Apophenia versus Creativity.

Recently an anonymous commenter used the word 'apophenia', and I had to look it up to learn its meaning.  Thank you for that anon, I am always pleased to learn a new word and 'apophenia' is an excellent example.

'Apophenia' describes the phenomenon of the perception of patterns, meanings, or connections where none exists. It’s like looking at a Rorschach ink blot and telling the analyst what you see.

In the world of statistical analysis, apophenia is known as a "Type 1 error". This is often called the “false positive” and happens when data is interpreted as confirming a hypothesis when in fact it does not. It’s effectively when you see a pattern where there isn’t one.  

The human brain constantly searches for patterns; it's a learned behaviour which developed in response to danger. Patterns are recognised as established order, and breaks in patterns suggest danger.  So although we say we seek patterns what we really do is watch out for breaks in established patterns but the result is the same - we monitor patterns constantly.

We Besslerites are convinced that Johann was genuine, despite what we have been taught and we therefore seek to confirm our belief by reproducing his wheel, not just for that reason but for the benefit of mankind, as we see it. But, as someone put it recently, when you think you might have solved the problem, "the chances are that you are having an apophenic experience and you need to remember to clean your cognitive glasses in a little reality solution."  This sounds rather depressing but actually it isn't.  Looking for the solution involves much trial and error and therefore apophenia is a necessary part of the process.  

We all have our pet theories and each is different to the rest, and we have no way of knowing, so far, if any of them are right, but we seek to prove them by building or simulating the finished wheel, according to whatever hypothesis we are committed to.

Searching for the solution to Bessler's wheel is a bit like connecting the dots to make a recognisable picture.  Sometimes the dots don'tproduce the picture we want.  But have faith, according to Karl Brugger, "The propensity to see connections between seemingly unrelated objects or ideas most closely links psychosis to creativity ... apophenia and creativity may even be seen as two sides of the same coin."  So be creative and let the reality check take care of itself and if the result is attributable to apophenia keep looking for that break in the pattern.

JC

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Update - Frustration leads to innovation!

My wheel project is stationary at the moment for reasons I have explained previously, but things are gradually improving. Unfortunately I am still restricted by lack of space, however this has forced me to concentrate on the most basic requirements for solving this enduring puzzle.  I have built a simple test rig to try to solve the problem currently occupying my mind; how to make the weight fly upwards at the critical moment.

The pictures below give some idea of my working environment!  I'm sharing space with my son-in-law's two bikes, his cross-trainer, his complete tool chest for maintaining his bikes, a fridge-freezer, dishwasher etc etc.  Now they are formally in residence we are trying to make more room, but for now I must just bite the bullet.

I used to have the run of the whole workshop but hopefully things will return to normal at some point earl;y next year!  All my tools and equipment have been crammed into a small corner on the right in the above picture, to allow for the removal of the bikes from time to time.  I can barely turn around in the space left, but I will keep at it because I need the buzz I get from building new mechanisms and testing them to see how they work. 

I had been working with the whole wheel and all its five mechanisms but it is pointless to keep everything in a state of flux when all I need to know is how to get one mechanism to act the way I wish it to.  My test rig is just a simple two foot square of MDF which is painted white and has the critical angles marked out on it.  Certain angles, although apparently necessary to the succesful mechanism have to be omitted from the range of movement for reasons which are clear once you know how the whole thing is meant to work, and they are painted yellow and the critical one to abide by are in red, the rest is as I say, white.  I'm finding this detail  helpful in keeping the design within the limits of my self-imposed strictures which I believe apply to a successful mechanism.

At the moment I'm transferring some parts of the mechanism from the wheel to the test rig and then at every opportunity I return to it and continue my research. I'm certain that once I have achieved the reaction I am looking for I won't need to build the wheel to prove my point because it relates to something I have referred to from time to time and which is secreted in the string of letters I always include after my posts....but of course I will build it!

PS. I know the test rig isn't really an innovation, I just liked the ring of the title!

JC

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The Mystery of the 684 X's in Apologia Poetica

Occasionally I've commented on Bessler's graphic codes, but have generally said little about the non-graphic ones.  But as the subject of the infamous x's scattered throughout Apologia Poetica, came up recently on Besslerwheel forum, I thought I'd update people on my own efforts to extract meaning from them.  I know this is not as interesting as discussing possble mechanical arrangements but there are many people who are still bent on deciphering what Bessler's secret message said.

The mysterious inclusion of 684 x’s scattered in an apparently random fashion at the ends of many of the 7000 plus lines of poetry which compose the Apologia Poetica, has been the subject of some debate.  In fact these x’s are actually abbreviations for the phrase et cetera, and one might think that that is a satisfactory explanation for their presence, but 684 seems an excessive use of the Latin expression and their numbers are reduced to a normal amount, less than ten, in his subsequent book, Das Triumphirende.  The presence of 28 &c's in addition to the et ceteras used, would seem to make the necessity of using the Latin abbreviation redundant, anyway.

The presence of so many et ceteras and the various hints at the existence of a hidden message within the Apologia Poetica lead one inevitably to question the large number of these abbreviations.  In some cases there are as many as seven consecutive lines each ending in the Latin expression.

There are 397 et ceteras in part one of Apologia Poetica, and 287 in part two, totalling 684.  I have omitted the  &c's and the many NB’s and NB’s because I am uncertain about their relevance to a secret message.  But just for the record there are 9 + 19 = 28  &c’s, and 20 + 176 = 196 NB’s. Anyway in preparation for devising his code, Bessler must have written his text and then looked for a way to hide it within his existing work.  I assumed that he then circled or underlined the letters or words he sought for his text and then used some method to identify the line containing that letter or word.  I suggest that he marked this line by placing the et cetera sign at the end of it. There is no mileage, in my opinion, in trying to read something in the positioniong of these abbreviations, either from the front or the back of the page; their positioning is too similar to each other for any one to detect any subtle differences.

The next step was to leave some means of guiding us to the correct letter or word on that line. I tried various ways of identifying a letter or word, but came to the conclusion that a letter was too time consuming and as he had a plethora of suitable words to pick from, why make his job more difficult if he could use full words and still hide them.  If one assumes an average of five letters per word then from a total of 684 ‘et ceteras’, he had about 137 words to complete his secret message, whereas if each et cetera indicated a whole word he would have potentially 684!  I suspect the answer lies somewhere between those two figures.

The method he used to hide his words had to be very strong.  This becomes even more obvious when you consider such passages as this one on page 27 of the Apologia Poetica, which has no fewer than six consecutive lines with the et cetera 'X' at the end.

If each lines contained a word from his text in the order in which it naturally ocurred, it would not take long to find the identifier and hence the whole coded message could be read. And that is not the only page containing six or more consecutive lines with  et ceteras at their ends.  An additional clue may be found in the presence of double et ceteras which appear in part two of Apologia Poetica. Here are a couple below:-

Note the second one is positioned just after two blanks.  The missing word is ‘Schelmen’ meaning ‘rogue’ or ‘rascall’.  For further information on the use of the blanks visit my web site at www.theorffyreuscode.com

I then wondered if the meaning and even the position of the et ceteras themselves were irrelevant.  Maybe the secret lay in the number of them per page.  If there was just one et cetera on a page, maybe that meant 'line one' held the missing word.  As a check I looked at the title page which has one et cetera on it and assumed ‘one’ et cetera meant line ‘one’.  The first word is ORFFYREI  which looks promising, but then it all goes wrong again.  In the subsequent page with et ceteras on it, nothing else supports this idea.  I tried various alternatives such as counting lines from the top on odd pages and from the bottom on even ones, but no dice.

But consider this, if each page which has one or more et ceteras on it, is meant to hide one complete word, there are potentially 226 words.  That is the number of pages which have et ceteras on them.  I feel that this way lies the solution.  It is too tempting to be drawn into considering the line with the et cetera on it rather than just counting how may X's there are and using that number to find the word.

One more thing might be worth taking into account.  The whole book is written in rhyming couplets except for part of Chapter 55, which I have discussed at www.orffyreus.net - maybe there is some way to assign the number of et ceteras to a couplet?

Good luck to those who are persuing this line of enquiry, and I know there are several, from my email correspondence.

JC

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I was contacted recently by a English journalist, Eve Pearce, who offered to write some content for my websites. I thought it was a good idea but as I am so busy at the moment, I had decided to leave my websites as they are for the time being,  so I offered her a guest spot on my blog to see what comments an 'outsider' would generate. I use the word, 'outsider', not in any pejorative sense, indeed I was delighted with her article, but in the sense that she is not part of our somewhat closed community and she can provide a fresh viewpoint to our research.

Her website is at  http://www.andalemono.com/  and here are some samples of her other work:-

http://www.antarcticconnection.com/blogs/Fiennes/

http://www.greenweddingconsortium.com/green-weddings/how-big-is-your-weddings-carbon-footprint/

http://www.oyetimes.com/lifestyle/homes/29907-is-the-canadian-housing-bubble-about-to

Her article follws:-

Perpetual Motion Machines in Use Today

Critics of Bessler´s Wheel would argue that perpetual motion in such instance would be impossible as it contravenes both the first and second law of thermodynamics; while energy is conserved, the energy of a closed system changes due to the transfer of heat and work between it and its environment and secondly isolated systems move towards thermal equilibrium, where entropy is at its greatest, so thermal energy is unable to be transferred for work. However, while they use their theories as evidence, they forget about the best evidence that we could possibly have for perpetual motion machines - those that are in use around the world today. A number of devices have already been invented that allow us to harness the motion in the environment that can go on indefinitely without any further human input; after all everything everywhere is moving - the Earth, its rivers and seas and the very atoms that everything on the planet is made up from. While the Cox Clock - which uses changes in barometric pressure to keep on running - may only be a relic in a museum, we consider another three devices that are examples of perpetual motion machines and are in use today.

 Atmos clock

 This clock produced in Switzerland by Jaeger-LeCoultre is mechanical, but does not need to be wound. Instead it obtains the energy that it requires to run from changes in temperature and atmospheric pressure in its surrounding environment. The clock contains a mixture of ethyl chloride gas and liquid in an airtight capsule. With a rise in temperature and pressure the mixture expands into a chamber, causing a spring to be compressed; the converse occurs when the temperature or pressure falls. The temperature only needs to change by a very achievable 1C or the pressure by 3mmHg every two days for the clock to continue running. The clock is however helped by an internal environment that is almost friction-free and a torsion pendulum that uses less energy than a standard pendulum would.

 Tidal power generator

 Our high energy usage in our homes and businesses requires the use of vast amounts of gas and electricity. Consequently there has been much development in the renewable energy sector in recent decades, one area of which has been tidal power; the energy from the movement of tides is converted into electricity. Tidal forces are the consequence of changes in gravitational attraction exerted by the Moon as it orbits the Earth; in short its attraction to the seas causes their level to rise and water from the middle of the seas is forced towards the shore. Tides occur consistently as the moon has an unchanging orbit around our planet; this makes tidal power more reliable than sources such as solar or wind power, which can fluctuate significantly. Tidal power can be generated through use of a tidal stream generator, which uses the energy of moving water to drive turbines and then generators. Alternatively a tidal barrage uses the difference between the height of a high and low tide; a dam is used to hold back the water at high tide, allowing its energy to build up, and when released at low tide the energy is used to drive turbines.  There is also potential for the use of dynamic tidal power, which could use the interaction between the kinetic and potential energy in a tide.

 Geothermal power generator

 This renewable energy source relies on the energy released when matter is condensed by gravity. Geothermal power plants use the steam produced by geothermal sources to generate electricity. In dry steam power plants - the original method to harness geothermal energy - the hydrothermal fluids are largely steam, which drives a turbine directly; the knock on effect of which is to drive generators and produce electricity. Flash steam power plants are what are most commonly found today; high temperature fluid is pumped under pressure into a tank at surface level, where it is held at a lower pressure, causing some of the fluid to vaporize, which drives the turbines. In a binary cycle power plant the geothermal water or steam is never in contact with the turbines; instead the geothermal fluid passes with a cooler fluid through a heat exchanger, with the transfer of heat causing the second fluid to evaporate and then drive turbines and a generator Having considered these three devices that are driven by nature, could Bessler's Wheel have worked in a similar way through interaction with its surroundings? This theory was pondered by the mathematician Jean Bernoulli, who proposed that the motion seen in nature could support perpetual motion; rather than labelling machines such as Bessler's Wheel as working under artificial perpetual motion, they could move under combined perpetual motion with the help of nature.

Update on my reconstruction of Johann Bessler's Wheel.

Although I am unable to do any work on my wheel currently, I thought I'd update you on the situation as it is.  I'm still working with five mechanisms for reasons I have explained on my web site at http://www.besslerswheel.com/

You will also see that I am committed to the parametric oscillation theory in which a weight passes downwards in an outer position, relative to the axle, and then at six o'clock flies upwards in just the same way that a 'kiiking ' rider straightens his legs at that point in order to raise his centre of gravity towards the axle.

I am currently striving to get the weights to operate in the way Bessler described, shooting upwards at that point.  I completely understand why they must perform this part quickly and I can make each one ascend gently, but not actually shoot upwards and the result is that the lift is a too late.  

The idea is that once the wheel has completed a fifth of a turn, the next mechanisms acts in the same way to continue the rotation, however without a quick lift, the next mechanism doesn't arrive at the position in which it has to rise!  I believe I know how to improve the speed of the lift and make it shoot upwards and once I've constructed it and proved to myself that that part of the mechanism works, I should in theory be able to move on to the next bit which is constructing a fully working wheel.

The chief problem I have encountered over the last couple of years is getting the mechanism adjusted correctly.  I know that is an excuse everyone uses, but in truth, copying a working wheel might have seemed easy to Karl, who suggested it was so simple a carpenter's boy could make one if he was allowed to st udy it for a short while, but trying to get it right from scratch with nothing to guide you except some misleading clues is another matter.  In my case I have had to fall back on trial and error and it is a lengthy process but I remain confident that I shall get there eventually.  As before, once I know imy work is not going to result in a working model, I will release all my designs for public consumption.

By the way, the delay in wheel work is due to members of my family moving in to our house for a few months, but hopefully once the move is completed in the next couple of weeks, I can get back to work on my wheel.

JC

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The law of energy conservation proves that a single weight can't drive a gravitywheel.

Time to turn my thoughts to gravity again. Today's blog is a two parter but each is connected with the other.

Firstly, some say that Bessler never used the word 'gravity' in his writings, therefore he did not ascribe his energy source to gravity.  But the reason for its non-appearance is because he used such words as 'preponderance' and 'weight' instead.  Preponderance simply means 'a superiority in weight', in other words, heavier than something else.  

The apparently missing word, 'gravity', comes from the Latin word, 'gravitas'.  In Newton's time, Latin was the language used by the learned, and books on academic and scientific subjects were written in Latin so that they could be read by people in all the European countries regardless of the reader's native language.  Newton's use of the word, 'Gravitas', meant 'heaviness' or 'weight'.  But he suggested that 'weight' should no longer be regarded as simply a property possessed by a 'heavy body', but that a body that seems to be heavy is being attracted by another body with mass, in this case, the earth.  Thus the force of gravity was born.

The word for gravity in German today is 'Schwerkraft' but that did not come into common use for many years after Bessler's death.  So just because the particular word 'gravity' isn't there doesn't mean that Bessler wasn't referring to it in his writings and the circumstantial evidence is clear enough that that is what he meant.  If he could do it, then it can be done

Secondly, we've been taught that gravity is a conservative force and therefore it cannot be used as a source of energy.  I have repeatedly pointed out that the forces of wind and water are also conservative forces and they provide excellent sources of energy.  You can't have it both ways; either a conservative force cannot be used as an energy source.... or it can! 

In relation to our research, the law of conservation of energy only defines what happens for a single weight mounted on a wheel and driving a gravity-enabled wheel.  Picture Bessler's horizontal windmill, the one he was building at the time of his death; the wind acted on both sides of the vertical axle and with a number of sails or scoops, it was designed to rotate in the wind. if there had been just one sail or vane or scoop, it  would have made half a turn and stopped - it needed several of them to work with each side on either scooping up the wind or deflecting it, to make a full rotation.  

The same goes for an overshot water wheel for example.  If it had just one bucket it would stop after half a turn.  It needs a succession of buckets to make a full and continuous rotation. 

A Savonius windmill still requires a miniumum of two blades or scoops to allow it to rotate and there are designs using three or more blades.  My point is that even though gravity is a conservative force that does not rule it out as an energy source - as long as there are sufficient weights in complementary action.  

None of the above wind or water driven designs will work with just one blade, unless of course, as in the case of the former one, it is designed to operate face-on to the wind. The different designs mean that the wind and water wheels use surface-changes to their vanes, scoops or sails to interact with their relevant forces to gain mechanical advantage, whereas gravity-enabled wheels use position-changes of their weights to interact with gravity for a mechanical advantage.  

Horizontal windmills, or Savonius windmills present a larger surface area on one side of their axles than the other, which gives one side more leverage and makes them turn.  It's just the same with gravitywheels, they present the weight on one side further from the axle which gives one side more leverage and makes them turn

The whole argument against gravitywheels is based on the calculation of one weight operating the wheel and not several.

I've said all this before, on my other web sites and on the forum but I will repeat it and repeat it until someone listens and makes the required paradigm shift.

JC

Johann Bessler's graphic clues to the mechanisms in the Orffyreus wheel.

Someone grumbled that I haven't posted any interesting clues lately, well I can't give out any hard and fast clues yet, but here are some pointers to how I interpreted some perceived clues and got their meaning 

As I've said before, the most useful of Bessler's clues are those which show the actual mechanism.  They are contained in a few illustrations. That being so, how come no-one has been able to build a working model based on those clues?  The answer is, because Bessler deliberately confused the simple interpretation of the drawings by omitting some features, adding unecessary pieces and moving others into the wrong position, and pointing out what he had done, in other drawings.  

One particular example can be interpreted by re-orientating the drawing to the position in which the mechanism would naturally respond to gravity.  If you study the drawing, one part of the mechanism is semi-detached, and consequently by re-orientating the drawing, and allowing gravity to act as if it was a real mechanism and not just an illustration, thus changing the position, the item then shows itself in its correct position.  Reversing the orientation of the drawing again does not mean that the item discussed should return to its former position as this would then be incorrect for the functioning of the mechanism.

It is this kind of encoding that permeates Bessler's clues and requires a certain amount of lateral thinking.

One drawing is, as I have mentioned before, not showing the wheel in its true dimensions, but this advice was dismissed as wrong or irrelevant, which is of course the reader's prerogative.

Another one shows the two positions of the mechanism and how they vary in their connections with other parts of the same mechanism, during their range of movement - the connectedness principle.

Yet another drawing provides corrective information about a particular item in a different drawing and this can be established with a fair degree of certainty once you know what to look for.

There is one drawing which also hides the principle which I have described, but encoded, at the end of each post on this blog. I even described the clue on my website, www.theorffyreuscode.com, although I did not understand what it meant at the time. I stumbled on the principle by chance and then had it confirmed by the clue in question. This principle is the one which Bessler says he found where everyone else looked.  It is the one thing you need in order to build Bessler's wheel.

I can't put it better than Bessler did, "no illustration by itself contains a description of the motion; however, taking various illustrations together and combining them with a discerning mind, it will indeed be possible to look for a movement and, finally to find one in them."

I apologise if people do not find this helpful, but I wish to retain what I know for my own build.  Of course I might be completely wrong and I wouldn't want to lead anyone else up the wrong path.  There is much more to be learned from Bessler's drawings and they would not have been so carefully drawn and included for our consumption unless they were there to aid reconstruction, but, to the casual eye, they offer nothing of use to anyone seeking the answer. 

JC

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A sawmill such as Bessler's wheel would have powered.

Bessler probably acquired his timber from a sawmill and yesterday I came across this amazing saw mill built in 1673 at the Willermershof farmstead in Schwarzenbach, this 'Knocking' Saw was in use until 1963 when it was moved to Vogtsbauernhof in south-eastern Germany. 

You can see from the video that it is driven by a waterwheel which uses precisely the same 'three tusked cams', or lifting arms, fixed with tenons, that are evident in one of Bessler's drawings.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0teYGke_Lc

From the above video, "farmsteads operated their own saws when the property had a considerable amount of forest area. They cut their own timber for private use as well as to sell commercially. Contracting the saws out to other farmers was also an additional source of income. There was a widespread use of 'knocking' saws in the Black Forest starting in the 16th century. The technique originated in the 13th century.

The 'knocking' saws is driven by a middle-shot water wheel. This turns a shaft axis that has three tusked cams, or lifting arms, fixed with tenons. When rotated, these cams knock against the overhead saw frame, thereby lifting it. With each turn of the water wheel, the saw frame is hit upwards three times. 

This hitting motion creates a knocking sound that can be heard from quite a distance away. When the frame has reached its highest point, it drops down suddenly. Upon falling, the saw blade cuts the trunk. The trunk is fastened down to a sled. By dropping, the saw frame sets a mechanism into motion shoving the sled towards the blade of the saw.

Trunks measuring up to 20 ft in length could be cut. Sawing a 20 ft board or plank takes about 45 minutes. Generally, boards and planks of a thickness from 3/4 to 3" were cut. Squared timber, such as used to build houses, had to be clouted with an ax. Boards and planks were needed to build houses, furniture, and wagons."

Boards of 3/4 of an inch  still sound a little on the thick side for Besslers' wheel but I guess they could be trimmed down some more - or even sliced in half.  Teuber described the Merseburg wheel as being covered by thin deals which I presume would have been thinner than 3/4 of an inch

It seems clear that a similar mechanical arrangement could have powered other kinds of mills.

NB More clues to come in next post.

JC

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Petrol from Air!

This morning's news reveals that a British company is making petrol from fresh air!  There are a number of articles about it, for instance this one http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/fuel/9619269/British-engineers-produce-amazing-petrol-from-air-technology.html

'The “petrol from air” technology involves taking sodium hydroxide and mixing it with carbon dioxide before "electrolysing" the sodium carbonate that it produces to form pure carbon dioxide.

Hydrogen is then produced by electrolysing water vapour captured with a dehumidifier. The company, Air Fuel Syndication, then uses the carbon dioxide and hydrogen to produce methanol which in turn is passed through a gasoline fuel reactor, creating petrol.

Company officials say they had produced five litres of petrol in less than three months from a small refinery in Stockton-on-Tees, Teesside.

The fuel that is produced can be used in any regular petrol tank and, if renewable energy is used to provide the electricity it could become “completely carbon neutral”.

The £1.1m project, in development for the past two years, is being funded by a group of unnamed philanthropists who believe the technology could prove to be a lucrative way of creating renewable energy.'

At first sight this looks as though it might spell doom for Bessler's wheel, however, the process has to be a viable commercial operation to succeed and to produce just 5 litres in 2 months does not seem too awe inspiring, but then this is just a test facility and something much larger looms on the horizon.

Can they produce petrol at a better rate than the current rate for a barrel of oil (42 US gallons and about 35 UK gallons) which is currently between $92 and $112 per barrel?  Possibly, but the governments will still tax it to death.  Of course the same goes for Bessler's wheel but it is the greener option, despite the claims that this new process is greener than anything so far produced.  The carbon-neutral aspect of it could be supplied by Bessler's wheel and an electricity generator.

We must await developments meanwhile, on with the build!

JC