Did Johann Bessler Find Another Place to Secure His Coded information?

When Karl the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel described Bessler’s wheel as simple and expressed surprise that it hadn’t been invented before, I think that gives a misleading impression about the wheel’s construction.   Yes, it was easy to understand when you could see it in action, but without that information available to one’s eyes, even with a written description it would be difficult to get the details correct.  When you add Bessler’s disguised hints and clues it confuses what one thinks one understands or knows.

Bessler also embedded pieces of information in some of his drawings, but again these were designed to inform but also to deflect instant conclusions from their eventual true meaning.  

Thus we find ourselves with so many pieces of information which can be pulled together resulting in a mishmash of half right and half wrong constructions which fail over and over again.

But in the end we can remind ourselves that the inventor succeeded in building a gravity-enabled wheel which rotated continuously for 54 days in one test and numerous short runs over many years.  It is clear that he intended us to find the correct solution, dropping hints that the information was available to anyone with a particular interest in looking. But he made it so damned difficult, that even though we believe him and we study every word and image he left, we still can’t seem to find the solution….yet.

His primary intention should he fail to find a buyer for his machine, would seem to have been achieving acknowledgement for inventing his perpetual motion machine.  Even though he occasionally referred to it, as just that; a perpetual motion machine;  he pointed out on more than one occasion, that his machine could run continuously but may be brought to a stop for a number of different reasons; worn parts, broken parts, external influences or just that everything wears out in time.  It could run continuously but not perpetually, but per se, as if it were a PM machine.

What was in his mind when he originally placed coded information in  Gruendlicher Bericht, which was his first publication? It looks like an advertising booklet and although there is little or no sign of coding, it does contain his first published image of his wheel, and that definitely contains embedded information about the design of his wheel.  Obviously he planned to hide information in plain sight to coincide with his first certified attestation that his machine was genuine.  The first public test was witnessed and signed by several people of more than local importance

Here’s a curious fact. Bessler sent Karl a special greeting each year, on his name day, full of thanks and praise for the Landgrave, these were full of his favourite chronograms, each including the date of the document.  One curious feature was the discovery that he composed special editions dated 1519, 1619, 1719, 1819, 1919 and 2019!  Perhaps he anticipate that it would take another 300 rears or so to decipher his clues and produce a working model of his wheel?

I have never studied these documents other than in a cursory manner because I did not have my good friend Mike Senior who did all the translation for my books available, because he passed away before I obtained them.  It is obvious from studying them that Bessler spent a lot of time and effort in designing them and I’m not sure if Karl would have had the time and inclination to do more than admire Bessler’s work.  This begs the question, why did Bessler take so much trouble?

One thing is certain; every single document issued and received by Karl, was duly recorded and saved, and I think that Bessler had this in mind when he created these items addressed personally to the Landgrave.  What better way to ensure any information hidden within the documents is still available every year until now?

I plan to publish pictures of them here as soon as I can do so.  I may have to post small versions of the originals as they are a little larger than A4.  I’ll try to make them as sharp as I can to allow downloads which can be enlarged. There are in total twelve pages some containing text and other chronograms with Bible references

My purpose in this is to make them available to as many people as possible so any attempts at translating and deciphering the content can be posted here or elsewhere.  The encoding appears to include some pages of chronograms with Bible references attached and that leaves the widest possible option for codes of varying kind, for deciphering.

NB    A chronogram is a word, phrase, or sentence with specific letters that are interpreted as Roman numerals to represent a date. These inscriptions can be found in various contexts, from historical monuments and poetry to modern applications like a type of phylogenetic tree with branch lengths proportional to time. The word itself means "time writing," combining the Greek words chronos and gramma.

NB    Karl’s nameday is not a standard historical record for him. However, he was born on August 3, 1654, and his baptism date was August 17, 1654, which may be related to a name day celebration.

There are examples of Bessler’s chronograms in all three of Bessler’s published books.

JC

A Brief Reminder About Bessler’s Machinen Tractate - The Toys Page.

I think most of us are familiar with Bessler’s Maschinen Tractate (MT) and in particular the ‘Toys’ page and its curious numbering.  At the foot of the page the numbers 138, 139,140 and 141.   This totals 558. The 55 seems a popular number for Bessler, but what of the 8?  Well the three numbers in 558 total 18 and that is the basic number in the pentagram, all the angles are multiples of 18.  So that might be his intention., but later we’ll see further information about this suggestion.

MT 137 comes just before the toys page, as it should, but before that is MT 136 which contains a mechanical construction and is the last figure containing any such thing.  MT137 shows a duodecagram, which is easily identified as circles of fifths, a well-known term used in musical theory. It is believed to point to the importance of the number 5. It also reveals the reason for the choice of number MT137.

Below is the image MT137, with the number 5 linked to 12.  

On a clock face the time at 5 o’clock looks like the image below.

The angles between the hands is shown in the picture below.

Thus we see the reason for numbering MT137 as he did.  

We can also see that he also embeds the golden ratio or mean as described by Fibonacci and Plato, in the picture below. This version comes from Euclid, 300BC.

To inscribe an equilateral and equiangular pentagon in a given circle….”

It seems as though Bessler intended there to be 141 images but having hidden or destroyed many of them that  revealed the secret of his machine he was attempting to fill in the gap between his last image of a mechanical construction, MT136, and the Toys page image to total 141.  But there was more to this than meets the eye. What  other reasons might there be for choosing to accentuate the number141 ?  Why else load the last image (the “Toys” page) and add four numbers to the bottom of the page?

The only factors of 141 are 3 and 47, and I’ve shown how Bessler embedded Euclid’s 47 th proposition describing how to construct a pentagram.  So was this yet another hint.

See the image below, of the Toys page.

The items are lettered ABCDE, but C and D appear twice.  To add to the confusion there is a plainly written 5, which might match the five lettered images but doesn’t seem to as there is rough drawing of a spinning top, lacking its string pull.  Confusing?

Splitting the drawings into five parts reveals some information.  In each division in 'A', you can see, drawn vertically, two uprights surmounted by a single one.. They bear a striking resemblance to the figures labelled 'C' and 'D', which are shown horizontally.  But why two 'C' and 'D's?  I think only one hammer is needed in 'C' plus the parallel rods.  The same in 'D' but the hammer used is rotated around the other way to point outwards or to the left, because of the spirals and it also lacks arms.

So for me ‘C’ is an active part at the same time ‘D’ is passive.  ‘A’ shows ‘C’ figures connected by a single rope or cord when ‘C’ falls it pulls ‘D’ up.

The item marked 'E' is the storks-bill, lazy tongs, scissor jacks or whatever you prefer to call them.  Item '5' is a spinning top, just in case no one makes the connection that this is all about a rotating device.  Without its cord or string it can’t work, just the same the other items on the Toys page. Maybe he’s suggesting the missing string, is present in Item ‘A’?

Item ‘B’ in my opinion represents the storks bill looked at from above with the alternate blobs showing the pins holding the storks bill together.  Looking along the drawing the red lines connect two of the outer pins and two inner ones plus one more for the weight.

The top end of item ‘A’ shows the weight attached to the end of a lever.  It shows two positions; one when the storks bill is closed and shortened;  the other with the storks bill extended.

JC

Don’t Just Simulate, You’ve got to Fabricate.!

 

Looking back I see I wrote something along the lines of this post back in 2009, 2012, 2019 and 2022!  Why am I so hooked on making working models, after all a working model can be simmed and will be if one ever materialises? 

But a suggestion on the Bessler wheel forum yesterday prompted me to re-examine my model and I saw a simple but crucial error that I  might have missed on a sim.

Anthony (a newbie) has this signature “it’s not where you see the weights on the wheel that matters, its where the wheel (FEELS) the weights thats important”.  Now that is a fact I learned so long ago that I almost forgot how important it is.

Imagine you place pendulum on a wheel with its pivot just below the axle, so the weight hangs downwards.  If you rotate the wheel a few degrees clockwise, the pendulum rotates anti-clockwise relative to the wheel.  The pivot bears the weight of the pendulum and as long as the pendulum moves relative to the wheel, the weight is pulling down on the pivot.

But if you place a stop in the path of the pendulum forcing it to stop and remain motionless, the weight is no longer felt on the pivot, but rather where the weight actually is, resting against the stop. 

As soon as the pendulum is free to move again the weight is again felt at the pivot.

The error I found was a simple mistake. A supporting rod I had fitted into the mechanism was too short,  meaning the part it was supporting did not have its pivot close enough to the axle to gain a big enough advantage?  Unless you keep the fact mentioned in Antony’s signature in mind you might not even realise you’ve overlooked it.  Like I did!  

Actually I didn’t forget about it, but I was so intent on correcting what I saw as an unnecessarily long lever in a drawing, I  shortened it too much.

JC

Did Bessler’s Perpetual Motion Machine Arrive Before ItsTime?

There has been some discussion about the potential power available from Bessler’s wheel.  Comparisons have been made between the Merseburg wheel and the Kassel wheel.  The two wheels were of a similar diameter but the Kassel wheel was 18 inches thick compared with the Merseburg wheel’s 12 inches.  The Kassel wheel, which turned more slowly than its predecessor, the Merseburg wheel, was designed to complete a long endurance test, of over one month of continuous rotation, which it easily achieved.  Clearly a slower speed of rotation would withstand wear and tear to a greater degree than a faster rotation.  The design had to be modified to achieve the slower rotation speed but the machine was still able to lift similar weights to previous machines and I suggest the extra thickness of the wheel satisfied this need.

Bessler wrote that he could make wheels of greater or smaller size and with various speeds.  He went on to suggest that the useful output of the machine could be multiplied by increasing the size of the interior workings, or by making wheels of up to 20 ells in diameter, about 37 feet! In 1700, John Rowley built a tidal wheel to pump water from the Thames to the Royal family at Windsor which measured 24 foot long by 12 foot high, so Bessler’s estimate was quite possible.  An alternative number of identical wheels could be mounted on a single axle thus multiplying the power of the resulting assembly many times.

These suggestions make good sense, so deriding the potential power possible from Bessler’s wheel without considering how one might increase the output and versatility of this remarkable invention seems like “throwing the baby out with the bath water”, an old German proverb.

Bessler’s suggestion that his wheel could help pump water from water flooded mines was never developed due to the Newcomen steam engine, but increasing the power of his wheel was never examined due to the distrust built up by the maid’s false accusations.

This does raise the question, what could have his perpetual motion machine be used for?  He suggested mills, and irrigation but satisfactory alternatives were in daily use and there was little call for his invention to be brought in to test the market.  Of course electricity generation would have provided an excellent use for his machine, but he was about 300 years too early! But not now - the time is right, with global warming, pollution from fossil fuels, lack of affordable, low tech ways of generating  electricity Bessler’s wheel is needed today.

JC

Johann Bessler’s Coded Secret Information is Ignored.

I expect everyone knows I believe Bessler’s wheel had five mechanisms.  Before you move on and dismiss what I’m going to write, just hang on for a moment.  I’m satisfied with my current and long held belief for excellent reasons, the majority of which you don’t know.

Imagine you are Bessler and you have this amazing secret which you believe is worth a fortune, but you can’t tell anyone anything about it, because you want to sell it first.  You decide that you are going to publish details of the secret but hidden in such a way that no one will ever find out unless you reveal the way to decipher it.  You believe that there are three possible outcomes.

Firstly you sell the machine and it’s secret and you decipher all the ciphers and publish the coded information and the world will gradually realise how exceedingly clever you have been.

Secondly, you never find a buyer and you die with the secret intact.  But you have sold many copies of your books.  You have inserted various comments that the books contain secret information about the Perpetual Motion machine and a clever person can study the books and eventually decipher the clues and discover the secret.

Lastly, someone else discovers the same solution and publishes it.  You prove your priority by demonstrating the clues and codes published in your three books containing all the information, from years before.

It wasn’t just the money he wanted, Johann Bessler sought recognition, which is why he went to so much trouble encoding information in various ways, adding secondary codes for confirmation in many places.  He stated that he would rather die without having sold his secret, than just give it away.

To continue imagining you are seeing things as if you were Bessler; before you even go public with your invention, you have planned everything.  First you adopt a pseudonym, but it’s not just an assumed name, it’s a clever contrivance, ostensibly to disguise your real name, but actually since everyone knows your real name, it appears to be a stage name.  Simple codes were in popular use at the time, and it was very obvious that Bessler chose an easily deciphered code name, using a well known code such as the Caesar shift, to call himself Orffyreus.

Why?  Because the use of a simple code in his assumed name, plus the few words of encouragement to readers of his books to search for the encoded secret, was intended to make people like myself and others, search for the coded information and decipher it. Exactly what we have been trying to do for many years.

At the end of the day, we know that Bessler invented a way to obtain continuous rotation enabled by the force of gravity.  We know he left secret information which was designed to show us how his machine worked.  Why on earth would we ignore this wealth of clues and codes and hints and struggle onwards dismissing this treasure trove of information?

I’ll post some of the clues I’ve uncovered and deciphered in another post, most of which I haven’t shared before.

JC

Latest News about Bessler’s Wheel Reconstruction.

My version of Johann Bessler’s perpetual motion machine, his “wheel” as many people refer to it, proceeds at a snail’s pace, seemingly! But in fact it still proceeds. The main problem, apart from my procrastination, is constantly having to revise the five completed mechanisms. Yes I’m confident that there has to be five mechanisms.

I’ve said before that the mechanisms needed to be rearranged in order to stop them interacting with each other, or more often sticking during their action. There is a small amount of lateral motion which causes two pieces to bump into each other. I’ve tried bending the levers a small amount to force them away from their nearest part but that is not effective. But this lateral motion can be reduced by tightening the locking or stiff nuts holding the parts together. But tightening them reduces the ease with which they rotate about their pivots. However, including thin, rigid but wider washers has improved things.

To explain how and why this happens is difficult to do without picture, but at this point so close to the finish, I’m unwilling to use a picture, at least not until either I’ve finished or run out of options. One way to imagine it is to think of each of the assembled mechanisms as being in two or three layers, sometimes one layer operating above or below another. What I’ve been doing is swapping some layers so that, for instance the top layer has been placed below the others and this seems to have improved things.

So once again I am back at my previous point, and I have to install the ten pulleys or screw eyes, to feed the cord through so that as one weighted lever falls it lifts the another fallen weighted lever. All cords are under tension which is a vital feature to provide continuous motion.

JC

Overunity or Perpetual Motion or…..Underunity?

People sometimes suggest that Perpetual Motion (PM) is an example of Over-Unity and it seems implied that there is a difference.  But what does it mean?  Obviously the two terms are meant to refer to Bessler’s wheel, but when I google it I’m given this. 

“Over-unity refers to a hypothetical device or system that produces more energy output than its energy input, a concept that contradicts the fundamental law of conservation of energy, which states that energy cannot be created or destroyed. Claims of over-unity devices often involve hidden energy sources, misinterpretations of efficiency, or pseudoscientific explanations, leading to their widespread rejection by the scientific community. While true over-unity is considered impossible, the underlying concept reflects a desire to find new energy sources beyond conventional ones.”

So it’s obviously impossible.

Here’s another definition, “ From over- +‎ unity (the number "1”, referring to the fact that an over-unity device should produce more kinetic energy than whatever potential it receives as input. Coined to avoid patent rules that prevent impossible technologies such as perpetual motion machines being patented.”

Cunning, but it’s still wrong.  The idea that a “device should produce more kinetic energy than what ever potential it receives as input”, is obviously wrong because it still violates the conservation of  energy principle. Let’s reconsider this idea.

If Bessler’s wheel was, as he claimed it to be, a perpetual motion device and the weights it apparently contained, were enabled to fall by gravity.  I note that  Bessler referred to his machine, using the expression “per se”. There are several nuanced definitions of this phrase but the meaning my original translator opined was “like or similar to, a perpetual motion machine”; or even “as if it it were a PM”. It seems to me to imply that Bessler understood the reluctance in the scientific world to accept the possibility of a PM machine and hinted at its similarity if not the actuality.  In other words it could run continuously with no input of energy other than that supplied by gravity to the weights.

Another impossibility?  Not necessarily, because all potential configurations have not been discovered, other than by Bessler.

I asked myself two questions. Was the falling weight the initiator of the beginning of rotation? Or was it the built-in imbalance already present in the wheel? It doesn’t matter actually, because we know the wheel would begin to rotate as soon as the brake was released.  Could the wheel begin to rotate, even before a single weight fell, if so then the wheel must have been out-of-balance, regardless of where it stopped? But that would not rule out the action of a falling weight contributing to the start of rotation even after it had been brought to a halt.  Where it landed must have created an imbalance and the start or continuation of rotation.

Maybe we should reverse the over-unity idea?

Consider this.  The only energy available is that produced by either imbalanced or falling weights. That’s all there is.  Configure the device to spend less of the kinetic energy that it received as potential energy and yet still be able sustain rotation.  Therefore it would need to generate enough potential energy from the kinetic energy it receives to rotate the wheel and yet still have some left to raise one weight sufficiently to rotate the wheel a little, to reset the wheel

Bessler told us this, “ a great craftsman would be he who, as one pound falls a quarter, causes four pounds to shoot upwards four quarters.”  This is one Bessler’s more devious clues.  What Bessler sought to do was to tell us what to do but disguise it from the casual reader; however it has turned out more difficult than perhaps he anticipated.

Note that within the quote he mentions that there are five weights, one plus four, and each one is equal to one pound.  Secondly, one pound falls a quarter.  How do we define what he meant by a quarter? In this case he was referring to a clock - something he also embedded invisibly in the first drawings in both Grundlicher Bericht and Das Triumphirende - and a quarter of an hour or fifteen minutes covers 90 degrees.  But how could this single right angle fall cause “ four pounds to shoot upwards four quarters”? 

In the first  part of this riddle the word ‘quarter', referred to, not just 90 degrees but also to a clock.  In the second part the word ‘quarter' also refers to a clock but this time he has confused us by using the words ‘four quarters’. ‘Four quarter’s equals ‘one whole hour’.  Each hour on a clock is divided into 30 degrees, so the words ‘four quarters’ meaning ‘one hour’ as used here equals thirty degrees.  To paraphrase Bessler’s words, “a great craftsman would be he who, as one pound falls 90 degrees, causes each of the other four pounds to shoot upwards 30 degrees.”  

You might think the 30 degree suggestion is wrong, but it is not, he alludes, silently, to this particular piece of information in two drawings.

That still didn’t show us where the extra energy which was sufficient to shoot each of the four remaining pounds in turn, upwards 30 degrees, and why was it only 30 degrees?

I know the answer and I will share it very soon and I can tell you that I’ve never seen this exact concept suggested or tested before.  I’ve almost finished my last attempt to build Bessler’s wheel, and I should know very soon if it works or not. I’m confident that I have the correct solution, but as I’ve said before, I’m not happy with the build quality!

JC