If at first you don't succeed....try, try, try again

Recent poems posted here prompted me to write something last night.  I write them for myself usually, although there is one of my earlier efforts at the beginning of my Bessler biogrpahy, 'Perpetual Motion; An Ancient Mystery Solved?' - and it's also on my web site at http://www.free-energy.co.uk/html/my_poem.html

Here it is:-

You think you've found the right solution

To continuous revolution,

Without the need for energy,

except of course for gravity.

It's common to the likes of us

Who like to think Orffyreus

Was genuine, and not a crook

Who fooled us all with gobbledygook.

But we get fooled ourselves you see,

When ideas, new, convince us we,

Have found the secret to the wheel.

We tell the world we will reveal,

The details of our cherished notion

That we found perpetual motion - 

But then we find we were deceived

And it was wrong which we believed.

The wheel stayed still, it didn't turn

We smash it up and let it burn.

But soon we're back with a new concept,

The disappointed tears we wept

Forgotten in the blinding light

Of revelation in the night.

This time for sure the wheel will spin

Endlessly - but who will win?

JC

The weights on Bessler's wheel describe a path similar to the letter 'R'.

I noted a comment on the besslerwheel forum by jim_mich, while I was away in Spain, that I had at one time espoused a belief that the movement of the weights in Bessler's wheel followed the path shown in the avatar, I use on the forum, the Yin Yang symbol.  I used to think the weights moved on a path similar to the double curve which runs across the middle of the circle.  It's true that I did cherish this idea for a time and indeed I discussed it in my book 'Perpetual Motion; An Ancient Mystery Solved'.  But I came to the same conclusion that Jim did, that there was no way to incorporate such a design within any of the wheels I was working on, and I no longer subscribe to this idea and have not done so for some time because conflicting evidence appeared to suggest another design altogether.

People must be aware of other 'coded' information I have discussed and in particular the alphabetic substition of Bessler's name and his adoption of two extra forenames.  (see www.theorffyreuscode.com) He was born Elias Bessler and added the Johann Ernst at some point before he became famous, so that E. Bessler became JEE Bessler.  Given the alphabetic substitution to turn Bessler into Orffyre and thence to Orffyreus, I pointed out that JEE became WRR. 

Now I could understand the doubling of the letter 'E', given his (and mine!) obsession with the number five and 'E' being the fifth letter to give two fives - and I could also appreciate the inclusion of the 'W' in the subsequent alphabetic substitution, which also provided two fives in the form of double 'V' - but before the alphabetic substitutions of 'W' he had an apparently meaningless 'J' and after the alphabetic substitution he had an equally meaningless 'R'.  To what purpose could these two letters of doubtful value be attributed?

I assumed that he simply fancied the name Johann and with alphabetic substitution, the inital letter gave him the useful 'W', and the equally valuable 'E' gave him the 'R' and that, it seems to me must have been of equal importance since he incorporated it in every logo he signed all his letters with .  I reproduce two examples of the logo below so that you can see it.  I am convinced that the letter 'R' mimics the paths of the weights but it has to be interpreted correctly, which I believe I have done.  So there is your clue for today.

JC

It's five mechanisms, not four or eight.

I discussed the importance of the number 5 to Bessler, here last year (see my web sites at http://www.besslerswheel.com/  and http://www.theorffyreuscode.com/ )  In my opinion there is so much information to be had from Bessler's books that just stress the importance of this number that I fail to see how anyone can argue with the obvious fact that Bessler intended to convey something of importance to do with the number 5.  I am therefore astounded to be told from time to time that I have imagined all of it, or that I who has become obsessed wit it!  

The only thing we don't know for sure is why.  Well I do, but until I finish my wheel I cannot prove it, but I have worked out why it is necessary to have five mechanisms and why equal numbers of mechanisms won't work, at least not with this design.  

Fischer von Erlach described hearing the sound of 'about eight weights landing gently', etc.Why was he not sure about the number of weights he heard?  He was a widely respected and talented architect and engineer and seems to have tried to carry out a thorough examination of the wheel, yet he had some doubt about how many weights he could hear. 

Let us suppose that Bessler covered a weight in one mechanism with sound-deadening material - he mentioned that he used felt in an earlier wheel - so the other weights made a heavy knock as they landed, but the remaining weight made some kind of soft thud or perhaps it landed silently on a spring and made no noise at all. Did Erlach hear another sound but as it wasn't the same as the others, he attributed it to some other action and therefore concluded that there were about eight weights, whereas I argue that there were ten - five for each direction the wheel rotated.  The only suspicion he might have had was that there was a gap in the regular rhythm  of sounds he heard, but when you take into account the sounds he must have heard from the reversing mechanism which might not have been evenly synchronised with the forward moving ones you can see how he might have had doubts.

So guys, forget the eight weights or the four weights, it's five for each direction - and they operate in pairs.

JC

A belated expression of thanks to my first customers - and on with the show!

I've been looking for some old stamps for my grandaughter who has decided to start collecting them and I came across a huge bundle of envelopes I received from people all over the world when I first published my book. I have almost 400 stamps from so many different countries.

I'm amazed at how many I have and I think I should belatedly publish a word of thanks to all those people who took a chance on sending me a cheque to buy my book.  There was no PayPal nor anything similar back in 1997 and it must have seemed a risky purchase to send a cheque from one side of the world to the other.  The cheques themselves took six weeks to clear if they were in any denomination other than Pounds Sterling, which most of them were, but I couldn't leave people waiting all that time so I just sent the books and hoped the cheques would clear.  They all did and for that I'm extremely grateful.  

So I'd like to offer a belated thank you to all those people who risked a sum of money, with very little information about myself.  I guess we have grown older and wiser since then and are  much more aware and wary of internet scams than we were back then.  The internet was a new and exciting toy whose dangers most of us didn't fully appreciate.  Not only are we now much more clued up on the dangers of the internet but we are more cynical unfortunately.

My Spanish holiday gave me some much needed thinking time and I discovered some more information which has enabled me to produce a more accurate picture of the precise proportions of two parts of the mechanism.  I'm constantly amazed at the amount of information Bessler managed to secrete in various places under our eyes, without our noticing.  Anyway back to work, time marches on!

JC

300th anniversary approaching and no sign of success .... so far!

We're almost at the 300th anniversary of Johann Bessler's first exhibition - and I've a feeling it's going to be a bit a damp squib!  No sign of success either here or elsewhere although that may change very soon.  

I'm going away to Spain for a couple of weeks very early on Tuesday morning and I'll have to close the comments facility, but as soon as I get back it will be open again and I'll be back at work on my own wheel, unless of course someone has beaten me to the winning post and published their own working model!  I won't close the comments 'til Monday evening.

There have been a number of people who have said that they will have a working model by the 300th anniversary, myself among them, but I suspect that they won't materialise (mine won't).  My own work has gone well and I think that I have the right design if only roughly, and getting it perfect has proved more difficult than I anticipated.  But as I continue to build, adjust, build and adjust I learn more and more (about how to build a stationary wheel!).  I know that certain people will say I'm just fooling myself and my design will never work (I don't need to name you guys!) but I have something up my sleeve that may astound you once you know.

I'm taking a small computer with me in the hope of finding free wi-fi and I may post something if I can.

So good luck to all of you who are building or designing and I'll see you again soon.

JC

Divide the toys page into five parts.

I feel that the clues I have published may be too subtle for some to accept. This puzzles me, but of course I've had many years to study them and get inside Bessler's mind.  Obviously some people think I may be fooling myself but I have good reasons for thinking the clues are deliberate and real.  I never intended to give anything away when I published the clues and therefore by themselves they may seem unimportant, but I hope to explain why they are helpful in discovering the solution to Bessler's wheel.  I won't publish any more as I shall be away for a two weeks and will have to close the comments facility until my return.  I am taking a small computer with me and if I can find a wifi hotspot somewhere then I'll try to write something.  So, in the mean time....

3 days to go - 7th clue.  The items in the Toys page in MT, numbered 138, 139, 140 and 141, are labelled A, B, C, D and E (1, 2, 3, 4, 5).  There is an additional hand-drawn item, a spinning top, which includes in the notes attached to it the number 5 (five again!). You can rather neatly divide the drawing labelled 'A' horizontally into five equal divisions.  You can run the horizontal lines across to the left and find that they match well with item 'B' and further across to the stork's bill/lazy tongs.

It has always seemed clear to me that the items labelled 'A' and 'B' are the same things - and with the five divisions in place, show they are also five repeated versions of items 'C' and 'D'.  'A' is shown with the five mechanical arrangements labelled 'C' and 'D' in an open position, and 'B' is the same but closed.

But item labelled 'E' is also similar - you should think of it as 'C' and 'D' linked together.

In other words, as I said in another post, the drawings are not what they appear to be, at first sight.

One more thing.  I could never understand why Johann Bessler added four numbers to the bottom of the page and I assumed that it was to show which pages he had omitted.  In fact this doesn't make sense because this is the last page and followed on from 137, which would have been the last page before he added the toys page. But four numbers doesn't relate to the five (or six) drawings he labelled, but here's an idea - 138, 139, 140 and 141 totals 558.

JC

Bessler's pendulums are not just pendulums.

Only 5 days to go  -  6th Clue. It seems that my suggestion that the pendulums are more than mere decorations is considered highly doubtful, so I shall have to try to convince the sceptics with some more clues.  I would like to convince most people that the secret lies in "taking various illustrations together and combining them with a discerning mind, it will indeed be possible to look for a movement and, finally to find one in them," - Bessler's words, but I couldn't have put it better myself.  

He published the Merseberg drawing in its original state in 1715, in Grundlicher Bericht, and the MT was not completed with the Toys page until about 1723 and yet in Apologia Poetica, also published in 1715, he had already hinted in quite strong terms that he had left a number of clues behind in case he died before the secret was out.

I'm surprised that I'm having to say this but perhaps I should point out here that the pendulums, as shown in his illustrations, are not to be taken literally, in other words they are not what they appear to be.- that would have been far too obvious  For instance, it's no good calculating their period of swing.  They weren't there as speed limiters or modifiers, but they were inside the wheel, but not in their current form.  If you think about it for a moment you realise that it would have been crazy for Bessler to put anything which was easily read and understood correctly as a clue; it had to be opaque, even to the serious researcher. 

I am not going to add any drawings here, but if you are interested, take a look at the Merseberg wheel illustration in Das Triumphirende.  Two hints here, firstly you all know the main wheel includes a pentagon aligned on the rope that passes behind the wheel, the sloping hatch marks are to help fill in the missing parts for one of the pentagons, of which there are two.  Why is the pentagon important?

The second hint is that there is clear evidence that the wheel facing you should be drawn larger than it is shown. Check out the tops of the two right hand pendulum pillars numbered 12, they're higher than the others for a reason, but the two wheels in the picture are the same height. The enlarged circle includes the outer end of the left side of the horizontal weight and also coincides with the right edge of the picture. I leave it to you to decide how one might make use of this.

More clues in other drawings to follow.

JC

The real purpose of Bessler's pendulums.

Work on my wheel has stopped, currently, due to unexpected developments within my family circle.  I may have to leave things 'til my return from holiday.  Unfortunately I will be away on the 300th anniversary, and because finishing the wheel will be delayed, that means my intention to publish everything will also be delayed, but I will get back to work on it as soon as I can.  

I'm sure there may be some who think I'm welching on my promise to share what I've been working on and in order to try to satisfy those who think that way, I will post a few more clues before I go on holiday.  Upon my return I shall try to finish the document and the video asap and publish both freely.

It has often been said that we won't know if a successful wheel was the same as Bessler's or not.  But I think we will know.  I, for one, have based my design on some drawings he left and it will become very clear which ones.

Johann Bessler left dozens of clues about how his wheel worked and  expected that someone would eventually work out all the clues and make a working wheel.  But there have been mistakes, and incorrect assumptions and mostly a complete dismissal of his clues.

(5th clue)

The commonest error is the belief that his comment on the front of His Maschinen Tractate applied strictly to the drawings it contained.

“N.B. 1st May 1733. Due to the arrest, I burned and buried all papers that prove the possibility. However, I have left all demonstrations and experiments since it would be difficult for anybody to see or learn anything about a perpetual motion from them or to decide whether there was any truth in them because no illustration by itself contains a description of the motion; however, taking various illustrations together and combining them with a discerning mind, it will indeed be possible to look for a movement and, finally to find one in them.”

In fact only the toys drawings in MT contains useful information.  There are additional hints in MT137 and in the letters 'A' which he used in MT, and there are hints too in some of the illustration numbers.  The remaining drawings he was referring to are the four which appeared in his Das Triumphirende and of course Grundlicher Bericht and in a small way the one at the end of Apologia Poetica.  These four drawings which contain the infamous pendulums also hold almost everything you will need to build his wheel.

It is a source of continual amazement to me that no one seems to have grasped the real reason for the presence of the pendulums. They are there to help you construct Bessler's wheel as he designed it.  I can't put it more plainly than that.  Now I have suspected this for almost the whole time I've been studying Bessler and I have a feeling that I'm not alone.  I think that the others who, like myself, have suspected the true purpose for the pendulums have kept quiet in the hope that they might succeed through tireless experimentation of the many many variations available using the visible clues.

NOTE

No pendulum was ever described by a witness.

Bessler said that they were required to even out any inconsistencies in the rotation of the wheel, but the truly equable nature of the wheel's rotation was commented on in writing more than once.

I suggested that the pendulums were there to make the rather dull illustrations more interesting, but even as I wrote that I in 1997 I was already convinced that the true reason was so that someone "with a discerning mind etc etc."

I have other clues of a more specific nature concerning the drawings which I will post in the next few days.

PS There is a copyright notice at the bottom of the page but I have no objection to these pages being commented on elsewhere and the material copied and pasted as long as proper acknowledgemetn to me is given.  A reference such as  http://johncollinsnews.blogspot.co.uk/   will suffice.

JC

Gravitywheel - Catch 22?

I note recent comments suggesting that all designs should be shared, so others can study them and build and experiment with them.  I have promised to share mine if the wheel works or fails, but in my experience designs are dismissed by the majority and maintaining that you are right only leads to calls for a proof of principle wheel - is that a catch 22 situation?  Design is ignored without a PoP model but you can't build a PoP model unless you have the correct design.

The definition of catch 22 in the book of that name (Joseph McLennan) is "a situation in which a person is frustrated by a paradoxical rule or set of circumstances that preclude any attempt to escape from them".  

Now that has a familiar ring to it.  Our situation requires us to build a wheel which uses the force of gravity to move a number of weights causing a wheel to rotate continuously.  Unfortunately we are frustrated by the paradoxical rules which say that what we wish to achieve is impossible, even though it has been done before.

"Begging the question" is a type of logical fallacy in which a proposition is made that uses its own premise as proof of the proposition. In other words, it is a statement that refers to its own assertion to prove the assertion.  I think it was Helmholtz who said that perpetual motion machines must be impossible because  no-one had ever succeeded in building one that worked. Therefore, such machines must be impossible. If they are impossible it must be by reason of some natural law preventing their construction. This law, he said, could only be the law of Conservation of Energy.  That is also, ironically, a circular argument.

JC