Update

I have again replaced my usual blog with a brief account of the legend of Bessler's wheel.  I'm currently unable to maintain the frequency of my blog due to commitments which are keeping me exceedingly busy!  

I had hoped to create more interest by revealing a few of the many pieces of code I have found, but there have been limited responses to what I've published and perhaps the best thing is for me to concemtrate on bringing to public view a working model of Bessler's wheel.  This is going to take some months as I am still settling in to our new house and we are waiting for some building work to be carried out.  My workshop is going to have to wait until this has been accomplished. 

I am closing the comments feature for the time being , but as soon as I have something of interest I'll be back.  In the mean time all the books detailed on the right are available and I hope that any new readers will want obtain copies for the information Bessler left for us.

11th August 2016

JC

The legend of Bessler’s Wheel began on 6th June 1712, when Johann Bessler announced that he had invented a perpetual motion machine and he would be exhibiting it in the town square in Gera, Germany, on that day.  Everyone was free to come and see the machine running.  It took the form of a wheel mounted between two pillars and ran continuously until it was stopped or its parts wore out. The machine attracted huge crowds.  Although they were allowed to examine its external appearance thoroughly, they could not view the interior, because the inventor wished to sell the secret of its construction for the sum of 10,000 pounds – a sum equal to several millions today.

News of the invention reached the ears of high ranking men, scientists, politicians and members of the aristocracy.  They came and examined the machine, subjected it to numerous tests and concluded that it was genuine. Only one other man, Karl, the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel, was allowed to view the interior and he testified that the machine was genuine. He is a man well-known in history as someone of the greatest integrity, and  the negotiations between Bessler and Karl took place against a background in which Karl acted as honest broker between the warring nations of Europe; a situation which required his absolute rectitude both in appearance and in action.

There were several attempts to buy the wheel, but negotiations always failed when they reached an impasse – the buyer wished to examine the interior before parting with the money, and the inventor fearing that once the secret was known the buyer would simply leave without paying and make his own perpetual motion machine, would not permit it.  Sadly, after some thirty years or more, the machine was lost to us when the inventor fell to his death during construction of another of his inventions, a vertical axle windmill.

However, the discovery of a series of encoded clues has led many to the opinion that the inventor left instructions for reconstructing his wheel, long after his death.  The clues were discovered during the process of investigating the official reports of the time which seemed to rule out any chance of fraud, hence the  interest in discovering the truth about the legend of Bessler’s wheel.

My own curiosity was sparked by the realisation that an earlier highly critical account by Bessler's maid-servant, which explained how the wheel was fraudulently driven, was so obviously flawed and a lie, that I was immediately attracted to do further research. In time I learned that there was no fraud involved, so the wheel was genuine and the claims of the inventor had to be taken seriously.

The tests which the wheel was subjected to involved lifting heavy weights from the castle yard to the roof, driving an Archimedes water pump and an endurance test lasting 56 days under lock and key and armed guard.  Bessler also organised demonstrations involving running the wheel on one set of bearings opened for inspection – and then transferring the device to a second set of open bearings, both sets having been examined to everyone’s satisfaction, both before, after and during the examination.

So the only problem is that modern science denies that Bessler's wheel was possible, but my own research has shown that this conclusion is wrong.  There is no need for a change in the laws of physics, as some  have suggested, we simply haven't covered every possible scenario in the evaluating the number of possible configurations.

I have produced copies of all Bessler's publications, with English translations.  They can be obtained by clicking on the appropriate links on the right.

JC

Numerology and Alpha-Numerics in Das Triumphirende.

Here's another little coded example.  Please be aware that it has been abbreviated from my own writing and I have omitted some detail but the facts are there for anyone to check.

I noticed early on that there seemed to be an excess of numbering in the wheel drawings in Grundlicher Bericht and Das Triumphans. It looks as though some of the items are ‘over-numbered’.  By that I mean that Bessler seems to have labelled the parts with a particular number more than seems necessary.  For example the main pillar supporting the wheel is numbered 4, three times.  The slimmer pillars are numbered 12, and two of them to the left are numbered twice each, and the other two are only numbered once each.   

Some numbers appear more often than others and not just because they are attached to more similar pieces. After number 18 the rest of the numbers are lone examples. I speculated that this was done to achieve a certain total, and having identified each part once with its number, Bessler then sought to add to the total by labelling the same parts more than once. Obviously the higher numbers would make the jumps toward his desired total too big too quickly so he labelled everything once and having acquired a total, he added more of the smaller numbers until he had achieved his desired end. There are other peculiarities in the labelling and why this should have been done was unclear to me at the time.

There are discrepancies between the two drawings which I shall discuss in a later post but for now be aware that in the first drawing the numbers, composed from 59 numbers, add up to 649 which is, interestingly, equal to 59 x 11 (both prime numbers).  In the second drawing the numbers add up to 633, which is 16 short of the 649.  In the second drawing the numbers 5 and one of the 11s has been omitted, which is why the second drawing does not match the 649 of the first drawing (NOTE 5 x 11 =55).  In both drawings the picture cuts off the left hand end of the drawing and in the process cuts off one of the number 11 weights.  If, in the first drawing, this is added to the 649 of the first drawing it produces the number 660, and because we then have 60 numbers, 660 divided by 60 equals 11, but more interestingly, 660 divided by 12 equals 55.  55 is a number we shall see many times during these posts.  This choice of the number twelve to introduce yet another example of the number 55, may seem too speculative, however, fascinating proof that it is the right assumption will appear in my next post

All the drawings in Das Triumphans contain similar number manipulations, the 'Andere Figura' and its companion, 'Secunda Figura', use the numbers from one to ten.  There is obviously a case of overlabelling in the right picture, with four number eights.

The numbers in the left picture add up to 28; those in the right, 62, to total 90.  There are 15 numbers used and 90 divided by 15 is six. This does not seem to be a significant number, however knowing that Bessler’s favourite number was 5, I realised that it divided 90 exactly 18 times – the ubiquitous pentagonal numbers again.  Secondly the numbers used, 1 to 10, add up to a total of 55 – the other Bessler number.

 

The wheel drawing containing the archimedes pump (see above) also uses overlabelling to achieve a specific number. One of the differences between this drawing and the other ones is the fact that in this one the parts are labelled with letters rather than numbers.  However there is one labelled part which is strangely ambiguous and that is the main supporting column which supports the wheel.  It looks like a ‘W’ however it can also be mistaken for the number ten, but this cannot be right because the other parts are labelled with letters.  The answer lies in the attached list of labelled parts; here the list is entirely in letters except for the last item which is undoubtedly labelled 10.  You can see the ambiguity in the expanded detail below, which has two examples of the number ‘10’, or the letter ‘W’.

Why then is the last item called item 10?  The solution seems obvious; the intention is that the reader should replace all the letters with numbers. The letters run from ‘A’ to T’, plus the letter/number 10.  Since 10 is the last item on the list one might suppose that it would represent the letter ‘U’ as ‘T’ was the last letter, but in fact it represents the letter ‘J’.  We know this for the simple reason that ’J’ is omitted from the list of parts and does not appear in the drawing.

 Bessler's use of the letter 'W' was often used as a way of implying the presence of the number ten, consisting as it does of two letter V's or Roman numerals to produce two more 5s.   He wrote it in the style shown below, which was taken from one of hos many handwritten examples.  The letter 'J' it replaces is the 10th letter of the alphabet.

There are 39 numbers, running from 1 to 20, totalling 355.  This does not seem significant until you discover that one of the letter ‘e’s representing the ropes which run around the spokes on the axle, has been omitted in the left side picture.  The one ‘e’ missing could, if replaced, increase the numbers to total 20 in each picture, and the total from 355, to 360.  360 divided by 20 eqals 18, our favourite pentagonal number again - of course 360 divided by the missing 5 equals 72, another pentagon number.


So the first drawings have 24 numbers, apart from an apparent hiccup over the number 24 getting transposed to number 42 which was deliberate, as I shall show in a later post.  The Andere figures use ten numbers, and the waterwheel uses 20.

There is so much more than these simple examples, but clearly there is a reason other than blinding us with mathematical mystification.  It has to be something useful to us for reconstruction his wheel.

JC

Deciphered Code I Published Previously

I know that most will be aware of this discovery, but just as an introduction to some codes I've deciphered I'm starting with my first real advance, which was the discovery of the pentagram in Bessler's drawing of his wheel in Gruendlicher Bericht and again in Das Triumphans.  The picture below comes from  my own copy of Das Triumphans and the one below that shows how I found the pentagon.

In the next drawing note the coloured lines.  The red line traces the path of the rope as it passes behind the wheel on its way from the pulley on the floor up to the window.

The green line is drawn from the wheel's centre of rotation perpendicular to the red line grazing the edge of a weight on the left end of the 'T' bar and terminating at the period which immediately follows the double x's above the top line.

These two lines cros the circumference of the wheel at three points lines allowing us to fill in two of the five chords which make up the pentagon.  The third point lies at the base of the central support column and the point on the circumference of the wheel, which is missing is provided by the blue line which crosses the wheel from left to right aligned with the 'T' bar on the left side of the drawing and runs through the centre of the wheel and wher it crosses the circumference on the far side, identifies the final point of the pentagon.

The fact hat the pentagon is so obviously intentional does add weight to my contention that there is much more hidden information to be discovered and decoded.

So we have a pentagon; so what?  More will be revealed following subsequent explanation of more codes within the same drawing and it will be seen that there is a perfectly sound reason for the inclusion of this particular geometric design, one that has a mechanical importance.  There is no need to summon the assistance of the 'golden mean' or any of the other mystical sciences.

JC

Masonic Codes, Pythagoras and the Rosicrucians - or are they Red Herrings?

There are several people who have discovered hidden codes within Bessler's writings, which appear to allude to Pythagoras, Masonic and Rosicrucian secrets.  Now some of those codes have also been found and investigated by myself and for me they have been useful, but I didn't need to involve the connections currently pointing towards the above more mystical origins.

I'm not suggesting that those who have described their own findings relating to the above, are wrong, but I think that Bessler, immersed as he was, in the 18th century fascination with all things of that nature, literally filled his books with conundrums of a poetic, prosaic and artistic nature, but they were also informative for those who could separate the former from the latter.

Consequently I see posts on the forum which appear to me to be half right but which have missed their intended point which was to inform us, who came after, how he did it.

There has also been much discussion on calculations and maths - this seems to me simply a distraction from what we are all trying to achieve.  Right from the beginning I always sought to imagine a mechanism which operated in a certain way to achieve Bessler's results, but I didn't need any maths to work it out - and with the help of the hidden information which is to be found in Bessler's book, I'm certain that it will prove possible to reconstruct a working version of Bessler's wheel.

What evidence is there that Bessler intended to leave valuable evidence for future readers of his books?  Bessler leaves several hints that there is more to be found in "Apologia Poetica", than might at first reading be visible.  On page 244, he writes "Let every reader give me the benefit of the doubt and ponder on why this book was written".  On page 246 he writes, "I feel forced to write this book, so that all who read it carefully will end up wiser than they began." On page 295 he writes, "Those who are keen to ask questions should ask them of this little book.  My work shall not be revealed prematurely."  On page 309 he writes, "How will things go for me and this book of mine?  Will people truly understand what I'm getting at? The things that remain to be revealed will have to be left for a future ocasion." and so on.

Bessler commented,  "Let every reader give me the benefit of the doubt and ponder on why this book was written"; so, why was the book writter? If the book was written as an aid to sell his machine then he could have made a much better job of it and made it much shorter.  If it was written as a guide to future readers on how his machine worked, by hiding the necessary information in the book, then that makes more sense.  The inclusion of the various encoded mysteries would have been more easily recognised in his day and thus a search for the hidden information more likely to be started.  But even he had doubts, "will people truly understand what I'm getting at?" he asks.

I will be posting some of my decodings in the next few posts and perhaps these will help convince people that there is information available to those with eyes to see.

JC

I'm back! Welcome one and all.

I must apologise for my absence this last few weeks, but thank goodness my house move is completed!  There are still a few boxes waiting to be opened and the contents made to disappear but we're in at last.  I haven't got my workshop yet but I'm confident I will be back at work on wheel building very soon.

I was about 15 years of age when I first encountered the legend of Bessler's wheel and although I immediately suspected the maid's account of how Bessler fooled everyone who came to see his wheel, I never suspected that I would spend the next 56 years years (the rest of my life so far!) trying to discover how he did it.

I think I know now, at last, but as my wife reminded me, I once told a man I was sitting next on a plan to Florida back in 1996, I was on the verge of a breakthrough even then!  But I wasn't, and it is part of my routine to remind myself to keep my enthusiasn/self-confidence under conrol.

My first wheel took the form of a hollow three dimensional swastika made of balsa wood.  It had one large ballbearing in each leg and remained absolutely motionless unless you nudged it a little when it would turn about a quarter of a revolution and then stop again.

There have been so many different versions since then that I have lost count but it must be well over a hundred and possibly two hundred.  Not a single one has shown any inclination to turn more than five or six turns before stopping.  Am I ever tempted to chuck the whole research after so many failures?  No, because I know that that Bessler's wheel was genuine and I have broken so many pieces of code that I think I have the solution.  I was writing up my conclusions until I started to move house and I shall return to it as soon as I can and I will publish it, but I want if possible, to build it first to test my hypothesis.

I believe that the clues I've found clearly show evidence of Bessler's intention to hide information which would help to understand the workings of his wheel, but the best evidence remains hidden in chaper 55 of the Apologia Poetica.  See my website at http://www.orffyreus.net/ for information about the clues I've found in Apologia Poetica.

Discussions have surfaced again on the besslerwheel forum about the drawings in Apologia Poetica and in Das Triumphans and the inclusion of pentagrams, see my own interpretations at my website at http://www.theorffyreuscode.com./html/apologia_wheel.html

These interpretations were made a few years ago, and I have found and solved many more since then, but as they refer directly to the wheel I am working on (soon!) I prefer to keep  my findings to myself until I have had at least one attemt to translate them into a physical reality.

One thing I do know and that is this, should my own efforts fail I am certan that the information I pass on will lead to a successful working wheel by someone with a more skilled engineering talent.

It's good to be back!

JC

The Legend of Bessler's Wheel.

I have replaced my usual blog with a brief account of the legend of Bessler's wheel.  I'm currently unable to maintain the frequency of my blog due to commitments which are keeping me exceedingly busy!  

Once I have completed my house purchase, and have set up a new workshop so that I can finish my wheel tests, I shall return to the blog - plus I shall have published my interpretation of a large number of Bessler's clues, none of which relate to Bessler's portraits. So there should ample reason for discussion.

23rd May 2016

JC

The legend of Bessler’s Wheel began on 6th June 1712, when Johann Bessler announced that he had invented a perpetual motion machine and he would be exhibiting it in the town square in Gera, Germany, on that day.  Everyone was free to come and see the machine running.  It took the form of a wheel mounted between two pillars and ran continuously until it was stopped or its parts wore out. The machine attracted huge crowds.  Although they were allowed to examine its external appearance thoroughly, they could not view the interior, because the inventor wished to sell the secret of its construction for the sum of 10,000 pounds – a sum equal to several millions today.

News of the invention reached the ears of high ranking men, scientists, politicians and members of the aristocracy.  They came and examined the machine, subjected it to numerous tests and concluded that it was genuine. Only one other man, Karl, the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel, was allowed to view the interior and he testified that the machine was genuine. He is a man well-known in history as someone of the greatest integrity, and  the negotiations between Bessler and Karl took place against a background in which Karl acted as honest broker between the warring nations of Europe; a situation which required his absolute rectitude both in appearance and in action.

There were several attempts to buy the wheel, but negotiations always failed when they reached an impasse – the buyer wished to examine the interior before parting with the money, and the inventor fearing that once the secret was known the buyer would simply leave without paying and make his own perpetual motion machine, would not permit it.  Sadly, after some thirty years or more, the machine was lost to us when the inventor fell to his death during construction of another of his inventions, a vertical axle windmill.

However, the discovery of a series of encoded clues has led many to the opinion that the inventor left instructions for reconstructing his wheel, long after his death.  The clues were discovered during the process of investigating the official reports of the time which seemed to rule out any chance of fraud, hence the  interest in discovering the truth about the legend of Bessler’s wheel.

My own curiosity was sparked by the realisation that an earlier highly critical account by Bessler's maid-servant, which explained how the wheel was fraudulently driven, was so obviously flawed and a lie, that I was immediately attracted to do further research. In time I learned that there was no fraud involved, so the wheel was genuine and the claims of the inventor had to be taken seriously.

The tests which the wheel was subjected to involved lifting heavy weights from the castle yard to the roof, driving an Archimedes water pump and an endurance test lasting 56 days under lock and key and armed guard.  Bessler also organised demonstrations involving running the wheel on one set of bearings opened for inspection – and then transferring the device to a second set of open bearings, both sets having been examined to everyone’s satisfaction, both before, after and during the examination.

So the only problem is that modern science denies that Bessler's wheel was possible, but my own research has shown that this conclusion is wrong.  There is no need for a change in the laws of physics, as some  have suggested, we simply haven't covered every possible scenario in the evaluating the number of possible configurations.

I have produced copies of all Bessler's publications, with English translations.  They can be obtained by clicking on the appropriate links on the right.

JC

Johann Bessler's use of Codes

Did Johann Bessler leave any clues?

Were any encrypted?

Was there more than one kind of clue?

Were they intended to help us reconstruct his wheel or was there some other reason??

Johann Bessler left numerous clues of such a diverse nature that although researchers have made some progress in interpreting some of the clues, in almost every case each researcher has discovered that a different method of encoding them has been used.

My own work on chaper 55 of Apologia Poetica can be seen at http://www.orffyreus.net/

It doesn't reveal any hidden information other than the fact that there definitely is a code and an extensive one.

I have also presented some other codes at my web site at http://www.theorffyreuscode.com./ Again these offer little other than the code and my interpretation of each one, and they appear to be indicating fiurther research is needed in order to understand what they mean.

Øystein has made signifiant advances in deciphering another range of codes totally unrelated to those I have mentioned above.  He has shared with myself some examples of his work and it cannot be denied that what he has found was intentional and therefore authored by Bessler himself.  There is also the work done by Ken B.  Unfortunately I have not had access to his findings so I am unable to verify it but he is planning to publish details shortly and then perhaps we can form an opinion

Where as Oystein's work is a combination of what I might call alphagraphical codes although it doesn't relate to QR bar codes, Ken's has found information in Bessler's portraits.  My own work involves yet another variation on the codes used, this time deducing the author's intention from clues within certain of Bessler's drawings.

Finally there are a number of textual hints which seem on the face of it either meaningless or too ambiguous to be of practical value, however when taken together with other clues, some sense can be made of them.

It is clear from the above and other areas of research that Bessler did indeed intend to leave enough practical informtion to allow us to reconstruct his wheel.  I know that there have been several statements both here and on the forum that we shall never know whether we have reconstructed Bessler's wheel or simply found another way to produce similar results, but in my opinion which comes from informed research, there are a number of pieces of useful information, which indicate why his wheel worked and how, so that the reconstruction of a wheel very similar to Bessler's will be achieved and in the near future.

I think that the detailed explanation in a textual format will be found in Chapter 55 of Apologia Poetica, but the graphic explanations which may be intended to supplement the text version will be found in Bessler's drawings.  Elsewhere there are the hints in the text which suggest the answer may be found in Apologia Poetica, and as I've said above, specifically in chapter 55.  There are also numerous tiny clues which seem to point to 5, 5 and 5 or 55; why the number 5? I think everyone knows my feelings on that, but using the number 5 may also have presented itself as the obvious choice for which chapter to include the extensive codes in, hence chaper 55.  

Also he initiated the whole encodement question by adopting the pseudonym Orffyreus, and you can see more about that on my web site at http://www.theorffyreuscode.com./

From all the hints and statements he made we can be sure that Bessler did intend for his wheel to be rediscovered should he unfortunately die before a buyer could be found - and he stated that he would be content with post humous acknowledgement - if that is not an unequivocal allusion to information being available after his death, then I don't know what it.

J

A Repudiation of Certain Statements made in Comments on this Blog.

It has been suggested here on this blog that "Bessler's wheel requires no energy to prime the weights even though they produce an imbalance providing torque to turn the wheel."

I disagree that the weights are "primed" as you put it, without requiring energy, they have to be lifted in the first place.  This requires energy. On the other hand I agree that the wheels turn according to "known physics".  So your suggestion that your wheel "uses the law of perpetual motion, which requires that no energy is needed to prime the weights ...", does not concur with what you refer to as "known physics"' which does require the consumption of energy.

So, assuming that Bessler did not lie, it is obviously possible to design a way to lift the weights so that they can fall repeatedly and this action must comply with "known physics" , so there is no need to invent a "law of perpetual motion". But the energy to lift the weights after each fall has to be included in the design, it's no use inventing new ways of enabling the weights to overbalance,  hoping that they will rise through the rotation of the wheel.

There is at least one way and possibly more than one, and it can be demonstrated that by incorporating some additional features that each weight can be lifted at the optimum moment in rotation.  This can be achieved with a simple design feature which I'm unwilling to discuss here because I'm writing it up, which easily causes each weight to shoot upwards, just as Bessler described.  I don't expect anyone to believe me without any supporting testimony just as I wouldn't believe anyone else who made such claims.

I will also take issue with the statement that, "you will not find anything in the MT drawings or the codes", not true and my document includes numerous illustrations along with full explanations of some of the clues from MT and some codes which will prove the error in the above quotation.

Finally let me deal with the statement that, "all of Bessler's wheels could theoretically start on their own, it just depends on what state they were left in when they were stopped."  This is demonstrably wrong.  The first two wheels were held stationary when not being demonstrated otherwise they started spontaneously.  Why assume Bessler lied?  It is safe to assume that the many witnesses who were allowed to screw the bolt in and out to slow the wheel down would soon have found the spot in rotation which would allow the wheel stop and remain stationary.  It is also entirely logical that to rotate continuously the wheel must have been in a state of continuous imbalance.  Therefore how could it not start spontaneously?

The latter two wheels could spin in either direction therefore they must have been in a state of continuous balance, as opposed to imbalance, and therefore how could they possibly start spontaneously?  The action of giving them a gentle push in the desired direction led to acceleration in that chosen direction, once one weight was heard to fall.  Once the wheel was stopped it remained stationary, and because a weight had to fall before it began to accelerate, it would not be possible to stop it in a position from whence it could spontaneously begin to rotate.

I have tried to argue logically without using any information I am privy to, which is unknown to readers of this blog, to try to balance some of the statements issuing from the hand of a certain commentator.  Much of this person's output is erroneous, self-opinionated and an example ofself-aggrandisement and should be taken with a large dose of scepticism, as should his claims to imminent success.

JC

Update for April 2016

While I await completion of the purchase of my house, I am unable to do any wheel building, so I'm working on the configuration of the mechanisms to try to improve and simplify the actions.  This can be a good task to undertake as it can lead to new ideas and also the discovery of potential problem areas.   Predictably I have found a weak spot in my design which is easily overcome and my enforced idleness has given me the opportunity to find this before I had continued with my build.  I tend to attack these new designs with too much enthusiasm and haste and then find I've got to go back a couple of steps to correct things.

My publishing intentions are still firm and at least I have the time now to work on the document and make any necessary alterations.

So my plan is to continue to finish and publish all the information I have acquired which I believe Bessler left for us in the hope that we would understand it and replicate his work.  At the same time l'm continuing to look at my design and once I'm back in my workshop, I will try to finish my proof of principle wheel or at least the mechanism, and publish a video of it with accompanying commentary.

For those who may think I'm prevaricating about my hypothesis document I must tell you that it is proving a complex composition.  It currently runs to more than 40 pages with more than 38 illustrations and there are more in the pipeline. If this seems a lot, be assured that it is necessary.  If I am to prove that Johann Bessler left enough instructions to permit the construction of his wheel, exactly in the form that he built his own, then I have to show the clues as he left them and how they reveal the solutions.  Each clue forms part of the whole, but it had to be obscure otherwise it would be too obvious and his secret revealed too soon.

Which ever comes first does not matter to me, I will publish both. In the mean time I will continue to write my blog when I feel that I have something worth saying.  I hope that you will stay with me at least to give me your reactions when publication happens.

JC