confidence remains high!

I've lost count of the number of times my workmanship has proved not up to the task required, but this time I took my time in assembling the parts, but sometimes less haste is difficult to maintain and I admit I rushed the final assembly and to my chagrin, the quality has been less than adequate.  Karl's comment on the simplicity of the design may give the impression that it was easy for a carpenter's boy to make, but it does not preclude the possibility of a ham-fisted mental genius cocking it up, not that I am that either - a mental genius.

If all else fails I will, in the end either publish my design or probably get help in making it, but I haven't reached that stage yet.

JC

Musings on Gravity

Trevor's comments about Besslers' wheel being a closed system got me thinking (thank you Trevor). I have posted an article at http://www.gravitywheel.com/ entitled, "Musings on Gravity". Any comments welcomed.

JC

Wheel update and Karl's comment

I'm working on the wheel again and I think (I hope) I know what was wrong with the last design and I'm reconfiguring the mechanism accordingly. I've found a way of making the correct weight rise upwards very quickly, at the right moment. This is something that is crucial in my design and also something that Bessler commented on.

There are other aspects to this design which have to be taken into account when arranging the actual range and position of the parts and this is something that Karl would have seen but almost certainly not recognised for its importance. Hence his comment that it was very simple. I have taken on board my own comments about sphexishness and tried not to make any assumptions in designing the new mechanical arrangenment, with the result that I have discovered that there is a variable which I had not appreciated before. I don't want to talk about it yet, but I will bring it up on the forum at a later date to get some feedback.

Finally to answer a couple of questions emailed to me, this rearrangement or reconfiguration of the mechanics does not mean I have abandoned the concept I have been working on, quite the opposite. The original concept is valid and unarguably the same as Bessler's, but there are variations possible within the design which improve the way it works and that is what I'm engaged on at the moment.

Regarding Karl's view of the machine's simplicity, I think someone commented similarly to my own view on the besslerwheel forum, that perhaps he had not appreciated how complex the design had to be; not complex in appearance, but requiring some very specific arrangement of the mechanism.  This I believe I know from my own work on this design and from the helpful hints given by Bessler.

I gave a small clue recently with my comment about opening windows.

JC

Wheel progress update

Doug made the point that 'A lot of scientific discoveries have been made by accident and even more thru trial and error. Did Bessler design a genuine perpetually turning wheel by trial and error, by accident, or by a dream in the night? Or did he realize the sphexishness of his efforts? Did he then design wheels that would convince everyone they were genuine, even though they weren't genuine?'

It's true that trial and error have played a part in scientific discoveries, but I think Bessler told the truth about his dream giving him the information he needed. I have had those kind of dreams as have others working in this field. But discovering the concept which may lead to the solution is usually followed by a bout of trial and error and might even involve sphexishness!

My own current construction has proven stubbornly stationary. Yesterday I finished the latest prototype and it failed miserably. However I know why and also what to do about it, so I won't be revealing anything just yet. The problem can best be explained by considering a horizontally opening window.

Imagine that it is wide open at 90 degrees from the closed position. The hardest effort to close it is at the start and then it become progressively easier to close . The same thing is happening to my mechanisms. They are slow to begin the move and then they slam into position, but too late. The solution appears to be to reduce their range of movement. It would be like only opening the window half way, to 45 degrees. Easier to close then.

This causes another problem which I also know how to solve - the range of movement of the main weight is reduced to the point of ineffectiveness. I must therefore increase the range of what I call the initiator, so that is what I shall be working on. Bessler described the weight as flying upwards and that is vital in my own design as it has to start and complete its range of movement within a fifth of a turn of the wheel itself, as there are five mechanisms.

I don't feel disheartened by this latest failure, as the end appears to be in sight.

JC

Sphexishness in Perpetual Motionists?

I'm indebted to Murilo, a regular on the besslerwheel forum, for the following link to an article about'sphexishness'.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-goldman-sphex-20110515,0,7387307.story

It got me thinking. If, in response to a familar trigger situation, we follow an internal rule or command, maybe ignoring alternative paths to follow, is this an example of 'sphexishness', if it is then I would argue that we are all, to a small degree, infected with this same set of internal rules.

From the above link, briefly, "scientists have coined a word for a certain type of behaviour named "sphexishness", after the female digger wasp, the 'sphex'. She will sting and paralyze a cricket, stash it in a hole in a tree and lay her eggs on it. When the eggs hatch, the baby wasps have fresh cricket to eat. But sphex also has an internal rule. When she brings a cricket to the opening of the hole, she always goes inside for a look around before she drags it in. If the cricket is moved a few inches away while the sphex is in the hole, she will repeat the process, bringing the cricket back to the opening and going inside for a look. As often as the cricket is moved, the wasp will repeat the behavior. Her internal rule calls for her to look in the hole before she drags the cricket inside, and that is what she will do, ad infinitum, every time the cricket is moved."

It's fun to observe sphexishness in animals. I used to have a labrador dog and it amused me that she always turned around a couple of times before settling in her basket. I was told that this was an instinctive action inherited from her forebears, related to trampling down grass to make a bed. This was an internal rule unconnected with her present circumstances but impossible for her to ignore. Even when she grew old and arthritic and barely able to walk she still managed a turn or two before collapsing into her basket. Instinctive behaviour - or inherited? What's the difference?

"The trick, of course, is to be able to recognize it in ourselves. What behaviors do we humans senselessly repeat over and over because of some unquestioned internal rule? What entirely avoidable loop of stupidity are we stuck in?"

True, we seekers of new ways of producing energy do try to envisage new approaches to the problem at each step along the path to the solution, and yet how many of us, on our individual paths, make assumptions commanded thus by some unquestioned internal rule. This rule could be based on some learned behaviour or 'fact' instilled in us from our earliest experiences - or an inherited instinct. But it's not necessarily one rule, whatever that may be, it's the trait of sphexishmess which lies behind our thought processes. To paraphrase a question from the article, What behaviors do we perpetual motionists repeat over and over because of some unquestioned internal rule? What entirely avoidable loop of stupidity are we stuck in?

We have been told that the secret of Bessler's wheel was simple, right? Right! And we know in our hearts that we cannot realistically expect to discover a new unknown law of physics which will allow Bessler's wheel to operate - well I don't anyway! And lastly we, at least, know that Bessler's wheel did actually work. So if we haven't discovered the secret of such a simple device which complies with the physical laws as we understand them - we must be being steered by sphexishness and being guided (misguided?) by some internal rule. We often use phrases such as, "think outside the box", apply lateral thinking", but these concepts still don't allow us to recognise and ignore certain rules inherent within our makeup. How do we circumvent these cast iron cognitive processes?

I think we have to take each step as if we were ignorant of the outcome of every possible configuration of mechanical parts. We must not assume anything, so all bets are off - the situation has drastically changed. Any guarantees, implications, or assumptions regarding its outcome no longer apply.(Thanks to http://www.urbandictionary.com/)

Then maybe we will find what Bessler found. In the mean time I continue to struggle to find the time to complete my own version of Bessler's wheel. If I'm right then the other method described in this blog, (also known as trial and error) will not be necessary as I think that Bessler did leave enough information behind him to build his wheel. But it's not so easy as just copying what you see in his drawings, but the clues are there.

JC