Let Us Ponder upon Bessler's Rich Pageantry of Words!

I have been meaning to comment on the rather strange passage in Bessler's Apologia Poetica, in chapter XLVI.  Bessler introduces it by urging us to study his 'rich pageantry of words'.  Having returned to the original many times, I can only find the following amateur translation of the original translator's valiant efforts . The original German words appear to describe the passage as containing resplendent words or flaunting words, which doesn't seem to me to a million miles from my original translator's efforts, if a little less poetic. It appears to be a poetic description of something which we suspect is related to the wheel, but quite how is hard to determine.  I decided to put my thoughts down about it, as far as I can, which isn't far.  It is almost all speculation although I have tried to use common sense, avoiding the higher realms of speculation.

It begins thus:- "Those who are keen to ask questions should ask them of this little book. My work will not be revealed prematurely. Should anyone wish to speculate about the truth, let him just ponder on the rich pageantry of words which I now cause to shower down upon him!"

Are they metaphors, similes, analogies or what?  I cannot say but they seem to contain some kind of truth which to me is not apparent but here goes anyway.

So the first thing to do is to identify where it starts.  Many people assume the translation from my book which commences "for greed is an evil plant..." is the beginning of a metaphorical description of the mechanism. My own view is slightly different.  There is a little trick that Bessler uses that some people may not be aware of or have forgotten.  We are all familiar with the names of his avowed enemies, Christian Wagner, Andreas Gärtner and Johann Gottfried Borlach, and Bessler would frequently include their initials in the text, easily identifiable by using Roman characters instead of the usual Fraktur font.  Often the letter would form the first letter of a mildly offensive word probably for his own satisfaction and to poke fun at his enemies.

In the adjacent image taken from the original. I have ringed in yellow, the particular letters to illustrate the point. In the image you can read in order, Gärtner, Wagner and Borlach, twice. Throughout the book there are many examples all aimed at the same three people. 

From the following line, Bessler begins his metaphorical descriptions.

"An anvil receives many blows. A driver drives. A runner runs. The seer sees. The buyer buys. The rain drips down. Snow falls. The shotgun shoots. The bow twangs."

I see these as descriptions of various forces and/or actions within his wheel.  The anvil receives many blows, but it is immoveable, despite the heavy blows it endures. This may relate to the part of the wheel on which the weights land. 

A driver drives and that is a proactive action as demonstrated by the blacksmith hitting the anvil with the hammer.  It seems to indicate that something causes the weights to move. The runner runs, and that is a reactive force moving swiftly without hindrance, perhaps like an object which has been hit and just moves quickly as a billiard ball might move across a table.  The seer sees, is perhaps a non-reactive object which awaits an action upon it.  The buyer buys is the opposite in a way, it is proactive again and awaits its chance to act not react.

Next we see the forces available.  Rain drips down, under the influence of gravity (not in response to an action such as a hammer blow).  Snow falls but it is lighter than rainwater so it falls slowly.  The shotgun is an explosive force and not conserved as gravity is, so it's a once only push.  The bow is similarly explosive but actioned by tension rather than a chemical agregate.  

"A great fat herd of fat, lazy, plump horses wanders aimlessly."  This may refer to the weights hanging without any control from levers or stops, so they hang and swing without guidance, at a certain point during rotation.

"The flail would rather be with the thresher than with the scholar."  The flail was a kind of threshing device and bit like a whip. This suggests that the flail/whip strikes the scholar/pupil but does not linger but instead returns quickly to its 'cocked' position, ready to strike again.  It may relate to the so-called 'stiff fops' mentioned later in the passage.

"The children play on the little/toy pillars/columns with loud heavy little/toy clubs."  There has been much debate over the translation of this piece so it's anybody's guess which is correct., and I cannot suggest something that might be taken seriously as to its meaning!  

The rest is so open to speculation that without the design of the mechanisms in front of me, I cannot relate to any of it, although I have plenty of ideas!

I've added this blog primarily to point out the starting point of the description and perhaps to put aside any thoughts about interpreting the 'greed is an evil plant' line, as it is a dig at his enemies and probably not part of the so-called pageantry of words which the study of, will help those who seek answers from this little book.

JC

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Bessler's Codes - why did he create them?.

Johann Bessler was christened Elias Bessler and added the other two forenames at about the time he exhibited the Merseburg Wheel, the one which could turn in either direction.  Although these additional names were added some time after the first exhibition, and they seem to have been part of a plan to leave information about this wheels hidden within certain documents he was publishing, his pseudonym, Orffyreus, was being used almost from the start.  This seems to indicate that he always planned to encode information about his wheels in published documents s.  

Why he felt the need to do this we can only speculate, but as patents were not available to him at that time we might assume that he undertook this action to try to establish, should it become necessary, his priority claim in the event that another should try to lay claim to being the first to invent the gravity-wheel.  Upon consideration, this action seems hardly worth the effort, because if someone else succeeded in duplicating Bessler's wheel before Bessler himself had sold it, then the result would be the same as if he had openly given away the secret of its construction.  The pretender would have to show how his wheel worked and Bessler would have to prove his priority by showing how his own wheel worked and that it was as described in the encoded information he had buried in his publications.  So perhaps there was another reason also.

He does say at one point that if he fails to sell his wheel he will be content with posthumous recognition. But this was written in 1715 when he had excellent prospects before him and such a plan at the age of 35 seems somewhat pessimistic, so perhaps there was a third and more compelling reason for the code.  Bessler certainly demonstrates that he had a deep and abiding curiosity about codes and the pleasure he derived from its use, drove him to tantalise us by dropping subtle hints in many places about the existence of codes and also leave obvious examples such as chronograms, and the ROT13 ciphers he used to establish his pseudonym, Orffyreus, from Bessler.

I think he would still have enjoyed pointing out his codes and their meanings in the event that he did have to prove his priority, even if it denied him the pecuniary rewards he sought.  But also the posthumous recognition desire was  self-evident so perhaps it was a bit of each reason that led him to devise his complex network of codes.

I'm aware of Øystein Rustad's work on deciphering codes and I look forward to seeing what he has done, and I have also deciphered a different set of codes and like Bessler, and Øystein, I think, I can't wait to share what I know!  There are other pieces of code awaiting someone's more  incisive analytical attention, such as the Bible references, and the whole of Das Triumphans,which I believe, contains some hidden gems.

Like many before, I too have found it useful to hide a little code containing what I call the Bessler-Collins principle.  It's not as if I would ever patent anything I found, but it would be good to know that I was first and could prove it, and that is what, in the end, I think was in Bessler's mind when he began devising codes.

There have been many illustrious scientists who used a similar idea to attempt to confirm their discoveries and thus receive their due honour, in the course of time; such people as Galileo, Sir Christopher Wren and Sir Isaac Newton, to name but three.

JC

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Bessler's Wheel Required Only Gravity as an Enabling Force.

I'm still being asked why I think Bessler's wheel worked purely on gravity and required no additional forces, and without giving away my own theory, it's difficult to bring something new to the table.  However looking back at the evidence it still seems obvious to me that nothing has changed

Leaving aside, on this occasion the evidence we are all aware of regarding the numerous examinations and tests the wheel was subjected to, Bessler said in Das Triumphens, "NO, these weights are themselves the PM device, the ‘essential constituent parts’" There are several other examples where Bessler discusses his weights and to my mind there is no other option than to consider that his claims were sincere.

There is another point and it is this.  Either we assume that Bessler told the truth and there was no additional force supplied, or he lied and there was another force present; in either case the wheel worked.  If there was another force available how come no-one has discovered what it was and replicated Bessler's wheel?  Such a discovery would be equally amazing and useful as one which only relied on gravity.  If another force was present why wouldn't Bessler hint at it?  He enjoyed dropping obscure hints about the way his wheel worked but he insisted that the weights were all that was needed.  On the Besslerwheel forum several suggestions have been made at what such additional force might be, and none of them are as convincing as the idea that it was simply gravity as Bessler said.  There was very little else available to Bessler at the time apart from ambient temperature changes or perhaps some kind of static electricity. Both ideas to my mind, simply won't do.  Others have suggested centrifugal forces or some such derivative, but in all cases no continuously rotating wheel has surfaced, therefore I am certain that Bessler told the truth and gravity was the sole provider of power to the wheel.  It's a case of Occam's razor which states that among competing hypotheses, the hypothesis with the fewest assumptions should be selected.  Just one assumption is necessary and that is that Bessler told the truth, there was no additional force.

When Sir Isaac Newton wrote his 'Principia', he wrote the whole thing in Latin, which was the accepted way to introduce matters of scientific and intellectual interest.  University lectures were given in Latin and publications such a 'Acta Erditorum' were also published in Latin.  Latin was a universal language at that time and thus students from various countries attended universities in England, France and Germany with equal ability to understand what was being taught.  Newton used the word 'gravitas'  for the force and in this sense, 'gravitas'  translates as 'heaviness'. Everyone understood the term 'heaviness' as a concept but the use of the word 'gravitas' and thus 'gravity', came to be applied later to the concept of 'heaviness as if it had been coined specifically for that purpose.  So when we say that Bessler used the word gravity he didn't mean it in the way we do, he just used the word 'heaviness' as the provider of the force which turned his wheels.

In other words Bessler did not think of gravity in the way we do with all its preconditions about how it can be used, he simply meant heaviness, and weights had heaviness and it was that which he was able to manipulate to his advantage.

Heaviness is a pressure or resistance we feel when we lift something up, or hold it.  I liken it, for example to the same pressure we experience when we fight to hold an umbrella from blowing inside out in the wind; or a gust of wind hits you when you come out from the shelter of a building, or a strong current of water encountered when swimming.  It is simply a pressure.  I used to sail a lot as a young man and it's the same thing when you haul in a sail, the wind pressure fights you all the way.  Gravity is a conservative force; so is the wind, and so is a current of water.  Just because gravity is conservative does not preclude its use as a continuous pressure to drive around a wheel.  The word conservative, as used in this instance, simply means that it does not stop, it continues to apply pressure, just as the wind does when it blows and water too when it is a current. Conservative forces don't really conserve their energy but they conserve their force or momentum. Hitting a ball, on the other hand, is an explosive event and therefore not a conservative event,  It is not continuous in the way that gravity, wind and water streams are. Conservative means that it is not used up with nothing left, the force is conserved not exhausted.  The opposite of conservative or conserved is un-conserved or not conserved, so the three examples above must be conserved or continuous otherwise we could not sail ships, turn windmills, use watermills etc., etc.

Lastly all calculations seem to apply to one weight moving in a circle, they seem to ignore the presence and effect of correctly configured multiple weights.

JC

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HAPPY NEW YEAR

I have a feeling that this will be the year that Bessler's wheel is finally solved!  Have I said that before? Probably, but something seems different this time.  Many separate skeins are coming together, and speaking for myself, I am confident that I have the whole solution in my head and partly already built in my secret laboratory  ( workshop/work bench/ small niche for my mechanism-building!)

I no longer worry about anyone else getting there before me (I used to!) - I just want to see dozens, hundreds, thousands, or more likely millions, of Bessler wheels of all sorts and sizes, spinning continuously all over the world, providing electricity, heat, air-conditioning, pumping water, grinding corn, propelling ships, trains -  maybe even  vehicles, who knows?

The end is in sight and somewhere there is (or are) one or more determined individuals putting the last touches to their prototypes prior to testing them.  It might be you or it might be me, but whoever it is, good luck and don't be put off if this one fails, you have it in you to succeed and succeed we must.  Good luck to all and a very happy, prosperous and healthy new year to all.

JC

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How big would Bessler's Wheel have to be to supply all the heat and light required for one home?

From time to time the possible uses for a Bessler wheel have been discussed, and much debate has centred on the potential power it might be able to generate.  I may be wrong, but I have got the impression that many people think that it will lack sufficient power to be of any practical use.  Mostly it has been thought that a wheel capable of generating enough electricity for single home's requirements would have to be too big to be of any economical benefit and might cost more to build than the cost currently experienced in paying power companies for their electricity (pardon the pun!).

But I have been following the news about the machine being built on behalf of Ribeiro brothers and information about it can be found at  http://www.rarenergia.com.br/  Looking at the photos I estimate that it must be at least 30 foot long by maybe 20 foot high.  I have no idea if this thing will work as claimed, but I can imagine the power output from a Bessler wheel of similar dimensions and it isn't small by any means. Bessler suggested that a wheel of 20 foot diameter could be built and this was a single wheel, imagine a series of them on one shaft covering 30 feet in length (like the Ribeiro brother's one ) and yet still 20 foot in diameter.

Most of the electricity in this country and elsewhere is generated by Alstom steam turbines.  There are different modules for differing requirements in output, but on average they measure at the very least 30 foot in length and over 15 foot in height and some are several times larger.  Admittedly these operate at a much higher speed than Bessler wheel could ever achieve, unless it was able to apply sufficient force to the right gearing, but that is an engineering problem and not impossible.  The point I am making is that these huge machines are designed to supply heat and light to thousands of homes, but something smaller than Ribeiro's machine in the form of Bessler's wheel might supply sufficient electricity to power maybe a street of homes - and how big for just one home?

JC

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A New Johann Bessler Film

A few days ago I received an email from a guy, who  I met about three or four years ago.  He gave me the news that he was going to make a film about Johann Bessler and he wanted to know if I wished to be involved. Of course I accepted immediately and work is expected to begin early next year.

He is an experienced presenter, writer, producer/director, interviewer, scriptwriter and editor.  He was formerly a producer and presenter with Granada TV ( now called ITV); founded film and TV production companies, authored six books and edited three magazines.  Whew! I think I covered all of it!

He was introduced to me by another friend, who I have been in contact for a few years.  He introduced this media man, thus..."He has a long history of music, TV and publishing, and is currently writing a novel about Bessler. I think he'd like to take you out for a pub lunch and chat about Bessler the man....  He. is intrigued by the story, and has a bottle of Jura Malt Whiskey sitting in his kitchen which he promises to give me when I make a working model!  He's a good bloke."  Can't think of a better recommendation!

The film will investigate the beliefs of those who remain utterly sceptical of Bessler's claims, almost certainly because of the laws of physics as they have been and are taught - and on the other hand it will assess the validity of the evidence presented by those who have become convinced that Bessler did indeed achieve precisely what he said he did - causing a wheel to turn continuously entirely through the force of gravity.  

It's early days but I am to be appointed associate producer which gives me a chance to influence, restrain or suggest ideas for the film.  In January I expect to be introduced to the film's producer, and I look forward to this with great excitement!

JC

10a2c5d26e15f6g7h10ik12l3m6n14o14r5s17tu6v5w4y4-3,’.        or to put it another way.

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The Return of the Mysterious Xs in Johann Bessler's Apologia Poetica!

When I first wrote my biography of Johann Bessler (Perpetual Motion; An Ancient Mystery Solved?) I mentioned the existence of what I termed X's throughout Apologia Poetica (AP),  at that time I had a suspicion that they weren't actually X's but something rather more mundane. - and it turned out that the character is actually a well-known abbreviation for Et Cetera. written not as we do etc, but as et   - meaning, and the rest, or so on and so forth. Modern German also uses an alternative which is "und so weiter" abbreviated to usw but in print in Bessler's day the fraktur type was used, and the abbreviation was et, which does not immediately resemble the two letters it represents.

If there had been just an occasional use of the abbreviation then nothing remarkable would be inferred, however in his Apologia Poetica it is used so many times that one can only conclude that either the author had no idea of its proper use - or he was attempting to transmit a secret message via the X's and hinted at by the over-abundance of this abbreviation.  In total he uses 684 so-called X's, in some places he uses two X's at the end of a line.  In others he has ten consecutive lines each with an X at the end; but then he can go for twenty pages without a single X.  On the other hand his other publications both before and after AP use no X's or etc's.

There was much discussion a while back on the Besslerwheel forum about the possible meaning of the X's and how to decipher them and the consensus was that the reason for the presence of so many could not be other than some kind of code.  Given the sheer numbers plus the use of two on a line at times, seems to imply the possibility that each X indicated a letter within the particular line.  I had already ruled out the possibility of each X meaning a word, because I went through the whole book looking for any kind of word within or near to any of the X'd lines which might be applied to the description of a wheel part - such as weight, lever, rotate, etc.  - but none appeared. 

One potential path worthy of investigation, I feel, are the passages which contain X's at the ends of several consecutive lines.  I have done some work in this area without any success, but the potential to discover a significant letter within the indicated line seems possible.  Given that Bessler would not have included this code unless he anticipated someone trying to break it, there has to be some kind of clue to aid someone in beginning to decipher it.  One way to look for such clues is to find the unusual occurances of the mysterious X.  So there are the passages with consecutive X's; the lines bearing two X's, presumably indicating the same letter twice; there is the presence of the X's even at the ends of some of Bible references which might seem the oddest place to put them.

What message might Bessler have hidden within the X's?  Given the numbers of  X's is 684, and assuming an average number of letters per word, as being five (taking into account one or two letters as well as longer ones) leaves us with about 135 words, which is actually quite a short message - about half the Gettysburg Address.    

Any suggestions what the message might say?

JC

Two countries divided by a common language? With thanks to Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw or possibly Winston Churchill.

I actually wrote this some time back but recent discussions on the besslerwheel forum prompted me to reread it, make a few changes and publish after all.

Recently I mentioned in passing the use of the word 'back-yard' in the USA referring to the land behind the house which we in England, call the 'garden'.  This is just one example of the many words we share which have different meanings for each country. According to Wikipedia, in England a back yard is a small space surrounded by walls at the back of a house, usually with a paved surface.  But in the USA it's a space at the back of a house, usually surrounded by a fence, and covered with grass which we call a garden.  There are too many examples to list but if the language we share has so many variations according to where you come from, how on earth can we understand what Bessler meant using an entirely different language in a different country and 300 years ago.

Not only that but we use idioms and according to wikipedia an idiom "is a combination of words that has a figurative meaning owing to its common usage. An idiom's figurative meaning is separate from the literal meaning. There are thousands of idioms and they occur frequently in all languages. There are estimated to be at least twenty-five thousand idiomatic expressions in the English language."  So, to add to the difficulties we are already aware of, Bessler used idiomatic expressions familiar to people at the time but some maybe incomprehensible to us now.  We know of some of his examples.

As I reminded people recently, Bessler was taught by Christian Weise, a man who enjoyed encouraging his pupils to act out his plays using what was termed 'robust language' which included swearing, slang and idioms.  Bessler wrote Apologia in rhyming couplets and obviously some words had to be 'bent' to fit the rhyme, hence it can be assumed that in some instances the sense was blurred to his readers, even at the time, and the more so 300 years later.

But there is more.  When I began to try to translate the German into English I had a relatively small German-English dictionary but subsequently acquired two ancient second hand dictionaries of huge size.  The reason was because some words did not appear or I could not recognise them in my small dictionary.  I also found that these early dictionaries had far more meanings for each sought word. Each book has over 600 pages and if I can't find a meaning that helps, in one of them, I can find it in the other. This suggests that there are far more meanings to these words than we might imagine, but I will give one example - the word Creuze (Kreuze nowadays) as used by Bessler; translated as cross-bar but actually my small dictionary gave the meaning as cross.  One large dictionary gives; cross; crucifix; crosier; cross-bar; small of the back; loins; rump; croup; club, as in cards; sharp, as in music; dagger; burden...etc etc.  That is just the single word, but once you add hiphenated words the list grows enormously, four columns in one book.  Then of course there are internet dictionaries some of which were compiled close to Bessler's time and offer other alternatives.

In the second dictionary I found, all the above plus ... peel, as in a to remove the skin of a fruit (definition corrected, thanks to the eagle eye of my good friend James); anchor -  and sword handle. I'm not suggesting that we should consider any of those examples because, as Mike Senior who did all the translating, said, you have to take into account the context of the sentence and despite the accusations many have thrown at the quality of his work he has done his best to provide the intended meaning and if people would stop pouring over each word as if it will give up a special meaning which will assist them in discovering Bessler's secret - and concentrated on the actual snippets of information he provided, then success may still crown the efforts of one or more of us who are happy to rely on Mike's work.

JC

10a2c5d26e15f6g7h10ik12l3m6n14o14r5s17tu6v5w4y4-3,’.        or to put it another way.

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Bessler's wheel & reciprocating mechanisms - some more musings.

I should think everyone's heard of reciprocating engines, but put simply, each employs a means of converting rotary motion into linear motion or the reverse - using pistons and cranks for instance.  Although they achieved their pinnacle of achievment in the steam engines a couple of hundred years ago, they are used extensively today - and were also used by the Romans;  an early known example of rotary to reciprocating motion can be found in a number of Roman saw mills dating to the 3rd to 6th century AD, in which a crank and connecting rod mechanism converted the rotary motion of the waterwheel into the linear movement of the saw blades.  So it seems to me that we are seeking to convert the fall of a weight, linear motion, to make a wheel rotate, rotary motion.  Perhaps there are clues to be found by studying these ancient techniques and combining them with parametric oscillation, swinging or Kiiking, to achieve the impossible!

Reciprocating motion, is a repetitive up-and-down or back-and-forth linear motion. It is found in a wide range of mechanisms, including reciprocating engines, rack and pinion steering gear and pumps.  A crank can be used to convert circular motion into reciprocating motion, or conversely turn reciprocating motion into circular motion.

For example, inside an internal combustion engine the expansion of burning fuel in the cylinders periodically pushes the piston down, which, through the connecting rod, turns the crankshaft. The continuing rotation of the crankshaft drives the piston back up, ready for the next cycle. The piston moves in a reciprocating motion, which is converted into circular motion of the crankshaft, which ultimately propels the vehicle or does other useful work. The vibrations felt when the engine is running are a side effect of the reciprocating motion of the pistons.

I just included a couple of images, (see above) but there are many more but all include linear  and rotary motion.

So in place of the piston and its up and down movement, we need the weight to move up and down.  We have the down-movement powered by gravity, but we also seek to raise it through gravity, - that's not so easy.  One might think that the flywheel effect might contribute to the rotation but it doesn't because the force of gravity which provided the initial force to turn it has been used up.  In a combustion engine the force is continuous and more than enough to get the flywheel spinning faster and faster. However in Bessler's wheel the force is provided by weights working in pairs and perhaps one of them falls into an outer position thus overbalancing the wheel, and subsequently the second weight falls into a neutral position therefore having no effect on the balance of the wheel, but in doing so moves the first weight back to its starting position?

We know that in all seriousness we cannot expect the single second weight to lift the first weight upwards more than a fraction of its fall, but we can imagine it being able to just tip the first weight over sufficiently to begin the process again - can't we?  Picture a bicycle wheel spinning.  To keep it going requires a light flick of your finger on the top of it to accelerate it or just keep it spinning.  Or a hoop and stick; you just keep tapping it forward and it rolls along  All we need to do is get the second weight to push the first weight over that small hill which represents the loss due to friction/work between start and finish of each rotation.

JC

10a2c5d26e15f6g7h10ik12l3m6n14o14r5s17tu6v5w4y4-3,’.

or to put it another way.

aaaaaaaaaaccdddddeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeefffffffffffffffgggggghhhhhhhiiiiiiiiiikllllllllllllmmmnnnnnnoooooooooooooorrrrrrrrrrrrrrssssstttttttttttttttttuvvvvvvwwwwwyyyy-----,,,