Johann Bessler’s Various Perpetual Motion Machines

There is a curious consistency about all four of Johann Bessler’s wheels, which is interesting and leads one to certain speculations about them.  The details which follow are all taken from www.orffyre.com.  This website is run by an old friend and correspondent of mine dating back to our earliest research days, and his information is accurate to date. From the afore-mentioned website:

(Bessler used the Leipzeg ell in his measurements - 1 ell = 22.3 inches

First wheel - Gera

Diameter = 4.6 feet

Thickness = about 4 inches

Speed = over 50 RPM unloaded

Rotation = uni-directional, required restraint when not in use

Axle = unknown

Sound = unknown

Power = unknown

* size in ell units: reported diameter = 2.5 ell = 4.6 feet; reported  thickness = 4 Leipzeg inches = 3.7 inches *

Second wheel - Draschwitz

Diameter = 9.3 feet

Thickness = 6 inches

Speed = over 50 RPM unloaded

Rotation = uni-directional, required restraint when not in use

Axle = 6 inches diameter (probable diameter = 1/4 ell = 5.6 inches)

Sound = loud noise

Power = unknown

* size in ell units: reported diameter = 5 ell = 9.3 feet; probable thickness = 1/4 ell = 5.6 inches *

Third wheel - Merseburg

Diameter = 12 feet

Thickness = 11.15 inches

Speed = 40 RPM or more

Rotation = dual-directional, required gentle push start in either direction

Axle = 6 inches diameter (probable diameter = 1/4 ell = 5.6 inches)

Sound = banging noise at descending side of wheel

Power = estimates range from 20 Watts to 100 Watts

* size in ell units: reported diameter = 6 ells = 12 feet; reported thickness = 1/2 ell = 11.15 inches *

Fourth wheel - Kassel (Weissenstein Castle)

Diameter = 12 feet

Thickness = 18 inches

Speed = 26 RPM unloaded - 20 RPM under water screw load

Rotation = dual-directional, required gentle push start in either direction

Axle = 8 inches diameter (probable diameter = 1/3 ell = 7.4 inches)

Sound = about 8 bangs per revolution at descending side of wheel

Power = estimates range from 25 Watts to 125 Watts

* size in ell units: reported diameter = 6 ells = 12 feet; probable thickness = 3/4 ell = 16.7 inches

Bessler's apparent use of the Leipzig ell suggests he probably built his wheels to whole ell units and simple fractions thereof. The above diagram shows feet and inches derived from Leipzig ell conversions as listed in the data above.)

Ok, this me!  The first thing to notice is that the first three wheels turned at a speed close to 50 rpm. Given the difference in the sizes of all three devices we might have expected a larger variation in their output.  The fourth wheel, the Kassel wheel, the largest one tested, only rotated at 26 rpm, but given that it was designed to undergo an endurance test of several weeks, it would be surprising if Bessler had not designed it to turn at approximately half the speed of the others.

It seems likely that he increased the thickness of the wheel to compensate for the reduced weight-lifting capacity caused no doubt by reducing the speed or the actions  of the internal mechanisms, thus slowing its rotation.  Although we know little about the interior of the machines we can speculate on what alterations he might have made to the mechanisms within the fourth wheel,  (the Kassel wheel) compared to those earlier ones to make turn more slowly.

In the most basic terms, we know that there were weights which must have moved about relative to the axle, and they had to be able to move from one place to another, and then return within one rotation.  There seem to be limited potential  variables, and I ruled out alterations in the mass of the weights. This leaves only a variation in the number of weights, and the distance they can move.

Again if we take into consideration the common rotational speed between the first three wheels, (Gera, Draschwitz and Merseburg) we might speculate that although the distances the weights moved might vary from wheel to wheel, perhaps their effect was controlled by the amount of torque each one could produce, and regardless of weight and mechanism size, perhaps no variation could occur, other than a reduction in top speed due to friction or work.

The first two wheels (Gera and Draschwitz) would begin to spin spontaneously as soon as a brake was released.  We can infer that they were both in a state of permanent imbalance.  I ignore suggestions that the wheel was stopped in a certain position in order to provide this effect.  Besides Bessler stating that they had to be locked to stop them continuing to rotate, there is plenty of evidence from onlookers that he spoke the truth.

The second two wheels (Merseburg and Kassel) did not have this feature, but would begin to spin after being given a gentle nudge in the desired direction.  They were capable of being started in either direction from which point they accelerated to their  top speed. Clearly their two-way capacity led the two directions being balanced when stationary.  This leads us to another question.  If the first two wheels could attain a speed close 50 rpm, it seems surprising that the third wheel (Merseburg) also achieved the same speed in either direction.  We can leave aside for the moment, the slow-turning Kassel wheel because we know it was designed to be slow.

One might think, as I did, that the two-way wheels had a second set of mechanisms designed to turn in the opposite direction, which allowed the wheel to be turned either way, but that might seem to create resistance in one mechanism being turned the wrong way which would either prevent the wheel turning, or lead to it turning more slowly.  This apparently did not happen because the two-way Merseburg wheel was able to match the speed of the earlier one-way wheels. If a duplicate, but mirror image mechanism was installed within the Merseburg wheel, it was twice the thickness of the second wheel which would probably provide enough space for a double mechanism.  

Given this problem perhaps he had found another way to allow just one set of mechanisms to cause rotation in either direction, this would have been the ideal solution, it would have simplified things.  But we cannot work out how he might have done this until we know how his one way wheel worked. 

So what is it that seemed to allow the first three wheels to reach around 50 rpm?  Well we do know that several witnesses remarked on the great regularity of all the wheel’s evenness of rotation.   There was no jerkiness nor bumpiness in each rotation.  I presume there would be a limit to how fast the weights could move and this could be a limiting factor, regardless of size of any internal mechanisms.  This could possibly be improved in these modern times, not just by reducing friction but by improving the configuration of the each mechanism.  It would be a curious feat if one could improve the speed up-to 60rpm, measuring exactly one minute.

A single second was, historically, established by calculating the time it takes for the Earth to rotate once about its axis and dividing the time by the 86,400 seconds in each solar day, (60 x 60 x 24 = 86,400).  Of course we have a much more precise method now, but in 1656, Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens invented the first pendulum clock. It had a pendulum length of just under a meter which gave it a swing of one second, and an escapement that ticked every second. It was the first clock that could accurately keep time in seconds. By the 1730s, 80 years later, John Harrison's maritime chronometers could keep time accurate to within one second in 100 days.

But, if Christian Huygens pendulum clock had a pendulum length of just under a meter which gave it a swing of one second (39.27 inches), might that give us a hint at the length of levers in Bessler’s clock? Were they also just under a meter in length to time the wheel to close the 60 rpm? Allowing for friction that might have slowed the rotation to what it actually was.

I suspect that Bessler’s weighted levers had a much longer swing than Huygens’ 6 degree swing because it was generating force rather than measuring minutes, but given the work they did, they moved more slowly than any clock pendulum, so being close to 60 rpm may or may not be just coincidental.

JC

Johann Bessler and a Few Coincidences?

There seem to be some related features within Bessler’s documents which may be coincidental, or not - so I have tried to draw conclusions from them by assuming that they are deliberate.  I’m sure some will disagree but I think it worth pointing them out, just in case they were intended to catch our eye for some reason.

It’s sometimes easy to see things as coincidences rather than intentional occurrences.  For instance I like the fact that Bessler stresses the importance of the number 5, and 55.  My birthday is on the 5th day of month 2, obviously a coincidence, how could it be otherwise?  I was born in 1945, Bessler died in 1745 just another coincidence.  There is one more example which I’ll mention later. 

The document I have always referred to as the “Toys” page is numbered MT 138, 139, 140 and 141.  This is logical as it follows MT 137. There are actually five drawings on the page lettered A B C D and E plus what appears to be a late addition of a hand drawn figure with the number 5 adjacent. So we appear to have four pages, apparently with five drawings labelled with letters plus one more number 5.

At first sight I believed the intention was to show that this page was intended to replace four others, destroyed or buried, after his arrest.  But this assumes that either he was charged but not imprisoned otherwise he might not have had time to prepare for searches or confiscation of his documents, so the charges he was accused of made him hurry to take precautions against such actions against him.  This is possible, but why would he need to remind himself of four pages buried or destroyed?

The total of 141 is interesting.  It seems as though he wanted to get to that number and not beyond, but numbering the ‘Toys’ page 138 would seem to have been good enough.  141 is not a prime number and it’s only factors are 3 times 47.  If we turn to MT 47 we discover that inserted within  the drawing which is numbered 47, another number 47, twice in fact because one is the mirror image of the other so there are three number 47s present on the page. Is this a pointer to the number 141 or the reverse or is it just a coincidence?

Bessler’s ‘Declaration of Faith’ which appears in his “Apologia Poetica” chapter 55, contains numerous Bible references, 141 to be precise.  So if we assume the same link as before, what is the relevance of the number 47?  The first thing which occurred to me was Euclid’s 47th proposition. Was Bessler drawing attention to it for some reason.

“In any right triangle, the sum of the squares of the two sides is equal to the square of the hypotenuse.” It’s also a 3, 4, 5 triangle, see below.  I’m sure I needn’t go into any detail about this, but the figure also relates to the Freemasons symbol as you can see further below. Maybe this was the connection he sought to hint at.

There other pointers to the Freemasons and I guess it’s up to people if they think the above is relevant.  But most likely, in my opinion it points to Pythagoras who is believed to be the originator of much of Euclid’s Propositions, and thus to geometry, which ties in with Bessler’s second portrait in his Das Triumphirende book (DT)

One other coincidence for now, which I wrote about in 2019.  I wrote “I have a copy of a document, a panegyric addressed to Karl annually, but it has something unique.  As many will know, Bessler was very fond of chronograms, which is a phrase or inscription in which letters such as M, D, C, X, L, I, W and V can be read as Roman numerals giving a date. He provides dozens and dozens of them in some of his documents and curious as they are, they don’t appear to hold any coded information.

This particular one includes the year.........2019! He also wrote them for 1519, 1619, 1719, 1819 and 1919.  But why 2019 and why did he stop,there? It could have been the year his solution was discovered - what a coincidence that would have been.  If it had, everyone would have believed that Bessler had somehow predicted the future, but it didn’t happen, and if it had, it would still be just a coincidence.

In my experience I find that Bessler added more clues, hints and implications as and when they occurred to him, consequently one often comes across new and exciting ‘coincidences’ seemingly added almost as an afterthought.

Of course the following is just  a happy coincidence, my new house which I hope to move into before the end of this month is numbered 47.  No!  I wouldn’t buy a house because I liked its number!  And I’m not into the Freemasonry.

JC

Some Thoughts Worth Considering in Designing a Gravity Wheel

I used the term ‘Gravity Wheel’ in the title of this blog in place of ‘Bessler’s Wheel’ to show that gravity wheels might have different configurations to Bessler’s Wheels, although from what I know I don’t think the basics will differ very much.

Fletcher made a comment in my last blog which touched upon a point which most of us will be aware of but which maybe some people missed the potential beneficial consequences of including its actions in our designs. I know its action is used in Bessler’s wheel.

fletch wrote, “ By my reasoning, therefore, for a Bessler wheel to gain in Angular Momentum and be everlasting in motion etc, then some part of the local available Angular Momentum pool must be compensatorily depleted to give the runner Rotational Kinetic Energy.”

A couple of years ago I realised the importance of something connected with gravity wheels which I had been aware of all my life but never considered it’s potential as a source of free energy, additional to that which we already know about, i.e, gravity enabled falling weights.

We design weights to be able to move around with the intention of causing the wheel to overbalance. We can calculate the work done by gravity in making the weights fall, but of course the path of the falling weight is not needed because we only need the perpendicular height of the fall. But if the weight is required to do work as it falls, and still overbalance the wheel, the extra time which the weight takes to fall because it’s doing work, does not affect the calculation, because in the simplest terms, time is not a necessary ingredient. 

Therefore if we simply configure the mechanism to react to the position change of the wheel and use gravity to make a weight move into position which overbalances the wheel, we miss the opportunity to use the weight’s action or motion under the force of gravity, to do some work during its fall. 

If the weight is in free-fall, it has no potential energy to unleash as kinetic energy, until it lands, but if it does work as it falls then it is using kinetic energy as it does so and it can still cause the desired overbalance by its eventual completion of its fall. The argument is similar that used in describing the friction generated in a brick sliding down a slope but in this case the work/friction could be used to help lift a fallen weight. This action may explain von Erlach’s description of each weight “landing gently on the side towards which the wheel turned”. There was little or no padding because the weights were slowed down by doing work, and made reduced noise as they landed. 

This idea I believe might correspond to fletch’s comment that “….some part of the local available Angular Momentum pool must be compensatorily depleted to give the runner Rotational Kinetic Energy.”

JC

My Way Works for Me, I Hope! Maybe It Will Work for You?

 I’ve mentioned this before, but anyway here I go again!  

There is so much talk about doing the maths, vector dynamics, velocity and acceleration analysis, gravitation and orbital mechanics, geometry etc (apologies to Tim for borrowing his words, but it supported my point perfectly).  Surely you can work out if it might have potential by sketching it out on paper, draw in the various weight positions, and if it still looks possible do what I suggest next. There is too much speculation about the maths in my opinion.  I can visualise a mechanism and watch it turn, and I’m sure lots of people in this field can do so too.

Surely anyone can test a theoretical design with cheap materials.  Cardboard, card, lolly sticks, straws, cotton thread, brass split-pins, fishing weights, washers, nuts and bolts.  Threaded rods or bolts. Old second hand Meccano sets even if they are missing most their original content are still a good source of pulleys etc.  These are the things I use and have done so for many years, much of it recycled from one design to another.  I used to make my prototypes out of good quality materials, but subsequently, I always kept in mind that this first model was for my eyes only, just to prove the design to myself.  A more attractive construction would follow my first successful build.

There are some people who are so focussed on reducing friction to a minimum that I think they’ve for gotten that Bessler’s wheel did work, lifting 70 pound chests, turning an Archimedes pump, not to mention running for several weeks.  Why worry about friction at all, if it works, refining everything can be done afterwards when it works.

There are others who spend inordinate amounts of time and money, producing beautiful mechanisms that are a joy to behold, yet still remain as motionless as a statue.  

Many people seek to solve Bessler’s wheel by trying to jump straight to the bi-directional wheel, which Bessler admitted gave him problems initially.  I’ve always concentrated on trying to duplicate the one way wheel first.  It is clearly the simpler of the two options.

Now of course I know that time after time I’ve been told that simulations are the way to go and I’m sure that’s true, but firstly I’m too old to learn how to use this kind of software, but more importantly I enjoy building models.  I find that I can learn more from building than looking at designs, whether on paper or in a video, and a few months ago I learned something I believe to be crucial to Bessler’s design simply because I was holding a piece of mechanism and just handling it, watching it operating my hands.

But I know sims are popular and even though I doubt I can understand it all, and actually I’m so busy that I have little time to learn about them, if I get a working model I have contacts who I’m sure would be happy make a sim of my wheel in action. I’m not convinced of their necessity given the success of a physical build, but I will bow to the consensus opinion, if I’m successful.

JC

Provable Scientific Facts Mean More than Expert Opinions

No matter how famous and celebrated some scientists may be, they are all prone to promoting scientific fallacies. One example everyone is familiar with is Lord Kelvin’s statement in 1895,  that “heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible”, only to be proved definitively wrong just eight years later by the Wright brothers’ flight.  But Kelvin wasn’t alone, the number of scientists and engineers who shared his conviction is too large to count.

Almost every top scientist you can mention made firm comments at some point in their otherwise illustrious careers, about some areas of scientific research which later proved to be wrong. I include Charles Darwin, Fred Hoyle, Linus Pauling, Albert Einstein and Carl Sagan to mention just a few.

“In 1847, a 26-year-old German medical doctor, Hermann Helmholtz, gave a presentation to the Physical Society of Berlin that would change the course of history. He presented the original formulation of what is now known as the First Law of Thermodynamics, beginning with the axiomatic statement that a Perpetual Motion Machine is impossible.

Axiom - A statement or proposition that is accepted as true without proof.

No one had ever succeeded, he wrote, in building a Perpetual Motion Machine that worked. Therefore, such machines must be impossible. If they are impossible it must be because of some natural law preventing their construction. This law, he said, could only be the Conservation of Energy.

But a profound reversal of reasoning has occurred in the last century. Helmholtz originally said "Because a Perpetual Motion Machine is impossible, therefore the First Law of Thermodynamics;" while in any physics text book today one will find the statement that "Because of the First Law of Thermodynamics, a Perpetual Motion Machine is impossible."

Skeptics are quick to cite the Laws of Thermodynamics to disprove Bessler's claims. In fact, the argument is circular. The Laws of Thermodynamics do not prove that Bessler's machine is impossible. On the contrary, they are deduced from the "leap of faith" of first presuming it is impossible.”

So given the doubts about Helmholtz’s axiom and Bessler’s validated claim to have invented such a machine, how can we ignore the potential benefit of a machine which costs nothing in energy to run?

There are many fields occupied by so-called pseudo-scientists and that is one of the more respectable names I’ve been called.  But how much more pseudo-scientific can you get than Helmholtz’s ridiculous axion, especially when Johann Bessler had proved him wrong over 130 years earlier?  It doesn’t matter that he made some significant discoveries in unconnected fields of science, so did the celebrated people I mentioned above, but just because someone excels in a particular field doesn’t necessarily mean that everything they say is correct.

There are surprisingly few proven facts in science. Instead, scientists often talk about how much evidence there is for their theories. The more evidence, the stronger the theory and the more accepted it becomes. 

Scientists are usually very careful to accumulate lots of evidence and test their theories thoroughly. But the history of science has some key, if rare, examples of evidence misleading enough to bring a whole scientific community to believe something later considered to be radically false.

Johann Bessler’s wheel has been ignored or dismissed by the vast, heavyweight scholarship of countless teachers and scientists who have defiantly promoted this paradigm, invented by Helmholtz as if it came directly from God.  It didn’t, it’s misleading and it’s wrong!

Most of the above quotation comes courtesy of the Besslerwheel forum with huge thanks to its moderator.

JC

Johann Bessler’s Perpetual Motion Needs a Paradigm Shift

Some people who visit this blog may be tempted to dismiss our whole raison d'être because they don’t know why we might even wish to be promoting such an apparently long-discarded theory of science.  The fact is that this old and hoary theory has been so resoundingly denounced, trampled on and blown out of the water, that anyone who raises the merest possibility that some form of practical perpetual motion might be possible is regarded with scorn, pity or utter contempt,  I know, I’ve been there!

But amazingly there is strong but circumstantial evidence that actually a continuously rotating device, powered only by the falling of a succession of weights mounted in a particular configuration upon a wheel, for instance, is possible.  But even more amazingly it was invented and exhibited to the public for more than ten years, over three hundred years ago!

Some of you who read this will be sceptical and I don’t blame you.  You have been taught that this device is impossible and this has become an embedded tradition which has continued for more than the 300 years since before Johann Bessler first revealed his invention. Even then he had to fight the scientific institutions to try to prove his machine was genuine and nothing has changed.

I have spent my whole life researching this man’s claims, and I’ve self-published five books, one a biography about him and the other four are translations of his own publications.  

The fascinating thing is that Johann Bessler suspected that he might never be able to sell his machine and he wrote that he would accept acknowledgement for inventing a real machine, posthumously, if he failed to be recognised in his lifetime.  To this end he left an incredible collection of coded information with which he intended to reveal his secret mechanism.  I have made great advances in finding and deciphering much of this hidden information, in fact I know enough to know exactly how his machine worked.  My intention is to reveal everything I’ve discovered in the hope that someone will use it to build the first replica of Bessler’s wheel in over 300 years.  I would prefer to build it first, partly for my own satisfaction, but also because I fear that simply publishing the solution, explaining the clues and what they mean, may result in it being simply ignored and disregarded like many other publications which call into question assumptions deeply lodged within the subconscious.  Ones mind is constantly filtering and bringing to your attention information and stimuli that affirms your preexisting beliefs (known in psychology as confirmation bias) as well as presenting you with repeated thoughts and impulses that mimic and mirror that which you've done in the past.

To change this paradigm will take more than a book of explanation.There has to be a working demonstration model to accompany the publication. 

One more thing - when Karl the Landgrave of Hesse was shown the interior of Bessler’s wheel, he expressed surprise at how simple it was and marvelled that no one had discovered the secret before.  When I finally learned the secret, I too was shocked that neither I nor anyone else had found it.  It really is so simple that you can understand it as soon as you see it. Nevertheless, I’m going to prove it first before I release the details.

JC

The True Story of Johann Bessler’s Perpetual Motion Machine.

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, who was able to examine the device, 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. Several official examinations were carried out and each time the examiners concluded that the inventor's claims were genuine.

Over several years Karl aged and it was decided that the inventor should leave the castle and he was granted accommodation in the nearby town of Karlshafen. 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 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 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.


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 77). 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.

Not long after I was able to read the English translations of his books, I became convinced that Bessler had embedded a number of clues in his books. These took the form of hints in the text, but also in a number of drawings he published. Subsequently I found suggestions by the author that studying his books would reveal more information about his wheel.


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

http://www.theorffyreuscode.com/

Take a look at my work on his “Declaration of Faith” at 

http://www.orffyreus.net/

Also please view my video at 

https://youtu.be/5BWVKtpuzn0

It gives a brief account both the legend and some more detail about some of the codes.

The problem of obtaining a fair reward for all his hard work 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 posthumous 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 confident 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 - 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 “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 use them in his planned school for apprentices.

You can order copies of the books from my website at 

www.free-energy.co.uk

Printed books direct from the printer can be obtained from here

https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/johncollins

Or from the top of the right side panel under the heading ‘Bessler’s Books’.

There are also links lower down on the right side panel.

As I often say, the solution to this device is needed now. Anything that might help cleanse the planet of pollution and help to reduce green house gas emissions, by providing a clean cheap alternative energy source should encouraged in its discovery and development to counter global warming.

JC

More reflections on the Two-Way Wheels

The Merseburg wheel and the Weissenstein or Kassel wheel were two-way ones and could both be turned in either direction with a gentle push in the desired direction.  I have always believed that the way this was achieved was by placing a pair of one-way wheels on the same axle, but with one wheel designed to turn in the opposite direction to its twin.  This would create a balanced wheel, with no restrained impulse to turn it in any direction.  

Giving it a push sufficient for one weight to fall would initiate the impulse to begin to turn in that direction. Once begun, the sequence would be repeated continuously.  When a twinned wheel was to be turned in reverse it had to be designed with one of two options; firstly it could be allowed to move as dictated by the positions the rotation caused it to adopt, with little or no negative effect on the mechanical advantage being generated by it’s paired wheel; or there was a feature or device designed within each mechanism which locked it into whatever position it was in as soon the first weight in the other half of the twinned wheel fell..

Many years ago I tested this theory using models of two Savonius windmills mounted on one axle, but not fixed to the axle.  Each one was designed to turn in the opposite direction to its twin.  Firstly they were allowed to turn independently of each other and when placed in the path of a fan, each began to rotate in opposite directions.  Next I coupled the two windmills together.  Now neither moved when in the path of the wind.  I gave the joined windmills a little nudge in one direction and the assembly began to turn in one direction.  The same thing happened in the other direction of rotation.  I gave a full account of the above experiment in my biography of Bessler, “Perpetual Motion; An Ancient Mystery Solved?”

The resultant rotation was about half the speed of the uncoupled windmills.  In this example the concave portion of the Savonius windmill when moving against the wind led to a braking effect, hence the slower speed of rotation.  However in the Kassel wheel the half speed of rotation was a desired effect to reduce wear on the bearings.  In the Merseburg wheel I think Bessler found a way to lock and block negative action in the wheel which was forced to reverse.

If the reversing mirror-imaged wheel generated some resistance to the forward motion of its twin, Bessler must have found a way to wipe out all of it in the Merseburg wheel, because it was able to rotate at about the same speed as the other one-way wheels.  Or it might have been possible to stop all mechanical action in the reversing wheel, because without any weight movement there,  the wheel would not be out of balance at anytime. Unless the mechanisms stopped in one position which would have led  to an imbalance at one point in rotation.  It might have been this that Bessler said, gave him a headache trying to set it correctly - stopping the weights from moving at all in the reversing wheel was one task but how to achieve that neutral point of balance at any point in rotation, automatically?

JC

Reflections on Johann Bessler’s Perpetual Motion Machines

When Johann Bessler’s largest wheel, the two-way version, was demonstrated at Kassel, it was recorded that the sound of eight weights were heard to land softly on the side towards which it turned.  I have often suggested that there might have been ten weights, but two of them, one in each half of the wheel, given a thick layer of felt to deaden the sound of their impact, giving the impression that there were only eight weights. However if that was the case, the rhythmic thumping noise heard from the wheel, turning at 26 rpm means each turn took 2.3 seconds.  Counting 8 thumps every 2.3 seconds it’s no wonder von Erlach said “about” 8 thumps per turn. Even so, if there were two silent weights operating, their silence would have introduced two gaps in the rhythmic thumping.  Surely this would have been mentioned?

The description of each weight landing “softly” suggests they were all felted.  The official reports specifically mention the great evenness of the wheel’s rotation which I think, obviates my suggestion of one or more silenced weights.  So perhaps there were two sets of eight weights each set driving the Kassel wheel in a particular direction.  The reason why I introduced the idea that there could have been two inaudible weights was because I could not understand why some researchers said that they were trying to make a two-way wheel which according to Bessler was very difficult; while others were using the eight weight description which applied to the two-way Kassel wheel to make a one-way wheel.  We have no knowledge of the sounds emanating from the one-way wheels other than that they were very noisy.

The Kassel wheel was designed to turn more slowly than its predecessors each of which were able to turn at about double the speed.  The Kassel wheel was built to withstand the wear and tear it expected to undergo during the endurance test of 30 days which, in the end, ran for 54 days before it was stopped. It’s speed of rotation was slowed by a half to preserve the integrity of its bearings and I assume this was achieved by reducing the distances of the movements within the mechanism.  This design might have reduced the mechanical leverage obtained in the previous wheels, but increasing the mass of the weights might retrieve the lost lifting power.  This may explain the increase in the thickness, or depth of the Kassel wheel, compared to its predecessor, the Merseburg wheel. In support of this suggestion Bessler said that he could make wheels turn very slowly and lift greater weights or turn very quickly, of small size or of great size.

All this tells us that we have documented evidence of one wheel using eight weights, turning at 26 rpm and nothing about the others except they each rotated at around 50 rpm yet were all of different dimensions.  That sounds to me like 50 rpm was the best speed available with Bessler’s design, regardless of size and the 26 rpm version was the modified design.  If the mechanisms inside the Kassel wheel moved through a limited range compared to the others, then perhaps there were more of them inside than in the others - 8 or more?  Fine if you are committed to building the two-way wheel, even though you don’t know how the one-way wheel worked, but I think the one-way one is the way to go!

Above courtesy of  

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JC