Update April 2020

I have received a little criticism from time to time, about my apparent inability to produce a working Bessler wheel, plus my book describing the details of the decoded clues with a full set of explanatory diagrams and a video of the wheel.   It’s true that I haven’t produced any of the above, but I’m not going to share my deciphered clues before I’m ready.  The wheel will be ready when it’s finished as will the book. 

I have been so excited about the many clues I’ve solved so far, that I have been tempted, many times, to begin posting them on my blog, but my other half has a wise head and she tells me to be patient, don’t give anything away until it’s all finished and ready.  She said I’d only regret it if I began to share things now and I’d come to wish I hadn’t, later.

My work on the wheel is progressing slowly and I’m also completing the book, at the same time, and I keep going back to improve what I’ve written or drawn already.  The garage is warm enough now so in between working on the book, I’m in there every day, working on the wheel.  One of the reasons for the snail-like progress is the other commitments which engage my time.  I cannot, neither do I wish, to relinquish any of them, but I’m doing my best to cover all exigencies.  I don’t regret the delay in what should be a relatively quick project, but I do offer my humble apologies for keeping everyone waiting, (those of you who haven’t given up on me!)

I have been accused of the same things that I accused Behrendt of,  imagining clues and finding clues which don’t exist.  Fair enough, I have said many times that I know the secret and that I’m going to share all my discoveries, and yet nothing has been published yet.  But it will all be in the public domain as soon as I can arrange it.  However frustrating it may be for you, I can assure you it is just  as bad for me.  I’m brimming with excitement to reveal all,  but I know there is a risk that it will be ignored or dismissed unless I can show a working Bessler’s wheel at the same time, along with a video and a sim.  That will be the proof I need to publish and anything short of that makes a successful outcome less positive.

My personal opinion is that as soon as anyone sees the design, they will ‘get it’ and become convinced that it’s correct, even without a working wheel or a sim, but having seen the reactions to other ‘proofs’, I just want to make sure that my work is accepted as quickly as possible and people around the world seize the initiative and develop a fully functioning electricity generator along with other utilities that may become evident in time.  That requires the evidence of a proof of principle wheel.

Finally, I remain convinced that a patent is completely unnecessary and will have the effect of slowing the development of a practical gravity-enabled wheel.

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Finally, finally! Many of you may recall that my granddaughter Amy, is suffering from PTSD and FND and has a crowdfunding page at  www.helpamy.co.uk

I thought I’d add a picture of the two of us to show how lovely she is....

She is a primary school teacher, a keen amateur dancer, and full of energy.  Since the onset of these diseases she had lost the ability to walk, sit up, hold her head up and had to be fed through a tube in her nose.  Thanks to STEPS rehab clinic she has recovered control of her head, she can sit up, eat normally and some of the side effects of these illnesses have significantly diminished.

Unfortunately, STEPS has been persuaded to take a number of corona-19 virus patients and all the non-urgent cases have been shipped out to other clinics.  Amy has ended up 200 miles away from home instead of 100 miles, but none of us can visit anyway because of the lockdown.  Amy is still making progress and has got some limited control in her legs and has made an attempt to stand, which was halfway successful.

Our major concern is what happens next and any donation to her crowdfunding site would still be gratefully received, and can I say a big thank you to the kind people who have already donated.

JC

Bessler’s Wheel vs Water Wheel.

This is somewhat speculative, but an argument against the oft-stated opinion that Bessler’s wheel will  have little real power.

There have been several attempts to estimate the potential power in Bessler’s wheel, but given the paucity of information about the internal workings, we are limited to using the dimensions, speed and a single estimate of the relative mass of one weight.  Even the size of the chest of stones proves little, as we don’t know the limit that could be lifted.  There is another approach which might give some useful idea of the inherent potential in Bessler’s wheel.

There is a restaurant about a mile from here which straddles the river Avon,  called the Saxon mill, records indicate it was a working mill back in the twelfth century.  The first reference to a waterwheel goes back to 4000 BCE and there are the remains of several Roman water mills throughout England.  According to the Doomsday book in 1086 there were no less than 5624 water mills in England.

My idea was to compare the size and speed of the old water wheels used in the mills and also take a look at the current thinking (sorry, cheap pun!) about modern commercial and diy water mills and try to get assessments of power output from wheels of comparable size and speed to  the Merseburg wheel. I’m sure I don’t need to go into the different types of waterwheel, there is plenty about them on google.  There are several varieties each with their advantages. There is also much about efficiency of modern turbines, but that does not concern us just now.

Much of what follows is gleaned from reputable google websites.

Most of the Roman water wheels were vertical and measured between 5 and 10 feet in diameter, not too different from the size of the Merseburg wheel.  In 1764 the first water-powered cotton mill in the world was constructed in Lancashire.  Below is a picture of an early textile mill, from 1770.   Note the huge size of the wheel, and the gearing used.

The principle challenge of the waterwheel is the low rotational speed, which means that significant gearing up is required to match generator speeds.  The same has been suggested as the problem with Bessler’s wheel. However high power gear units are widely available and have improved the economics of modern waterwheel power schemes up to 50kW and more. A 35kW generator is enough to power everything in a home. Water wheels are cumbersome and far less efficient than hydro turbines but the reason for this discussion is to try to get an idea of the kW output of a Merseburg size wheel.

The Merseburg wheel was about eleven feet in diameter and one foot thick and turned at 40-50 rpm. But the old water wheels turned much more slowly, 7 to 10 rpm was common.  The Lacey wheel on the Isle of Man is the largest working water wheel in the world. It is 72.5 feet in diameter and six feet wide.  It turns at just 3 rpm.  It has an estimated 200 horsepower which is about 150 kW. So back to the Merseburg wheel.

The speed and volume of water and height of its fall affects the power output of a waterwheel, but most can work from minimal amounts of each.

Eleven feet by one foot, turning at 40 rpm. Circumference is say, 35 feet. The rim is moving at 1400 feet per minute or almost 16 mph.  16mph is a strong breeze and if you were cycling at 16mph, you would feel it quite strongly.  How much power might be available from the Merseburg wheel?  No idea, actually because for one we don’t know how heavy the weights were, nor how many there were, but there is one thing we do know - the speed of the rim, 16 mph, and more when it turned 50 rpm, nearly 20 mph.

It reminds me of the feeling I had when I read the maid’s account of how she helped turn the Kassel wheel, I couldn’t prove she was lying, but I knew she was, and it’s the same here, the Merseburg had plenty of power and rotated at far higher speeds than any waterwheel.  Add high gearing and you could drive an electricity generator.  Bessler said his wheel could be scaled up providing more power, obviously this must be true, it’s a common solution to limited output in many machines.

I know, this is not scientific or practical or objective, but sometimes subjective feelings are all you have.

One more thing; there has been so much talk about Bessler’s use of pulleys to increase the lifting power of the wheel.  I have suggested that the slower Kassel wheel was deliberately designed to provide a slower demonstration, obviating the need for pulleys.  In the Merseburg demonstration, with an rpm of 40 or 50, each lift would have been over quickly.  We don’t have the height of the lift but it was described as ‘several Klafter’, each of which was six feet.  Several Klafter could be up to about 50 feet,  although I suspect less, which would use 100 turns of the wheel, and last less than two minutes.  Including the pulleys, extended the length of the demonstration.

The demonstrations took some organising and were observed by several people at a time.  Removing weights, translating the wheel, replacing the weights, making sure that as many people as possible could view the lifting process through the windows, plus of course, Bessler’s own brand of showmanship, would take time.  A lift of less than two minutes might even be missed by some and would be received with less interest and requests for several repeats.  The use of pulleys would help the demonstration.

NB. This, in my opinion, justifies the design of the Kassel wheel, which had two requirements.  Firstly it was needed to run slower for the demonstration, and secondly it had to be able to accomplish the lengthy endurance test. Bessler would have been aware of any wear on the Merseburg wheel bearings and made adjustments to the design of the Kassel wheel to slow it’s rotational speed without reducing its power.  If this assumption is not right, how else do you explain the slower Kassel wheel?  Don’t forget that Bessler stated that he could make wheels large or small with varying power output.

In my opinion Bessler’s wheel will prove to have more than enough power to provide useful amounts of electricity.

JC

Save Time and Money, Don’t Patent.

There has always been a question which haunts the back of the mind of the majority of seekers of a solution to Bessler’s wheel, and it is this - how do I earn some kind of financial reward if I succeed in designing and building a working version of Bessler’s wheel?

I know that some think it’s somehow immoral to seek to earn money for their work but it’s no different to earning money from any discovery.  Many researchers believe that a patent is the way to go, but I urge you to think again.  Patents are time-consuming, expensive and they don’t cover the whole planet.  They require policing to try to control patent infringements and these also have time and money costs.  So how do you get any return on all those years of trial and error?

My personal preferences is to make a reasonably good video of the wheel explaining how it works.  Post it on YouTube and select monetise it.  You need at least 10000 hits before you start to earn some money, but a video of this nature could swiftly get into millions of views. I won’t go into how you monetise a video, there is plenty of advice out there, but it is the way to go.  It takes a little effort to accomplish, but it’s much easier than getting a patent and it costs you nothing.

The result is that you have given away the secret to the world at large and made it impossible for anyone else to patent the design.  Someone will always find a way to improve a design and apply for a patent on the improvement, but that can happen even if you have already got the patent on your design.

Forget the patent route just finish a working proof of principle wheel then do the video.  Tell the world that you have significant potential improvement to the problem of climate change, pollution from fossil fuel burning and an alternative means of generating cheap clean electricity

Same instructions to self!

JC

Facts not Fiction, will Show the Way to Bessler’s wheel.

It seems to me that people are getting sidetracked into looking for clues in places which are not genuinely repositories for clues actually left by Johann Bessler.  The so-called clues identified by K. Behrendt in his book are not clues left by Bessler with the intention of guiding us to his design.  I say this with the utmost certainty because I have identified and interpreted enough clues to build his machine and it bears no similarity to the one that Behrendt claims to have discovered.

There so many errors and false assumptions littering the heavy prose which forms an enormous chunk of the book, that my heart quails at the very thought of identifying them.  In addition the author sketches ideas which become facts which supply sturdy support for his earlier erroneous assumptions.  His conclusions are so flimsy, based as they are on non-evidence that, one could drive a coach and horses through them and utterly destroy them

It may appear that I’m being unfair to Behrendt, but I’m actually trying to defend the truth and Behrendt’s truth is a mere shadow of the reality.  He has published books before on the paranormal, secrets of UFO technology, and numerous articles on time machines, extraterrestrials, the resurrection of the dead, the underworld, haunted houses, the oceanic depths.  The list seems endless, but I hope you get a picture of Mr Behrendt’s interests.  He is not a recorder of truths so much a purveyor of myth and imagination.

I am concerned at the number of people who are advancing Behrendt’s theories without concerning themselves with their origin.  You can have alternative theories and hypotheses, but not alternative facts. Facts that are successfully disputed cease to be facts, while theories that are successfully disputed continue to be theories.

It is for this reason that I continue to record my dislike and concern that people will assume that Behrendt writes with the tacit approval of those, like myself, who have spent most of my spare time throughout some sixty years in publishing only facts which are supported by documentary evidence.  I do not approve of anything which he has written in his book, ostensibly the truth about Bessler's wheel.  Even though some of it comes from my own research which he has by and large failed to acknowledge other than in the the most desultory fashion, but more, far more comes from his own vivid imagination, and you can form an accurate opinion on that by considering the other subjects he waxes enthusiastically about.  None of them are real, just a boy’s  imagination run riot.

JC

Bessler’s Wheel and the Orffyreus Code.

Apologies for putting this up again only I seem to have caught a cold, not  covivid-19 hopefully, and I’m not up to writing a blog.    I’ll return to the blog ASAP.       JC

The Legend of Johann Bessler’s Perpetual Motion Machine.

 The Truth Behind the Legend of Bessler’s Wheel and the Orffyrean Code

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.

Karl the Landgrave of Hesse permitted Bessler to live, work and exhibit his machine at the prince's castle of Weissenstein.  Karl was a man of unimpeachable reputation and he insisted on being allowed to verify the inventor's claims before he allowed Bessler to take up residence  This the inventor reluctantly agreed to and once he had examined the machine to his own satisfaction Karl authorised the  publication of his approval of the machine.  For several years Bessler was visited by numerous people of varying status, scientists, ministers and royalty as well as hundreds of  local inhabitants.  Several official examinations were carried out and each time the examiners concluded that the inventor's claims were genuine.

Over the years Karl’s health began to deteriorate and his sons decided that it was time for the inventor to leave the castle and he was given five years salary and accommodation in the nearby town of Karlshaven. Despite the strong circumstantial evidence that his machine was genuine, Bessler failed to secure a sale and after more than thirty years he died in poverty.  His death came after he fell from a windmill he had been commissioned to build.  The windmill was an interesting design using a vertical axle which allowed it to benefit from winds from any directions.  

He had asked for a huge sum of money for the secret of his perpetual motion machine, £20,000 which was an amount only affordable by kings and princes, and it’s no coincidence that this sum matched that being offered by the British Government as a reward for the invention of a way to establish a ships longitudinal position  at sea.  Bessler clearly believed his invention was equal in value.  Many people were interested in Bessler’s wheel, but 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 viewing the internal workings.  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.  He said that a bag of money should be put on the table and the buyer could take the wheel there and then.  He swore that if he was found cheating he should be beheaded, a not unlikely result if he was found to be a fraud and deceiving his ruler.

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.




This problem of acceptance by his potential buyers 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. He implied 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.


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 his codes and I am cautiously optimistic that I have the complete design.


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, his account of the search for perpetual motion - and my own account of Bessler’s life is also available from the links.  It is called "Perpetual Motion; An Ancient Mystery Solved?"  

Bessler's three published books are entitled "Grundlicher Bericht", "Apologia Poetica" and "Das Triumphirende...". I have called Bessler's collection of 141 drawings his Maschinen Tractate, but it was originally found in the form of a number of loosely collected 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 


I and thousands of others around the world believe that Johann Bessler’s claim to have designed and built a perpetual motion machine, or a continuously rotating device enabled purely by gravity, was genuine.  The circumstantial evidence is compelling.  This device if reconstructed now, could potentially provide cheap clean electricity, and by reducing the need for fossil fuels, provide a huge step forward in reducing carbon emissions in a very short time.

For some ideas about Bessler’s code why not visit my web sites at

www.theorffyreuscode.com  and

www.besslerswheel.com      and

www.orffyreus.net.                and

www.orffyreus.org

For more information go to www.free-energy.co.uk

JC 

Johann Bessler’s GRAVITY Wheel.

There are still a lot of people who accept the view that gravity could not be the sole provider of energy to Bessler’s wheel so here’s what I believe.  First, I am satisfied that Bessler’s wheel was genuine.

Sometimes it is helpful to look again at the evidence.  I am fully aware that his wheel could not have been a perpetual motion machine because they are impossible. However this presumption is dependant on there being no requirement for an external energy source.  I used the word ‘presumption’ because that is how it was suggested perpetual motion machines were supposed to work; no external energy source.  This is also known as a closed system’.

It doesn’t take genius to see that this is impossible, no energy in = no energy out, therefore  no work done.  If we accept that Bessler’s wheel worked then we should consider what sources of energy were available, and to help us we can see what the inventor said about it.  He told us that the weights themselves provided the perpetual motion.  This can only mean that his machine benefited from the presence of gravity.

Of course we’ve all been taught that gravity is not and cannot be a source of energy. But when I read that I always think to myself, but not saying it out loud, yes not directly, but water wheels and hydroelectric stations benefit from streams of water falling from higher ground to lower ground to drive electricity generators, for example. They benefit from the presence of gravity.  Bessler’s wheel benefited from the presence of gravity too.

It’s also a well-known fact that historically, virtually every would-be inventor of a pm machine ignored the suggestion that gravity could not be an energy source - that you can’t just tap into gravity and use its energy.   Not just uneducated people, but highly respected men such as Leonardo da Vinci, Robert Boyle and the famous Indian mathematician, Bhaskara II, all designed mechanisms which they believed might work, even Sir Isaac Newton left a perpetual motion sketch.  They weren’t put off by the idea that gravity could not be used, maybe it was never considered.

All forms of energy relate to motion, so when something is in motion it has kinetic energy, or sometimes it can have potential energy, or stored energy.  Energy is often defined as the capacity to do work. Gravitational energy can do work, it’s routinely measured to assess the amount of work it has done in a particular instance, so the only reason that I can see why it is taught that gravity cannot be a source of energy is because no one has ever devised a mechanical method which allows weights to fall and continuously be raised again while rotating a wheel, apart from Bessler.  It has been extensively and relentlessly argued that it is impossible, but Bessler’s evidence suggests that this is incorrect.

We can extract energy from windmills, but only if the air is moving.  No wind, then no energy.  Waterwheels remain stationary in still water,  You cannot extract energy from gravity if gravity is not moving anything, but you can if gravity moves something and makes it fall.

So you cannot tap gravity as source of energy directly, but you can if you have a medium in between gravity and the wheel, and in Bessler’s wheel it must be the weights.  Gravity makes the weights fall, causing the wheel to turn. A mechanism which can allow itself to fall, under the influence of gravity, and still manage to reset the fallen weights must be possible, and it must be Bessler’s solution, because the solution requires it to be so.

I’ve been writing the same argument for at least ten years, see my other web sites, and still few get it or accept it and yet it is pure logic.  Bessler got it and so can we.

JC

Johann Bessler - Random Documents, 1.

Throughout the many years I’ve been researching the legend of Bessler’s wheel I have accumulated many documents which I was unable include in my biography about him. The first draft of the book was way too long even without the extra stuff, so I’ll try to post some of it here from time to time. Each one is  not necessarily connected with any other but some may be of interest.  Most are  illegible so unless they include drawings I’ll leave them out.

After doing this blog for eleven years and a month it’s sometimes difficult to know what to write so there may be the occasional random content - like this one!

1)  I’ve read many books about perpetual motion and I was pleased to discover that one author whose book is called ‘Perpetual Motion; A Continuing Quest’, is commenting here occasionally. We corresponded many years ago and he kindly sent me a copy of his book, way back in 2003.  So welcome Richard A. Ford.(RAF)

2)  Another thing that has cropped up recently is the question of where did Bessler's death originate? Some thought that I was the source but on March 20th 1992, several years before I began to write my history of Bessler's wheel, a German local newspaper published details about a project to spend money on refurbishing Bessler's ruined windmill, from which they reported he had fallen to his death.  They planned to make it into a tourist attraction.

The article appeared in the 'Neue Westfalische, Nr. 68, Freitas, 20, Mars 1992'.  Although I think the page in question could be obtained online even now, (was unable to see that particular page even though I found the newspaper in question). Below I have included a very bad photocopy which was sent to me at the time and above it is a photo I took of the windmill from a similar position, so that you can confirm that it is the same building.

The headline in English reads 'Millions for Fairy tale and Legendary Mill'.  The article is very long so  have only quoted from the relevant text, 'Here originated a two story, half-timbered building with massive stone walls.  The roof and interior came to nothing as the builder, Orffyreus fell to his death from the walls.'

In addition to the above, Rupert Gould, whose 1944 book 'Oddities' first informed about Johann Bessler's wheel also described Bessler's fall to his death. He wrote 'Bessler died in 1745, aged sixty-five, when he fell to his death from a four and a half story windmill he was constructing in Fürstenberg'.

'Rupert T. Gould, "Orffyreus's Wheel," in Oddities: A Book of Unexplained Facts, revised ed., (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1944), pp. 89-116. Reprinted by Kessinger Pub Co., 2003, ISBN 978-0-7661-3620-5.' 

The windmill restoration was budgeted for and the local authority planned to translate my book into German and place it in the tourist office at Fürstenberg.  Unfortunately the restoration and the translation of my book never happened due to “budgetary pressures”.  You can see more photos of the old windmill at my web site at www.orffyreus.org

3) During my research I came across a large format book containing among other things photographs of items in the Kassel museum.  The creation of the item below was ascribed to Johann Bessler and a date was provided, 1721.  This particular device was not something we usually associate with Bessler but given his wide experience and unique number of manufacturing skills it is easy to imagine he was able to produce this device, but whether he also made the beautiful box containing the device is not stated. 

The device is called a Hydrostatic Balance and the photo was taken by H.L. at Kassel, Hess, Landesmuseum.  The book in which the photo appeared was called Mathematical Instruments 1960, and edited by Henri Michel. I thought its inclusion might be of interest. Bessler has given the impression that he worked on other devices and I assume that with his title of commercial councillor he might have advised or even made various items within the scope of his employment.

4)  A slightly oddball character called J.C.F. Von Hatzfeld had offered several designs for perpetual motion machines to both the Royal Society and to Sir Isaac Newton directly.  Mostly they ignored him and Newton didn’t even acknowledge the letter although it resides in the records. Von Harzfeld was persistent but he was treated as if he were little more than annoying insect buzzing around the heads of these important people.  I thought I’d post one of his designs dated 1725, not that I think it has merit, but you can assume that this topic of conversation was very much in the news at the time.  Von Hatzfeld mentioned Orffyreus several times in his previous correspondence which didn’t endear him to his recipients 
 

Here is the same design enlarged.  But is still won’t work!

JC

The Legend of Johann Bessler’s Perpetual Motion Machine.

I put this brief account of Johann Bessler’s wheel on my blog from time to time just in case someone stumbles upon my blog and wants a quick reminder of his life and his machine.  I remain convinced that the time is right, in fact it’s almost perfect, for the arrival of a solution to Bessler’s wheel. Regardless of the doubts being cast about the potential power in Bessler’s wheel, it is surely worthwhile examining, developing and up-scaling a successful working model.  

It is remarkable how very apposite a solution to Bessler’s wheel would be right now considering the urgency in dealing with the climate change, reducing the burning of fossil fuels and all the promises to reduce carbon emissions by such and such date.

The Truth Behind the Legend of Bessler’s Wheel and the Orffyrean Code

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.

Karl the Landgrave of Hesse permitted Bessler to live, work and exhibit his machine at the prince's castle of Weissenstein.  Karl was a man of unimpeachable reputation and he insisted on being allowed to verify the inventor's claims before he allowed Bessler to take up residence  This the inventor reluctantly agreed to and once he had examined the machine to his own satisfaction Karl authorised the  publication of his approval of the machine.  For several years Bessler was visited by numerous people of varying status, scientists, ministers and royalty as well as hundreds of  local inhabitants.  Several official examinations were carried out and each time the examiners concluded that the inventor's claims were genuine.

Over the years Karl’s health began to deteriorate and his sons decided that it was time for the inventor to leave the castle and he was given five years salary and accommodation in the nearby town of Karlshaven. Despite the strong circumstantial evidence that his machine was genuine, Bessler failed to secure a sale and after more than thirty years he died in poverty.  His death came after he fell from a windmill he had been commissioned to build.  The windmill was an interesting design using a vertical axle which allowed it to benefit from winds from any directions.  

He had asked for a huge sum of money for the secret of his perpetual motion machine, £20,000 which was an amount only affordable by kings and princes, and it’s no coincidence that this sum matched that being offered by the British Government as a reward for the invention of a way to establish a ship’s longitudinal position  at sea.  Bessler clearly believed his invention was equal in value.  Many people were interested in Bessler’s wheel, but 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 viewing the internal workings.  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.  He said that a bag of money should be put on the table and the buyer could take the wheel there and then.  He swore that if he was found cheating he should be beheaded, a not unlikely result if he was found to be a fraud and deceiving his ruler.

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 75).  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.

This problem of acceptance by his potential buyers 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. He implied 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.



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 his codes and I am cautiously optimistic that I have the complete design.


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, his account of the search for perpetual motion - and my own account of Bessler’s life is also available from the links.  It is called "Perpetual Motion; An Ancient Mystery Solved?"  

Bessler's three published books are entitled "Grundlicher Bericht", "Apologia Poetica" and "Das Triumphirende...". I have called Bessler's collection of 141 drawings his Maschinen Tractate, but it was originally found in the form of a number of loosely collected 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 


I and thousands of others around the world believe that Johann Bessler’s claim to have designed and built a perpetual motion machine, or a continuously rotating device enabled purely by gravity, was genuine.  The circumstantial evidence is compelling.  This device if reconstructed now, could potentially provide cheap clean electricity, and by reducing the need for fossil fuels, provide a huge step forward in reducing carbon emissions in a very short time.

For some ideas about Bessler’s code why not visit my web sites at

                                                                          www.theorffyreuscode.com  and,

                                                                          www.besslerswheel.com   and,

                                                                          www.orffyreus.net    and,

                                                                          www.orffyreus.org

 For more information on my books, go to  www.free-energy.co.uk


My granddaughter Amy has CRPS, FND and PTDS but is gradually recovering, but she has a long way to go, if you can help, please share the links - and a donation no matter how small would be gratefully accepted.

Link to my granddaughter’s gofundme site  https://www.helpamy.co.uk/

See the latest update.  https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-our-amy-to-walk-again

J C

Why Did Johann Bessler Leave Clues to How his Wheel Worked?

I have spent a large chunk of my life researching the life of Johann Bessler and trying to find as much written information about him, as possible.  Bessler lived about three hundred years ago so clearly the only evidence we have available for study is handwritten or printed.  Letters, newspapers and official reports plus drawings and illustrations is all we have, provided mostly by witnesses, or the inventor himself.  I have tried to find every single document that relates to Bessler and I am pretty sure I’ve either published all of them or I have copies of other documents which are illegible for now.  These latter documents are of more personal nature and do not offer any hope of further revelations about his wheels, although they do provide more information about his life after he left Kassel.

So it is kind of amusing to see people searching for new information in the documents I’ve already published. They seek invisible nuances of meaning in numerous pieces of text, suggesting inaccurate translations, or ambiguity or coded messages in seemingly straight forward prose.  I think that this is because they have spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out the secret of Bessler’s wheel, and are now scraping the barrel looking for some clue that everyone else missed.  I understand why.

Bessler encouraged us to scour his works looking for hidden information, by implying in a number of ways that he had hidden information in his works.  I know this is true and I have found much that was hidden, but for now I will just say that the information is real, it is there but in some cases it is not easy to find.  Some clues are easy to find but have proved impossible to solve, so far. Others are there but their ambiguity is so confusing that not only is it difficult to know if they are a clue, but also if you have the correct interpretation even if they are indeed a clue. In my opinion the translations are generally correct.  I know there have been disagreements over the precise translation of certain words, but I cannot find any advantage in changing or correcting those words, it does not seem to make any difference in our understanding of what Bessler meant.

One thing Bessler was very good at was providing a clue which once solved gave the correct answer twice so that you knew you had it right if you got both versions.  I read almost daily, suggestions as to what Bessler intended us to understand from some clue or other and yet the discussion flows so far away from what the inventor was trying to tell us, that I’m tempted to jump in and point them in the right direction.  But I never do because I’m still trying to finish my version of Bessler’s wheel and having got so far I’m determined to finish it. As I have said countless times, if it fails I will share everything; all the clues and what they mean and how they relate to the wheel.  They are clear, easily understood but their construction is absolutely amazing.  We often say Bessler was a genius for designing and building his wheel, well that is only half the story; his ingenuity in hiding the design of his wheel in plain sight of the world for more than 300 years is simply staggering.

Bessler must have intended from the very beginning to have included secret information about his wheel, but the reason for this seems difficult to determine. He set out to sell his machine for 100,000 Thaler.  Obviously he was intent on selling it so why did he feel the need to include clues that would reveal how his machine worked? Surely he must have realised that someone might decipher his clues and learn his secret, before he had managed to secure full payment for the device.

It was obviously so difficult to find and decipher the clues, that perhaps he considered post humus acknowledgement of the discovery acceptable, but if that is so did he fear that his chance of getting payment was remote right from the beginning?  That seems unlikely also, he was a born salesman and to my mind optimism is a key ingredient.  So why did he risk his clues being discovered and deciphered?

It’s possible that his knowledge of codes and ciphers and all the religious, philosophical and esoteric traditions that were flourishing in his day persuaded him to embed much of this practice into his works, in the form of clues to the structure of his wheels, in the hope that his fame would outlast his lifetime.

JC