50 years of Research into the Life of Johann Bessler.

Over the last few years I have acquired a fairly thick skin and I try to ignore the unflattering comments that are occasionally aimed in my direction.  Some recent suggestions about my character are disrespectful and I feel that I should try to set the record straight.

I've spent all my spare time over the last 50 years or so researching the legend of Bessler's wheel.  As a result of my research I self-published a biography of Bessler, Perpetual Motion, An Ancient Mystery Solved?

I also published four books authored by Bessler complete with translations into English, they are, Gruendlicher Bericht,  Apologia Poetica,  Das Triumphirende and Maschinen Tractate.  I don't know any German so I had to have the translations done for me.

I obtained a large amount of information over many years from English and German libraries consisting newspaper reports, letters and other documents. Still no German language skills, so more translation needed.

My first website went up in 1998 and I had to teach myself about computers and the internet and book publishing, I was an aircraft engineer back then and there wasn’t much call for computer literacy, nor internet savvy or self-publishing back in the 1990s.  

I've published several websites disclosing my findings on Bessler's codes etc, my ideas about how Bessler's wheel worked, kiiking, the remain of his windmill etc.

My intention then was to put as much information about the legend of Bessler’s wheel, out there as I possibly could.  Nothing’s changed and all I wanted then, as now, is for someone to succeed, me if possible, but anyone would do. I have already said that if I was to succeed, I don't wan't to patent it, I would just publish the whole thing freely so that no one could patent it.

I made a commitment to publish on a certain date which seemed achievable, but I failed to make it.  I’ve apologised and I gave my reasons.   I won’t be making any more commitments to do something on a certain date.  I don’t think I’ve broken any promises other than one I just mentioned.  This project has cost a lot of money and in no way has it financed holidays to Spain etc, and I utterly refute all the unpleasant comments and suggestions posted here lately.

JC

Johann Bessler the Showman.

When Johann Bessler discovered the secret of free, clean and simple energy generation, he didn’t concern himself with the ‘expert’s opinion that what he was claiming was impossible.  He knew instinctively if he could work out the correct arrangement of weights his wheel would spin.  He understood that the energy which made his wheels turn came from the weights, and they were made to fall and create an out of balance wheel by the action of gravity on them.  There was nothing magical about it, it was the natural heaviness of all things which had mass.  The heavier a weight was the more potential energy it had. 

When he found the right arrangement, the wheel began to rotate.  He had to stop it by force, which means that if he released it, it would begin to spin again, therefore it must have been permanently out of balance. Obviously to conserve the machine he fitted a brake so that it would not wear out its parts when not required to move.

It is not logical to suggest that he stopped it in a certain position so that it would begin to spin as soon as the brake was released.  There was no such position available, otherwise the wheel could not even begin to spin continuously and without permanent imbalance there would portions of each rotation which would present as slowing down and then speeding back up.  More than one witness remarked on the extremely steady and even rotation of the wheel.

We know that the wheel could be slowed down under load.  Early witnesses to the first wheel at Gera, were allowed to adjust the speed by means of a bolt which could be screwed in or out as desired, to apply a braking pressure.  We also know that the largest wheel, at Kassel, turned at 26 rpm, whenturning freely, but slowed to 20 rpm when lifting the box of bricks.  Again this is logical and not a negative factor, all machines tend to slow when under load.

I note that there are a few negative opinions expressed here about the potential of Bessler’s wheel.   No one can possibly know at this stage what potential there may be in this device, nor what other uses it may be adapted to.  We judge the potential power of Bessler’s wheel by the tests demonstrated over 300 years ago, but we cannot make accurate assumptions based on so little information.  Wolff suggested that the four times pulleys visible at the Merseburg test were needed to lift the box of stones, but we don’t know if that was necessary for the lift, or merely to slow it down for the witnesses.

That is just one example of the dangers of trying to assess the wheel’s potential from limited evidence.  That wheel turned at almost twice the speed of the Kassel wheel, although it was the same size but only just under a foot thick...why?  Did Bessler deliberately design it to turn slower?

The Merseburg wheel had an axle of just under six inches (5.6inches) and it turned at around 40 rpm although some reports indicated a speed of 50 rpm, perhaps when unloaded. A 5.6 inch axle has a circumference of 17.58 inches, so for a rope wrapped around the wheel it would travel 17.58 inches for each turn of the wheel.  40 turns would lift a weight more than 58 feet in one minute,  to the top of the Schloss Merseburg.

When Wolff visited Merseburg he commented on the pulley system and included it in his report,  suggesting that this might indicate that the wheel was not very powerful.  But there are a couple of  things to bear in mind about this report.

Firstly Wolff was on the brink of accepting an offer of a very senior position with the Czar of Russia, Peter the Great, and we know that the Czar was planning to buy Bessler’s wheel, and Wolff stated that he could improve the performance of the wheel if he were allowed to have access to it in his new position. So take his apparent dismissal of the wheel's power with a large pinch of salt.

Secondly, Bessler was the consummate showman and having noted Wolff’s comments about the pulleys he designed a wheel which moved more slowly but with the same amount of power.  I think Bessler added the pulleys at Merseburg, to slow down the lift because a one minute lift created its own problems.

For a start Bessler needed his brother down in the castle yard to load the chest of  bricks to the rope and shout when he was ready. Someone had to tell Bessler when to stop the wheel when the box reached the pulley, outside the window. Then he needed to reverse the lift back down to his brother and stop the wheel before it completely unravelled from the axle.  A second demonstration immediately could be arranged and repeated as often as wished, but how much better if he slowed the lift down fourfold. More time for each lift, more time for the witnesses to study the wheel in action, and fewer demonstrations necessary to show its lifting power without any loss in performance.

Also with  all the witnesses crowded into the machine room, watching Bessler, and peering out the windows to see the load going up and down, it must have been difficult to satisfy everyone present. No wonder he decided to make the wheel at Kassel turn more slowly. He did state that he could make wheels with different speeds and lifting capabilities and of various sizes.

One more thing; we note that the chest held about 70 lbs of stones.  Have you ever lifted 70lbs? The average hold luggage on an aircraft is about 50lbs, so 70lbs is probably more than sufficient to make the point.

JC

Johann Bessler’s Need for Recognition.

Ever since I came to the conclusion that Johann Bessler’s wheel was genuine, I have tried to find the solution.  I used to lie awake at night, and imagine designing a solution and then building it in my spare time, out of balsa wood, lolly/popsicle sticks, glue, cardboard, sticky tape, marbles and meccano.  I graduated to wood and ali/steel etc, but I was never attracted to simulations because for me the actual building of the mechanism gave me ideas for alternative designs, and alterations that might help.  Nothing did though, but it didn’t put me off.

I tried to put myself in Bessler’s shoes; I reasoned that if he was genuine then it seemed extremely unlikely that he would not have had some fall back position, failsafe  or backstop, with which he could either prove that he had the solution before anyone else, or just to show his wheel was real....or do so after his death.

Bessler was careful about maintaining secrecy about how his wheel worked, dismantling it each time he moved house, and yet trying to prove that it was not a fake by demonstrating tests which might only be possible if his claims were true, in front of prominent citizens and rulers.  It is clear from his publications that he was desperate to gain acceptance from the world at large and those publications contain several hints and ambiguous pieces of advice which add support to the idea that everything anyone needed to know was hidden within those books.

In which case there must have been some system either published or waiting to be found (such as Maschinen Tractate) which would provide some or all of the proof required.  I looked for and found a wealth of clues, codes, and ambiguous hints at their existence.

I have posted many of the hints and suggestions at actual code, but none of it provides anything useful in seeking the solution, their sole purpose is to tell anyone who will listen that the information is out there and it is waiting for the right person to find it, decipher it and make a working wheel.

I say none of it is useful in finding the solution, but that is not entirely true.Some of the clues are very useful but cloaked in ambiguity. They provide additional informaton which as far as I am aware no one has so far decoded, apart from myself.

I'm considering placing a piece of coded information again on my blog, which contains information about one or two of those piecs of information along with their explanation, I just have to work out an indecipherable code!  The reason being, like Bessler, I want to be able to prove that I got the answer before someone else gets it and publishs it.  For that reason I understand Bessler's motivation in encoding so much information.

JC

Could Someone Set My Poem To Music?

Too much to do and too little time to do it in, so instead of writing a blog this week, I’m posting a poem I wrote many years ago.  But here’s the thing, I’m kind of hoping that there might be someone out there who has a musical bent and would like to try to write a melody to accompany the words!

No, a ‘bent’ is not a musical instrument! I mean they have a talent for music.  You never know, a recording accompanying a video of a working wheel might earn the tunesmith a few coins! To be honest it wasn’t my idea, my granddaughter Amy suggested it

I would not sing it even if it had a tune.  My voice isn’t just bad, it has been said it falls some where between a frog’s croak and rusty hinges. Amy did suggest I rap it but I didn’t know what she meant! Actually I do and she thinks the words lend themselves to rap, but I don’t really like rap. So if you think you have the voice to attempt the singing, rap or ballad or rock, apply here!

I don't know if anyone ever uses the wayback machine, I just found a copy of one of my first free-energy.co.uk webspages; bit of a shock, but interesting to me.  1998! Its like a time machine. I posted this poem back in 2003! So hopeful back in 1998, where have the years gone.

This Ancient Mystery, I have sought, for many years, to solve and thought
The secret of the wheel's construction lay beyond mere skilled deduction.
So I brought the world's attention to this greatest missed invention.
Hoped someone’s  ability’d recover this facility.

Yet scarcely had the thought occurred before I realised how absurd
It was that I should have the notion I could solve Perpetual Motion!
This Ancient Mystery's merely myth, credited by those whose kith
And kin forgot what they had learned, that energy spent must first be earned.

Despite this fact there was some doubt - did Bessler find a way about
This obstacle to energy, and find a force that's pure and free?
Long ago my doubts were dashed, for sudden inspiration flashed,
The energy whose source I sought was all around - its cost was naught.
And wherein lies this bold solution that will solve the world's pollution?

The answer lies in Gravity, a source of energy that's free.
Conservative - its attitude to work is that its magnitude
Remains the same. It does not stop. It's constant and it makes things drop.
It’s said that this is contrary to what we think is verity,
Gravity cannot be used and those who think so are confused.

It matters not who's right or wrong - the clues have been there all along.
Bessler wrote in ciphers rare but paranoid, he did not dare
Reveal a clue - changed his ambition - sought posthumous recognition.
Hid in text, cryptic instruction, showing us complete construction.
His secret solved will be the key to giving us free energy.

If you believe this can't be true, suspend your judgement - see if you
Can find a fault in what you read about the proof, with which I plead.
My aim is clear, intent is strong, to show that Bessler has been wronged.



Please feel free to quote this poem as long as you acknowledge the author (John Collins)

Kassel Wheel, unloaded = 26 RPM, 8 Impacts at Every Turn

There are some assumptions regarding Bessler’s largest wheel and I  thought it might be interesting to reconsider the sounds coming from the 12 foot, 18 inch wheel at Kassel.

We have Fischer von Erlach’s excellent account of his two hour examination of the wheel, which he confirmed turned at 26 RPM when unloaded.  He described the sound of about eight weights landing on the side towards which the wheel turned in each revolution. This was a bi-directional wheel which could be started in either direction with a small push with just one finger in the desired direction. This brief push resulted in the wheel accelerating to its top speed within a few turns.

A speed of 26 RPM means that the wheel took just over 2 seconds per turn, so let’s simplify this and use a figure of exactly 2 seconds per turn, giving a speed of 30 RPM.

Imagine you are standing close to this wheel; it is 12 feet high and wide.  Your average house probably has 8 foot ceilings and maybe the room itself is only 12-foot wide, so this wheel is HUGE. You are counting the number of RPM, but you are also counting the number of heavy thumps you can hear for each turn.  Visualise in your mind that you are pointing your finger at the top of the wheel as it turns and follow it down to its lowest point in rotation and that takes 1 second.  You follow the same point on the wheel as it climbs upwards to the top starting point, another single second.  In each second you have to count 4 noises, 8 in a single turn of 2 seconds.

It’s not difficult to count 8 in 2 seconds, but it does convey the size and power being demonstrated in a way that might not be apparent to the casual acceptance of the facts.

You can hear what this sounds like if you go to ....

https://www.imusic-school.com/en/tools/online-metronome/

With  2 seconds per turn and 8 thumps per turn, you have 4 thumps  per second. Enter 4 times 60 to set the metronome at 240 per minute. This gives you an impression of the number of noises von Erlach could hear for each spin of the wheel. It provides a real time idea of the sound of the wheel. 

It must have been a difficult task to identify which sounds had the same cause i.e., the sound of the landing weights, against a background of reversing mechanisms which were designed to turn the wheel the opposite way.  I know many people favour some kind of reversing mechanism rather than a mirrored one, but there must have been other sounds besides the ones von Erlach mentions.

I also favour the possibility that Bessler reduced some of the sounds by applying felt, something he admitted doing in earlier wheel’s. I wonder if there were any gaps discernible in the 8 sounds von Erlach heard?  He doesn’t mention any so I assume there weren’t any, but also Bessler could have  added fake sounds to confuse his visitors. In other words, although his report is a useful guide,  we  should not get too hung up on the 8 sounds he described.

This is just reminder to find a way to look with new eyes at the Kassel wheel.

And on another matter: 

My granddaughter Amy is in a rehab clinic trying to recover from a series of diseases which suddenly afflicted her about eighteen months ago.  They are CRPS, FND and EDS.  Sorry for the alphabet abreviations but you can google them if you are curious.

Please share the following link and/or donate if you wish to aid my granddaughter's treatment. 

www.helpamy.co.uk/

JC

Help Amy to Walk Again.

I know most of you are aware of my granddaughter’s serious illness, which is officially incurable, but  Amy has a real fighting spirit and is making progress at last.  She has Complex Regional Pain Syndrome also known as Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy Syndrome in the USA. In addition she has developed Functional Neurological Disorder.  She also has Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  Before the CRPS appeared she had no health problems at all and lived a normal healthy life, as a teacher.  She taught reception class, the new kids, and they all adored her.  Many of them have donated via their parents and Amy has received many good wishes cards and paintings from the children.

https://rugbyobserver.co.uk/editions/view/?/Rugby/2019/06/13&024o

An article on page three of the local paper where my granddaughter Amy lives is available via the above link.  I have put a copy here but it is probably too hard to read.  She lives in Rugby, home of the best sport in the world - Rugby!

The article gives an update on her progress at the STEPS rehabilitation clinic in Sheffield, and they are working a miracle but she has far to go.  Her crowd funding site has raised over £23000 so far, but at £5000 a week, she will need a lot more.

Several people here have been very generous and our whole family appreciate every single donation even if it’s just £5.  We are organising a fundraising event on 12th July at Amy’s old school in Kenilworth, which will have live music, comedians, an amazing raffle and an auction of valuable items.  You can only take part in the auction if you are there.  You can buy tickets from www.helpamy.co.uk

We are expecting one or two celebrities to attend but I can’t say who until we have written confirmation.  Even if you prefer not to donate or have already done so, I would be so pleased if you could share this page or better still her website at www.helpamy.co.uk

Amy also publishes vlogs and these can be accessed via the same web site.

Thank you for your time and patience, normal service will be returned shortly!

JC

Some Clues.....Belatedly!

Following a fair criticism in comments, I have taken on board the suggestion that I should at least have given away some of the clues I used to discover Bessler’s design for his wheel. I have posted several clues over a number of years but for those who missed them, here are some of the ones previously identified plus some I didn’t mention.  These are not necessarily in order.

The first one I wrote about suggested that the note which was found along with the MT drawings did not only refer to the MT but also to any other drawings.  The most instructive drawings have proved to be  those found in DT.  They contain everything you need to know about how to reconstruct Bessler’s wheel - yes, everything.  The point about MT is that it was planned to be a teaching aid, and he added the comment about other drawings when he was arrested.  There was no intention to leave a series of clues in his original design of the drawings, but he added the Toys page to replace some that led to the ultimate design.  They are numbered, but not all by Bessler, so apart from the first 55, there are no comments adjacent to the drawings.

The second one pointed out the existence of the pentagram in not just one of the DT drawings but all of them.

The third one pointed to the existence of a clock within GB and one of the DT drawings.

The fourth one pointed out that the numbers in the above two drawings added up to 660 which when divided by the number of hours in the clock totalled 55.

The fifth one pointed out that the numbers in the two conjoined drawings used the numbers 1 to 10, which also adds up to 55.

The sixth one discussed the inclusion of the extra E for Ernst, added to Bessler’s forenames.  E, the fifth letter of the alphabet, with the atbash cipher applied produced R.  You can see in his logo at the top of this page that he uses two Rs in opposite directions to each other, to support the O of Orffyreus.  The O is sometimes shown as a circumpunct, which represents his wheel.  The reason for its inclusion is because the letter R mimics the path of his weights.  The two opposing Rs also supports my conclusion that the two way wheels were driven by mirror image mechanisms.

The seventh one discusses the addition of the letter J for Johann in his forenames.  When atbashed this produces W.  W is actually double V, which Bessler includes for its use as the Roman numeral for 5 giving 55 again.

The eighth one refers to the large number of NBs and  NBs in AP.  These are designed to point to the shape of the rope which appears in several drawings.  It indicates the path of the connecting rope between two mechanisms.  The italic NB is added to make you question why?  Because italic ones don’t have parallel uprights, just as the actual ropes doesn’t.

The ninth one is extra to the fifth one.  The two conjoined drawings add up to a total of 90, by adding and duplicating numbers in the right hand drawing.  The left side includes a pentagram; 90 divided by 5 gives 18, the base number of every angle possible in the pentagram. 18, 36, 54, 72, 90 and 108.

The tenth one does of course refer to the drawing in AP which I have demonstrated in the orffyreus codes pages, contains a pentagram and nothing more

These ten items barely scratch the surface of Bessler’s ingenuity in providing clues in front of our eyes.  I haven’t even had to look them up I am so familiar with them all. I can spout them all in quick fire delivery because they are so clear to me.  I could give you another ten tomorrow and another ten the day after. 

Why 55? 5 mechanisms, five for each direction,  

 And on another matter:

My granddaughter Amy is in a rehab clinic trying to recover from a series of diseases which suddenly afflicted her about eighteen months ago.  They are CRPS, FND and EDS.  Sorry for the alphabet abreviations but you can google them if you are curious.

 
Please share the following link and/or donate if you wish to aid my granddaughter's treatment.

www.helpamy.co.uk/

JC

Bessler’s Wheel and the Orffyreus Code.

As I'm currently away and it is difficult to write blogs on my ipad, I'm reposting a previous blog which is simply a brief description of the the legend of Bessler's wheel.

 

 

  The Legend of Bessler's wheel.

 

On 6th June, 1712, in Germany, Johann Bessler (also known by his pseudonym, Orffyreus) announced that after many years of failure, he had succeeded in designing and building a perpetual motion machine.  For more than fourteen years he exhibited his machine and allowed people to thoroughly examine it.  Following advice from the famous scientist, Gottfried Leibniz, he devised a number of demonstrations and tests designed to prove the validity of his machine without giving away the secret of its design.

After more than thirty years he died in poverty.  He had asked for a huge sum of money for the secret, £20,000 which was an amount only affordable by kings and princes, and although many were interested, none were prepared to agree to the terms of the deal. Bessler required that he be given the money and the buyer take the machine without verifying that it worked.  Those who sought to purchase the wheel, for that was the form the machine took, insisted that they see the secret mechanism before they parted with the money. Bessler feared that once the design was known the buyers could simply walk away knowing how to build his machine and he would get nothing for his trouble.

This problem was anticipated by Bessler and he took extraordinary measures to ensure that his secret was safe, but he encoded all the information needed to reconstruct the machine in a small number of books that he published. It is well-known that he was prepared to die without selling the secret and that he believed that post humus acknowledgement was preferable to being robbed of his secret while he yet lived.

I became curious about the legend of Bessler’s Wheel, while still in my teens, and have spent most of my life researching the life of Johann Bessler (I’m now 74).  I obtained copies of all his books and had them translated into English and self-published them, in the hope that either myself or someone else might solve the secret and present it to the world in this time of pollution, global warming and increasingly limited energy resources.

It has recently become clear that Bessler had a huge knowledge of the history of codes and adopted several completely different ones to disguise information within his publications.  I have made considerable advances in deciphering one of his codes; the simplest one, and I am confident that I have the complete design.  Due to unfortunate family circumstances I am currently unable to complete the build I have undertaken but shall return to it as soon as possible and I sincerely believe that 2019 will see the reconstruction of Bessler’s wheel.

Johann Bessler published three books, and digital copies of these with English translations may be obtained from the links to the right of this blog.  In addition there is a copy of his unpublished document containing some 141 drawings - and my own account of Bessler’s life is also available from the links.  It is called "Perpetual Motion; An Ancient Mystery Solved?"  Bessler published three books; "Grundlicher Bericht", "Apologia Poetica" and "Das Triumphirende..."

I have also published Bessler's collection of 141 drawings and I have called it Maschinen Tractate, but it was originally found in the form of a number drawings of perpetual motion designs. Many of these have handwritten notes attached and I have published the best English translation of them that I was able to get. Bessler never published these drawings but clearly intended to do so at some point.

For some ideas about Bessler’s code why not visit one of my web sites at www.theorffyreuscode.com

One last thing.  Perpetual Motion machines have been utterly proscribed and Johann Bessler’s claims ridiculed - however, it seems that more than a handful of scientists have now come to the conclusion that it might theoretically be possible to design a mechanical system which is continuously out-of-balance and therefore will turn continuously using the repeated fall of weights for energy.  Gravity but not directly.  These open-minded people remain tight lipped for now, awaiting proof of their hypothesis.

 

And on another matter:

My granddaughter Amy is in a rehab clinic trying to recover from a series of diseases which suddenly afflicted her about eighteen months ago.  They are CRPS, FND and EDS.  Sorry for the alphabet abreviations but you can google them if you are curious.

 
Please share the following link and/or donate if you wish to aid my granddaughter's treatment.

www.helpamy.co.uk/

JC

A Brief Response to My Fickle Friends.

Despite my concerns about failing to deliver the finished wheel, I felt I had to post something to explain why.  I confess I was not expecting such an angry reaction.  I suppose I should have realised that many people had high expectations of learning some interesting information which they might not know and I let them down.

I won’t be making any more commitments, I’ll just get on with my build.  I only made the promise in order to try and drag myself out of the mood of procrastination which was a feature of the general air of despondency which has enveloped our family over the last eighteen months.  It worked to a degree but was not sufficient to allow me to complete my self appointed task on time and I bitterly regret deciding to go public with such an important commitment, it was a mistake and one I won’t be repeating.

I am grateful to those who made supportive comments encouraging me to continue.  Those others are welcome to leave, they will not be missed.  

I have lived and breathed Bessler since I was about fifteeen years of age, in fact a quotation by Swami Vivekananda sums up my attitude.  He wrote, "Take up one idea, make that idea your life. Think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone.  This is the way to success,"

So the many disparaging comments from people I believed were friends, in response to my honest admission, have reignited my determination to finish what I started. I suppose I should thank them but I won't, because I'd have finished the project in due course any way.

Please share the following link and donate if you wish to aid

  my granddaughter's treatment for CRPS, FND and EDS

https://www.helpamy.co.uk/

JC