Why Bessler smashed his wheel to pieces.

I was asked recently why Johann Bessler was reported as having smashed each of his wheels, before leaving a town.  Bessler  said, for example, at Gera, "Soon I was being plagued by crowds of Sunday visitors, some of whom were fairly rough and boisterous, and I couldn't even eat in peace. I made a firm resolve that as long as I was in control of matters, no wheel would ever turn an inch on Sunday. Certain enemies of mine got to hear of this, and began to congregate outside in ever-greater numbers, shouting and jeering. It got so bad that finally, in a rage, I smashed the machine into a thousand pieces, and vowed to seek peace and quiet elsewhere".

And then at his next chosen venue, "somehow it all went wrong, and finally having to leave Draschwitz, I smashed my wheel to pieces".

Finally, in a scientific publication, Neue Zeitungen von Gelehrten Sachen, which was published by the Mencke family in Leipzig, in the April issue of 1722, page 344 it said, "In Kassel, Mr Orffyreus, who is Commercial Councillor to His Highness the Landgrave, has destroyed his Perpetuum Mobile that, prior to this, stood at the Landgrave's Castle of Weissenstein. He did this after he had suffered a serious illness, and after he had received a house in Karlshafen."

But it wasn't just Bessler's words, one of the Zeitz Councillors, Johann Zollman, wrote in a letter to Leibniz, "even in his anger he should not have destroyed his machine but should rather have dismounted and dis-assembled it."

This is a fair point and  I have previopusly suggested  that it was simply easier and safer to transport the wheel in pieces rather than trying to move it whole, because robbers might be tempted to try to steal it.

But this does not explain the words "smashed into a thousand pieces" - I thought at first that this was due to Bessler's sense of drama, included to show how thoroughly angry and upset he was at his treament by the crowds.  However on subsequent consideration I realise why he destroyed each of his wheels before moving on.

Travel over land in the 17th century was restricted to stagecoach, for those wealthy enough to afford such luxury, or horseback with the same proviso - you had to be wealthy to own a horse.  The alternative was .. you walked.  Bessler was only provided with transport when he was retained by Karl, the Landgrave, to move him and his wife and their belongings to Kassel - we have a copy of the charges incurred.  That distance was 151 miles from Merseberg to Kassel, but the distances Bessler had travelled between towns prior to his employment at Kassel was considerably shorter, Gera to Draschwitz - 21 miles, Draschwitz to Merseberg 25 miles.

If Bessler had to walk from town to town he could not have brought much with him, certainly not the wheel, even disassembled it would have been too big.  So he was forced to destroy each wheel when he moved, so that no clue remained to hint at how it worked.  The last comment   Each move was probably no more than a day's walk, maybe two, given the non-existance of proper roads at that time.

Confirmation, in a way, is supplied by the news item above which explains that Bessler destroyed the Kassel wheel after being given a house in Karlshafen.  He was leaving and the wheel had to be detroyed.

You might think it unlikely that people would routinely walk many miles to get somewhere, but an extreme example of the time was Andrew Hay, who travelled six times to Italy to buy up original paintings to sell on in London auction houses, twice walking all the way there and back!  He also walked to France and back fourteen times and retired in 1740 an extremely wealthy man.

JC

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Where have all the new Bessler fans gone?

On reading this back it looks a little like a narcicistic journey back in time (my time) and I apologise for this impression. I was mulling over the fact that far fewer new people come to investigate Bessler than did  years ago, at least not in the numbers they used to, and I wondered why.  I think the reason is that certain forums which existed then, have gone and there is now a surfeit of them on every subject under the sun.

When I first tried to get people interested in my biography of Johann Bessler, back in 1997, one of the first people I contacted was Jerry Decker of  http://www.keelynet.com/.  Jerry Decker has long been devoted to the quest for authentic free energy, gravity control and electronic health technologies for about 20 years.

KeelyNet began as a BBS (forum) in 1988 and moved to the Internet in 1994, having inspired many other websites along the way, as well as promoting the active sharing of useful and interesting information related to both orthodox and alternative science. His contribution was invaluable to me.  He requested a copy of my book, read it, loved it and went public with it in a way that I could never have dreamed of.  Mind you, it generated a lot of bad responses as well as good, from the establishment corner, but it toughened my attitude to negativity in a way that allows me to deal with the nay-sayers easily and ignore those who try to denigrate my contributions to the legend of Bessler's wheel.

The 'flame wars' started right at the beginning - see this:- http://www.keelynet.com/energy/orflame1.htm

And here's his brief moment of optimism in 1997! http://www.keelynet.com/orrmast.htm

Unfortunately Jerry Decker's forum has gone, although he continues to comment on twitter at https://twitter.com/zpeman and report on things that grab his attention.

The Nexus magaxine became interested - http://www.nexusmagazine.com/ - (Nexus New Times in the USA) and devoted a couple of issues to my book about Bessler.  Their aim was and is to present hard-to-get, ignored and suppressed information on the subjects of health, science, the unexplained, world events and history.  They too helped to spread the news about Johann Bessler.  See the item on page 53 of their 1998 Christmas issue below.

Then Infinite Energy Magazine came along in the shape of Editor-in-chief, Gene Mallove who I mentioned recently.  One of the world's foremost proponents of new energy was killed on May 14, 2004. Dr. Eugene Mallove was the founder and editor of the magazine Infinite Energy.

Issue 21 Review of Perpetual Motion: An Ancient Mystery Solved? (John Collins)

by Eugene Mallove, Mike Carrell, and Thomas Phipps.

Interview with John Collins by Susan Seddon

Bessler's Wheel - An Explanation? by Steve O'Donnell

Issue 23 Response by John Collins to IE #21 Reviews of his book Perpetual Motion: An Ancient Mystery Solved?

I also did about 5 Radio Interviews but they were broadcast within the UK, so resulted in little interest  outside of this country.  The Italian documentary has informed the Itallians but unfortunately the film is not so far available in English and until it is I doubt there will be much more than that.

Finally you can read reviews of my book by  Peter Lindemann, D.Sc., Brian O'Leary (former NASA astronaut), Eugene Mallove, former editor-in-chief of Infinite Energy Magazine and Hal Fox of New Energy News.

So I conclude that without the global news media such as Nexus Magazine, Infinite Energy Magazine and the Keelynet forum, there is little to be done to attract more new people to our cause.  Jerry Decker took part in the discussions on his forum which helped to direct attention to what ever took his fancy.  Not so with other forums and I guess we are just going to have to solve this ourselves!

JC

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Suggestions for Posts wanted.

Writing posts for others to read is an enjoyable past time for me, but am I writing about the things you guys are interested in knowing or discussing?

I would be interested to get some suggestions for subjects to cover so I can keep your interest and maybe gather a few more readers and commenters.

Let's have some ideas - please?  :)

JC

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Maschinen Tractate - the TOYS page, some thoughts.

I thought it was time to talk about clues again, so today I'm looking at the 'Toys' page in Bessler's so-called Maschinen Tractate (MT).

The Toys page was the last page  in my version of the book MT which, by the way, was found as a pile of unbound drawings lying in a box.  I believe that subsequently the pages have been re-photographed in a slightly different order resulting in the Toys page not being the last one.  In any case it is the last numbered page, having 138, 139, 140 and 141 handwritten in the bottom left corner.  I have always imagined that it was inserted by Bessler to replace four pages he removed at the time of his arrest when he wrote on the cover;-

 “N.B. 1st May, 1733.  Due to the arrest, I burned and buried all papers that prove the possibility.  However, I have left all demonstrations and experiments since it would be difficult for anybody to see or learn anything about a perpetual motion from them or to decide whether there was any truth in them because 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.”

This action must have been carried out with the intention of providing some kind of clue in case MT was never published for some reason.  If publication had been achieved then the original pages would have been reinserted.

Did he suspect that he might be imprisoned?  Possibly, and then his records would be available to the anyone of rank, so he replaced them with something less revealing.  My research has shown that he was being subjected to considerable pressure from his in-laws and feared that there was a conspiracy to either force him to reveal his secret or to frame him for some illegal dealings.

I have inserted a clarified version of the Toys page which has the four page numbers omitted on the bottom and also the short piece of text which was written next the the spinning top which reads, “5. Children's game in which there is something extraordinary for anyone who knows how to apply the game in a different way.”   

The letters run from A through to E, five letters!  But there are six drawings including the top, so why does he write 5 in front of the text?  Note my red lines which align the separate parts of each drawing, there are five!  Could he be telling us - yet again! that there are five mechanisms?

I think the letters are written in anticlockwise order to show which drawing should be interpreted first.  Note that A aligns with B but note that the latter is twisted - the small blobs on the left end of each horizontal on A are shown alternately on the left and right of the vertical line labelled B

The pantograph shape of C and D is similar to that  part of A. As B is twisted perhaps C and D should likewise be twisted?

Thereare two Cs and two Ds which suggests that there are two items from the each drawing required for the mechanism.  A hammer/axe or weight might be one, and the pantograph shape another.

The later addition of the spinning top was probably an attempt to hint that the 'toys' shown, relate to something that spins?

That's enough for today, I think, but I will just say that despite appearances in y opinion the item A has no connection with the Jacob's ladder toy.

 JC

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Electricity from windturbines? No thanks!

A report by the UK's Department of Energy and Climate Change says a huge expansion of green energy is planned, with up to 32,000 new wind turbines and many thousands of transmission pylons as it struggles to meet greenhouse gas emissions targets.

This news report got me thinking.  Obviously it would be wonderful if Bessler's wheel could be part of the energy supply sysytem - but that is but a possibility glimpsed in the future, at this time.  So in the mean time we must have the windturbines - apparently.  So, how efficient and how green are these wind turbines?

"Passed by millions of drivers a year, it is one of England’s best known wind turbines. It is also one of its most useless. According to latest figures, the 280ft generator towering over the M4 near Reading worked at just 15 per cent of its capacity last year. And although it generated electricity worth an estimated £100,000, it had to be subsidised with £130,000 of public money.  Since it was switched on in 2005, it has been given £600,000 in public subsidies while working at an average of 17 per cent of its capacity."  Not very efficient then and certainly not cost effective.  (Daily Mail)

When we drill for oil or mine coal, the fossil fuels obtained result in a net profit to the energy companies because more energy is created than is used to obtain the fossil fuels. They make a profit because the consumer places a certain value on a gallon of gas; he pays for the fuel to drive 20 miles, instead of walking, bicycling or riding a horse.

That is not the case for wind turbines. The energy they create does not even pay for the costs of obtaining that energy, therefore they do not create energy. Each dollar represents a certain amount of energy. A 2MW turbine costs $3.5 million dollars according to wind turbine sources.  The lifespan of turbines is estimated to be about 20 years. If you financed the entire $3.5 million at 7% it would be require a payment of $330,000 per year. This does not include the cost of maintenance, transmission line or back-up conventional power plants to balance the fluctuating output.

If we construct the 2MW turbines in a favorable position it will produce about 30% of 2MW or .0.6MW over the entire year. There are 8760 hours in the year yielding a production of 5300 MW-hours. Multiply by 1,000 to convert to kWh's and the yield is 5,300,00 kWhs. Each kWh is worth about 5 cents wholesale for a total production of $262,000 per year, yet the owner will have to pay $330,000 per year to cover capital costs. A rough estimate reveals at least another $70,000 per year to cover maintenance, landowner leases, local government kickbacks, transmission lines and extra costs of conventional power plants backup. Generally there is approximately 1 full time worker for every 4 turbines. Even using the gross under-estimate of $70,000 per year of ongoing costs the investors would need to spend $400,000 per year to yield only $262,000 in electricity payments.

Where's the money?  Where is the profit?  The profit for the investors comes from Government subsidies and tax credits which ultimately means you and me!  But hey, no worries - wind turbines are green!

From a local residence point of view they are harmful to wildlife such as bats, songbirds, and raptors such as golden eagles; they ruin the views and hurt tourism; they cause noise and light pollution; and diminish real estate values.  There is also the NIMBY factor (Not In My BackYard), and I wouldn't want one in mine.

Also, many sites for wind farms are far from demand centres, requiring substantially more money to construct new transmission lines and substations.

The performance of wind mills depends on wind, weather and geography. Wind is a fluctuating, unpredictable source of energy and is not suited to meet the base load energy demand unless some form of energy storage is utilized (e.g. batteries, pumped hydro).

The manufacturing and installation of wind turbines requires heavy upfront investments – both in commercial and residential applications.

Wind energy, compared to solar panels, requires greater maintenance due to moving parts and the bearings of the turbine require changing once every 5 years.

In the process of reducing emissions, people are building sea-based windmill parks to harness energy from the wind. The question remains as to how these windmill structures, which rise out of the sea, will affect the marine ecosystem. Will seals and porpoises be disturbed by these structures? How might other parts of the marine ecosystem be affected by these windmills, and how might impacts on invertebrates and fish affect marine mammals? 

Havas and Colling (2011) wrote a paper entitled: Wind Turbines Make Waves: Why Some Residents Near Wind Turbines Become Ill. Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society 31(5) 414–426.

People who live near wind turbines complain of symptoms that include some combination of the following: difficulty sleeping, fatigue, depression, irritability, aggressiveness, cognitive dysfunction, chest pain/pressure, headaches, joint pain,skin irritations, nausea, dizziness, tinnitus, and stress. 

These symptoms have been attributed to the pressure (sound) waves that wind turbines generate in the form of noise and infrasound. However, wind turbines also generate electromagnetic waves in the form of poor power quality (dirty electricity) and ground current, and these can adversely affect those who are electrically hypersensitive. Indeed, the symptoms mentioned above are consistent with electro-hypersensitivity. Sensitivity to both sound and electromagnetic waves differs among individuals and may explain why not everyone in the same home experiences similar effects. Ways to mitigate the adverse health effects of wind turbines are presented.

June 13, 2012.  For years doctors at Women’s College Hospital, in the heart of Toronto, have been diagnosing patients with environmental sensitivities that include multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS) and electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EMS). They have a long waiting list and if you sign up it will take 9 months to a year before a doctor has time to see you.  Some of these cases have been attributed to the close proximity of wind turbines.

BUT, that's not all! In China, the true cost of Britain's clean, green wind power experiment is Pollution on a disastrous scale

"A toxic lake is poisoning Chinese farmers, their children and their land. It's what's left behind after making the magnets for Britain's latest wind turbines... and is merely one of a multitude of environmental sins committed in the name of our new green Jerusalem.  On the outskirts of one of China’s most polluted cities, an old farmer stares despairingly out across an immense lake of bubbling toxic waste covered in black dust. He remembers it as fields of wheat and corn.

Vast fortunes are being amassed here in Inner Mongolia; the region has more than 90 per cent of the world’s legal reserves of rare earth metals, and specifically neodymium, the element needed to make the magnets in the most striking of green energy producers, wind turbines. But there is a distinctly dirty truth about the process used to extract neodymium: it has an appalling environmental impact that raises serious questions over the credibility of so-called green technology.

The reality is that, as Britain flaunts its environmental credentials by speckling its coastlines and unspoiled moors and mountains with thousands of wind turbines, it is contributing to a vast man-made lake of poison in northern China. This is the deadly and sinister side of the massively profitable rare-earths industry that the ‘green’ companies profiting from the demand for wind turbines would prefer you knew nothing about. Hidden out of sight behind smoke-shrouded factory complexes in the city of Baotou, and patrolled by platoons of security guards, lies a five-mile wide ‘tailing’ lake. It has killed farmland for miles around, made thousands of people ill and put one of China’s key waterways in jeopardy. This vast, hissing cauldron of chemicals is the dumping ground for seven million tons a year of mined rare earth after it has been doused in acid and chemicals and processed through red-hot furnaces to extract its components.

Rusting pipelines meander for miles from factories processing rare earths in Baotou out to the man-made lake where, mixed with water, the foul-smelling radioactive waste from this industrial process is pumped day after day. No signposts and no paved roads lead here, and as we approach security guards shoo us away and tail us. When we finally break through the cordon and climb sand dunes to reach its brim, an apocalyptic sight greets us: a giant, secret toxic dump, made bigger by every wind turbine we build.

The lake instantly assaults your senses. Stand on the black crust for just seconds and your eyes water and a powerful, acrid stench fills your lungs. For hours after our visit, my stomach lurched and my head throbbed. We were there for only one hour, but those who live in Mr Yan’s village of Dalahai, and other villages around, breathe in the same poison every day." Thanks to http://www.dailymail.co.uk and various other sources.

JC

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Perpetual motion or gravitywheel or infinity engine.

I was thinking about whether Bessler's wheel was a perpetual motion machine and/or a gravitywheel.  We routinely describe Bessler's wheel as a Perpetual Motion machine but I have always argued against the term because, back in Bessler's day, they defined it as a machine which would run with no external energy source, which is obviously impossible.  But when you consider the words themselves, out of context, there is some validity in describing his wheel as a Perpetual Motion machine.

Perpetual Motion means motion of some kind which is never ending. This definition is open to interpretation; it can also mean that the energy source is always available, so the machine keeps running. So a perpetual motion machine would run for ever as long as the materials of which is made did not wear out or break down - and its energy source was always present - a description straight from Bessler.

A theoretical perpetual motion machine would run for ever, or as buzz lightyear said, to infinity and beyond! If there was a way of continually topping up an auto's fuel tank while its engine was running, that would also seem to comply with the definition of a perpetual motion machine, i.e. as long as its parts last and it has enough fuel to continue running.

Talking of infinity, the symbol for infinity refers to something without any limit, and is a concept relevant in a number of fields, predominantly mathematics and physics. The English word infinity derives from the Latin, infinitas, which can be translated as unboundedness, itself derived from the Greek word apeiros, meaning endless.  So perpetual and infinity both mean endless. Endless also means extending indefinitely which is what we do when we continually top up the fuel tank to keep the auto engine turning, or continuously supply electricity to electric machines.

So Bessler's machine was a perpetual motion machine as long as it had access to an unending supply of energy - which I believe was the force of gravity. The infinity symbol, called a lemniscate, see above, looks like the figure eight lying on its side. Coincidentally I have argued on one of  my websites that the shape seems to relate to the movements of a person on a swing, demonstrating parametric oscillation.  What a marvellous coincidence if this shape should prove to be representative of the action of the weights within Bessler's wheel - an infinity symbold for an infinitly moving wheel.

So we can conclude that both terms, perpetual motion and gravitywheel, can apply; perpetual motion is endless if it has an energy supply and in Bessler case the energy was the force of gravity.

JC

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Johann Bessler's clues - real or imaginary?

A recent email prompted me to review Bessler's clues - did I think they were real or imaginary?  I resolved to re-read my own conclusions and also why he might have left them for us, if they were fake.

The first and most obvious one was his pseudonym - Orffyreus.  It is easy to see how he arrived at it but not so clear why.  Many writers from every age chose pseudonyms - modern day pseudomyms include the following; Mark Twain's real name was Samuel Clemens; Woody Alle - Allen Stewart Konigsberg; Fred Astaire - Frederick Austerlitz.  In and around Bessler's day; Molière - Jean Baptiste Poquelin; Voltaire - François-Marie Arouet  - and Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, 1493-1541, physician, alchemist, and mystic, more popularly known as Paracelsus!.

But the way Bessler chose his pseudonym was unusual.  The method, described as the atbash cipher is a simple substitution cipher for the Hebrew alphabet. In the English language the first 13 letters: A|B|C|D|E|F|G|H|I|J|K|L|M are place above the last 13 Letters: Z|Y|X|W|V|U|T|S|R|Q|P|O|N.

A B C D E F G H I/J K L M N O P Q R S T U/V W X Y Z

The order of the underneath row can be reversed as in Bessler's case. A similar cipher, known as the albam cipher required two alphabets.

We know he learned some Hebrew in Prague while staying with the Jesuit and the Rabbi, it seems obvious that he learned of the cipher then, but why would he choose that method to create a pseudonym?  No simple name changes as in the examples above and as far as I can find out, no-one else adopted such a method for their pseudonym - nor the encodement of their real name.

The reason must be linked to a desire to at least convey the impression that he was knowledgeable about ciphers and it is but a short step to conclude that he did that because he had put some encoded writing where people could read it.  I can see no reason why he would have wished to convey that impression unless there was a good reason for it and that conclusion is supported both by his own comments in Apologia Poetica as well as subsequent discoveries indicating the presence of alphabetic/numeric ciphers.

What information might that have been?  Either his chance to have the last laugh by explaining how he cheated everyone - or the real explanation of how his wheel worked, and I simply cannot accept that the former might have been true.  His tortured writing about the misery he has suffered at the hands of Gartner, Wagner and Borlach ring true.

Over the last few years I have published on my other websites my theories on why his machine did not violate the physical laws and also I have provided many examples of encoded material - too much to explain away as coincidence in my opinion.  I have a number of other examples which I am not ready to share yet but in summary I don't think there is any doubtr that Bessler left clues behind him.  Their purpose was two-fold, firstly to make people think there was information about his machine to be found within his published works, and secondly that information was there to be deciphered and it would explain how his wheel was constructed.  As I have said several times now, the information is both graphic and textual and should mainly be looked for inhis published works.

JC

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IT'S 2013 - HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I know I said I wouldn't say it ... but I really do have a strong feeling that 2013 will see the solution to Bessler's wheel!  How can I explain it?  Sometimes you have a feeling that something is going to happen and you can't explain why or how you know; you just know - and sometimes you are right!  That's how I feel.

It's a new year and I feel full of optimism.  This year of 2013 will be the year that Bessler's wheel will be reconstructed.  Furthermore it will be exactly the same internal design as he had, although there may be some minor differences in sizes and ratios. How will we know?  We'll have to wait for it to appear, then I'll show you.

I cannot wait to get back to work to prove my design and let the world have it for free.  No patent, no license, no sale - just the widest possible dissemination by every kind of media.

I know there are many who oppose my no-patent persuasion but that is a view I arrived at after many years of deliberation - and anyway, it might be you who discovers the secret, not me!  You must do what seems best to you.

Here are some reasons for optimism in 2013 :)

1. “We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.” - Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962

2.    “Man will never reach the moon regardless of all future scientific advances.” - Dr. Lee DeForest, Inventor of the TV

 3.    “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” - Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

 4.    “640K ought to be enough for anybody.” - Bill Gates, 1981

 5.    “The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a ‘C,’ the idea must be feasible.” - Yale University management professor critiquing Fred Smith’s paper proposing what became FedEx

 6.    “Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.” Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929

 7.    “Everything that can be invented has been invented.” - Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899

 8.    “Louis Pasteur’s theory of germs is ridiculous fiction.” - Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872

9.    “If excessive smoking actually plays a role in the production of lung cancer, it seems to be a minor one.” - National Cancer Institute, 1954

10. “Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote.” - Grover Cleveland, U.S. President in 1905

11. “I’d shut [Apple] down and give the money back to the shareholders.” - Michael Dell, founder and CEO of Dell, Inc., 1997

12. “This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication.” - Western Union Internal Memo, 1876

So when someone tells you that you can’t do it, remember these quotes, charge forward, and just focus on making it happen. Cheers to an innovative and productive 2013.

(thanks to Forbes magazine)

Good luck to all of us - and good health, wealth and happiness. :)

JC

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HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!

I'm not sure if I shall post another blog before Christmas as our house is now bursting at the seams!  My elder daughter, son-in-law and two of my grandchildren are all here and eating and drinking us out of house and home!  Two of them are now six foot four and can eat for the olympics, and we have had to resort to alcohol to de-stress! It was also my younger daughter's birthday, yesterday, and we are having ten for Christmas dinner.  Great fun though and I wouldn't miss it for the world, but getting time to blog when there is so much going on is not so easy, but I do get up early every morning, always have done, and that may be my best time to write.

My long search for the solution to Bessler's wheel..............continues!  I don't know how many times, as each year draws to a close, I've written that I'm sure that next year will be the year somone somewhere succeeds in solving this puzzle.  So what about 2013?  Will it be the year?  I don't know and perhaps it is a good idea not to tempt fate by saying that I have a feeling that it will be the year when Bessler's wheel rolls again!

I'm disappointed that we didn't succeed during this 300th anniversary year but that would have been a mighty coincidence, wouldn't it - to actually solve the problem on the 300th anniversary? So next year will be the 301st since Bessler exhibited his wheel, but of course he probably built his proof of principle wheel the year before so maybe it will be 302 years since he actually discovered the secret.  It simply doesn't matter whether we time the solution to a nice round number of years as long as we do make the discovery - and the sooner the better.

There are lots of discoveries to celebrate every year but mostly only the more famous ones get a centenary.  Somehow I feel that when this one surfaces it will earn the right to have centenary celebration.  So forget the 300th anniversary, next year will do just fine for the discovery of how Johann Bessler built his self-moving wheel.  Good luck to us all and I wish everone a Merry Christmas or a Happy Holiday according to your personal preference.

JC

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