Update for April 2016

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

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

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

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

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

JC

http://www.witt-energy.com/ harvesting Motion Energy

I have Andre to thank for informing me about this amazing invention -  the WITT motion energy harvester.  It has been invented by Martin Wickett, a British civil engineer, who has found a way to construct a device which uses motion in any direction to drive a rotating wheel.

Unlike a self-winding watch which uses linear motion to win a watch,, this device harvests all motion whether up, down, round sideways etc. Andre sent me this (now corrected) link to a youtube video:-


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RACH6bFhxKY&feature=youtu.be

Here is another link to the official website.  So many potential uses for this machine!

 http://www.witt-energy.com/

I put it on this blog because I think it is such a logical and useful discovery.

JC

You need a working wheel or enough of the mechanism to show how it works.

When Johann Bessler exhibited his wheel for the first time in Gera, Germany, 6th June 1712, he had worked out in his own mind that all he had to do was provide some evidence that his wheel was genuine and the rest would follow - money, fame etc.

The next few years proved his optimism was seriously undeserved.  No one was sufficiently persuaded of his claims to make an outright payment in full without seeing for himself that the wheel was genuine. 

Gottfired Leibniz tried to guide him by suggesting several tests which would add weight to his claims by being difficult if not impossible to fake.  They included translocation to a different set of wheel supports; lifting as high as possible a heavy load; driving an archimedes screw; a long endurance test under guard, lock and key and seal - and most importantly, if he could bring himself to allow it, the public confirmation by a well-respected person, of the genuiness of his wheel, by revealing the internal workings for his close inspection.

All these requirement were eventually carried out, but still no buyer could be found who was not prepared to pay up without first assuring himself that the device was real by looking inside it.

This sounds depressing and we may feel sorry for Bessler, but there is good reason to suspect that exactly the same response or lack of response would follow similar claims today.  You might think think that a patent would be proof enough, but consider how many hundreds of perpetual motion machine designs have been registered with various patent offices over the last few hundred years and you can see that a patent proves nothing even if it might offer some limited protection against competition.

The only answer, it seems to me, is to reveal the design within a video of a working model; a full explanation will need to accompany the video - or find that reputable person, like Karl the Landgrave, who will verify your wheel. But you still need that working model, I know, I'm in that situation now.

There is one more possibility to my mind and it is this.  There must be a configuration within your wheel which will demonstrate how the mechanism works, without having to complete a whole wheel.  The weights which fall have to be returned to where they started from at least once in each turn of the wheel, and your mechanism must be able to demonstrate how that can be achieved, and that is the route I intend taking once I get my workshop back.

JC

The Legend of Johann Bessler's Wheel.

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

Once I have found and bought my house, I shall return to the blog plus I shall have published my interpretation of a large number of Bessler's clues, none of which relate to Bessler's portraits. So there should ample reason for discussion.

4th April 2016

JC

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

JC

Bessler's Wheel as a Reactionless Drive.

I remember speculating about the possibility of finding new uses for Bessler's wheel way back in 1996 when I first published my biography of Johann Bessler, Perpetual Motion; An Ancient Mystery Solved?

One of my  suggestions was that by dpowering Bessler's wheel in reverse, from an external source, might it not be possble to actually levitate the whole thing?  I no longer think this is a realistic possibility but I still think it will prove possible to use something similar to produce a linear propulsion effect - reactionless drive as sought for spaceship drives.

My reasoning was as follows.  If Bessler's wheel was driven by weights then, in effect it was converting a downward linear force into a rotating force.  If Bessler's wheel definitely worked and was proven to do so, then it follows that reversing the mechanical process should provoke an opposite reaction, in its case an upwards lift, perhaps measurable on scales.  Now it seems to me that actual aerial motion might be a step too far, but linear horizontal motion as sought by many historical projects such as the Dean Drive, The Gyroscopic Inertial Thruster (unfortunately shortened to GIT!), and of course Eric Laithwaite's, "Propulsion System", which was claimed to create a linear thrust through gyroscopic and inertial forces. 

I am aware that after years of theoretical analysis and laboratory testing of actual devices, no rotating (or any other) mechanical device has ever been found to produce unidirectional reactionless thrust in free space.  That being said I cannot fault the logic described in my initial argument that if Bessler's wheel worked than the reverse pprocess should produce the reverse effect.

The self-same arguments which persist to deny any possibility of Bessler's wheel ever having really worked also apply to the research done extensively on the reactionless drive.  I attended a conference on the subject at Brighton a few years ago where I had the honour of meeting Hal Puthoff who was one of the speakers there.  I have to admit that no-one mentioned the possibility of Bessler's wheel providing evidence of the possibility of a reactionless drive, most of the discussion was way above my head!  The conference drew no conclusions either for or against, it was simply a place discussing ideas.

Anyway something to think about guys.

JC

The Difference Between Heaviness and Gravity.

I tried, in my previous post, to define the subtle difference between the force of gravity and something that Bessler understood as the heaviness of an object.  This may seem like splitting hairs and that there are no differences, but bear with me.

What is the difference between gravity and energy.  We are told that the reason why the force of gravity cannot be the source of energy is because energy is a property of objects, such as balls and weights etc. In contrast, the word force describes the interaction between objects. Forces are the way that energy is transferred from one object to another when they interact, but forces are not the energy itself. Gravity is a force  and it provides one way for objects to exchange and transform energy to different states.

People speak of energy as if it is a thing, and of course we all know that energy can be stored, bought and sold, and transported. The reason that energy has all these aspects is that, unlike many conditions that objects may be subject to, energy is conserved; the condition of having energy is always passed from one object to another, never created anew or destroyed.

Remember Bessler's words from his Apologia Poetica?  "The rain drips down. Snow falls. The shotgun shoots. The bow twangs", he is refering to motion not the cause of the motion. I used to think he meant gravity, but because he included two motions not applicable to gravity, I think he was simply pointing to motion and emphasizing the fact by including the bow and the shot gun. I'm certain that he was describing in particular the motion of falling - the reaction to gravity, to the action of things that are imbued with heaviness when they were allowed to fall.

So if I stand by a wall and try as hard as I can to push it over, as far as the wall is concerned I haven't spent an ounce of energy, because it hasn't moved.  Forget the fact that I'm panting, sweating and very hot.  But what if the the wall suddenly gives way and falls over?  A snapshot of one second during my ten minutes of pushing is the moment when my energy output which was a force, changed the potential energy I was providing into kinetic energy as the wall fell. So the only energy I gave the wall that made it fall was that expended during that single second.

Imagine I'm standing on a trap-door.  For me it's the same as standing on solid ground, until someone pulls a lever and I fall through the hole.  As long as I'm standing on the trap door I'm like the force I was exerting against the wall.  Nothing changes until the lever releases me then the potential energy that was my weight is released and it changes into kinetic energy.

Now picture Bessler's wheel.  It has the weights suspended from some part of the wheel.  The force of gravity is a force imbuing the weights with heaviness, but nothing happens because no weight falls.  But we know that Bessler's wheel began to rotate spontaneously, which can only have happened if one weight or more was in a position which overbalanced the wheel.  Overbalancing motion occurs when there is more kinetic energy on one side of the centre of rotation than the other.  If it was potential energy on each side and there was more potential energy on one side of the CoR than the other, the weight would fall, but only when the brake was released, the wall gave way, or the lever was pulled which released the trap door, that is why, as soon as the wheel was released it began to turn.

The force of gravity had unlocked the potential energy and converted it into kinetic energy, but only during the period of its fall.   It had to wait for the wheel to be released before it could change the potential energy locked up in the weights; the trap-door had to be released before I fell; and the wall had to give way before my potential energy was converted to kinetic energy.

Jean Bernouille said perpetual motion seekers should seek a movement in Nature to adapt to a perpetual motion machine; the falling of any object of mass, is that natural motion in Nature.  What we are doing or trying to do is make use of something which is already happening, that is, a weight is falling.  Gravity has already changed the weight's potential energy into kinetic energy.  The energy was already there it just needed releasing by allowing it to fall and produce usable enregy in the form of kinetic energy.

When the wall fell over, and the kinetic energy was released in that single second, it wasn't new energy; the potential energy had been there ever since someone built the wall.  The trap door fell because someone locked it upwards into position and it was that energy that was released when it fell, and the same applies to the weights in Bessler's wheel.  Their potential energy had been there since he built the wheel ...But, how did it repeatedly acquire new potential energy for its next fall? Before I respond consider the following.

I've said before that those who suggest that Bessler's wheel were stopped in a certain point during rotation are wrong.  If you have a wheel which appears to spin continuously it must always be out of balance.  Why?  Because if there were points during rotation where it wasn't out of balance it would stop if a sufficient load were placed upon it.  With no load, rotation might well be carried past the dead zones purely by impetus, but as soon as a heavy enough load were placed on it, you would notice a variation in speed during a single rotation and the heavier the load the more likely the wheel would come to a stop.  But one of the most impressive things about Bessler's wheel was its very steady rotation. This supports the idea that the wheels were always out of balance, anything else would show up. But anyway logic demands that a continuously turning wheel must be continuously out of balance.

The oldest argument against these weight-driven wheels is that a weight falling in a circle cannot have enough energy generated by its fall to enable it to return to its starting point.  Do people think we are so dim that we have not discovered that fact for ourselves long ago, as if we didn't already know it?  Why on earth do those same people stick with the old, old formula of one single weight to demonstrate their flawed argument?  Do they really think that there is no way to get a weight back to its starting point with the assistance of other weights operating in different ways - a special configuration of a number of weights?

In my opinion Bessler's wheel did not try to tap gravity for its energy source, mainly because he did not know of this exterior force of nature, all he knew about was that his weights were heavy and did not prodice energy unless they were falling.  He worked out that the inherent heaviness in each weight provided the fall and his most difficult achievement was to find a way to configur his weights so that there was spare action available to return each fallen weight back to ts starting point

JC

It's Heaviness not Gravity which provides the Energy for Bessler's Wheel.

I return to this subject from time to time, always seeking clarification.  I know that gravity cannot be a source of energy, I've been told so more times than I can remember.   But it does seem as though Johann Bessler thought that the 'heaviness', i.e 'ponderousness' or as they say in Latin the 'gravitas'  of the weights inside his machine gave the wheel the necessary energy to continually rotate.

Notice that there is a subtle difference between what we know as 'gravity', which is some kind of force field which attracts other things of mass - and a thing's inherent 'heaviness'.  Is there a difference?  Bessler believed that it was the 'heaviness' of the weights in his machine which gave it the power to turn continuously, but we always take one step further back in the process, i.e. was it the thing that caused the 'heavinesss' in his weights which he did not know of  and which we call 'gravity'?

Can it be that this whole apparently pointless enterprise, making a wheel turn continuously simply by constructing a clever configuration of weights, has been doomed to failure because man sought the source of the 'heaviness' when it did not matter where it came from, he should have just been glad it was and is there?

We accept several different forms of energy which we can turn to our advantage in one way or another but the fact that we know from where it originates and how it works and how we can best make use of it, is not neccessarily something we need to know.  People have sailed ships using the wind as an energy source for millenia.  Same for windmills for grinding corn etc.    Others learned how to use water wheels in a similar way.  Clock makers even used 'heaviness' to drive their weight-driven clocks, long before Sir Isaac Newton discoverd 'gravity'.  Just because no one seems to have discovered how to manipulate weights to rotate wheel continuously does not mean it can't be done.  I'm certain that Johann Bessler knew and yet he never mentions the word gravity in any of his publications, because it wasn't known about for many years after Sir Isaac Newton descibed it in Latin as 'gravity'.

My point is this, weights are inherently heavy, we know it is the effect of gravity but we don't actually need to know that to use them.  Gravity is not a source of energy but it does create the conditions which can lead to a device being able to exploit the heaviness which gravity gives to an object of mass.

So when Bessler said, " NO, these weights are themselves the PM device, the ‘essential constituent parts’which must of necessity continue to exercise their motive force (derived from the PM principle) indefinitely – so long as they keep away from the centre of gravity."  That is what he meant; the heaviness in the weights, not some remote force called gravity.

Interestingly he used the word ''gravium', at the end of the sentence above which I have translated as, 'centre of gravity', but I subsequently learned that the word ,'gravium', is the genitive plural of 'gravis' which I learned means 'heaviness', so Bessler uses the phrase 'centre of heaviness', which means the same thing but when you put it into the correct context of his time, you can see that he is not referring to the same thing as we are when we use the phrase 'centre of gravity'.  He is simply stating that the centre of heaviness is at a certain point but has nothing to do with the force of gravity. We on the other hand, mean that the centre of gravity refers to the action of gravity on the whole structure and identifies the balancing point between both sides affected by the fore of gravity as the central point.

In the second paragraph I suggested that we habitually looked at the conditions prior to the use of weights, or what gravity did to the weights, whereas we should be looking at the weights themselves as they were at the time of their use. We have been looking one step back and ignoring the evidence in front of our eyes.

All we need to know is that the weights are always heavy just as long as gravity is affecting them.

JC

Update - personal and impersonal

Had my hernia op last Saturday and I was released to go home the same day.  No heavy lifting for six weeks!  Funniest piece of advice I received was don't sign any legal document during the first 48 hours.  Apparently one's judgement can be seriously affected.  I had a slightly iffy reaction to either the anaesthetic or the morphine and kept having to be told to breathe!  Body temperature went down  34 degrees C, which is equivalent to 93.2 F.  Brought me this thing called a bear hug - brilliant!  Soon brought my temperature up to normal.

We will move out of this house in about two weeks and stay with my daughter until our new house is ready.  It's not really new, but we are getting an old one renovated and then things can return to normal, but until then no wheel work can be attempted, because I aint got anywhere to do it! Verification has turned into a collaboration for now, so I guess some will say it's failed but hang in there for bit longer, and all will be revealed.

I read many theories, mostly old ones rehashed on BW forum, and some which I know are so wrong, and yet you have admire people who keep on trying to get the answer.  Pet theories abound, and that name explains it all, "pet" theories - someone's favourite explanation, to many of us, seems completely bananas.

My own theories seem to me to be the epitome of logic and common sense, but they can't be if they don't work.  Doubtless if my work is not verified soon, once it's published there will be some who will dismiss it without the slightest consideration - but one thing I am confident about is this; when the work I've done on deciphering a large number of clues is published, it will provoke much discussion and I think that someone will take my work forward and succeed.

Once we are out of here and settled with my daughter I will try to entertain with more interesting topics for this blog, but until then there is so much to do, it leaves little time for writing.

My account of the clues I have discovered and solved is comng along and I cannot wait to share the amazing work that Bessler did in revealing so much information right there, under our eyes, without anyone suspecting that there was anything to see.  I guarantee you will be amazed.

JC

Weights and measures relating to Bessler's wheel; what to use and what to leave.

It is a curious fact that many people seem bent on designing and building their Bessler-wheels whilst labouring under the misapprehension that picking weights and measures relating to any one or more of the wheels, from a variety of sources without applying simple logic to the process, is sure to result in success.

Some insist that there were eight weights or eight mechanisms.  This figure arose from the report by Fischer von Erlac to J.T. Desaguliers, Sir isaac Newton's curator of experiments.  Doubtless the writer recorded accurately what he thought he heard and perhaps he was correct, but these figures applied to the mighty Kassel wheel, one that was able to turn in either direction. The problem as I see it is that this was a far more complicated wheel to build, as Bessler himself admitted. 

Why would anyone hoping to repeat Bessler's success begin with the most complex wheel ever built?  The logical starting point would be to try to copy his first wheel, or even the second one.  Each of these started spontaneously and only turned one way.

A lot of people have suggested that perhaps Bessler preloaded the wheel to make it start spontaneously as soon as the brake was released.  This is an example of picking and choosing what to believe and what to discard when considering Bessler's claims or the reports about his wheel and its performance.  If you believe Bessler's wheels were genuine, and you accept many of the things he said or were reported about the wheel, why would you then reject other parts of the record, simply because you don't believe it or you think it was a trick designed to impress a gullible audience.

Take his first wheel for example.  4.6 feet in diameter; thickness about 4 inches, speed unloaded 50 RPM.  Always began to rotate as soon as its brake was released.

Second wheel; 9.3 feet in diameter. thickness 6 inches; speed umloaded more than 50 RPM.  This one was mounted on a six inch axle.

Utterly different sizes yet output speed about the same.  The same speed might indicate a more powerful lift in the second one, but we don't know.  What we do know is that the third and fourth wheels were bi-directional and needed a gentle push to get them rotating, from which start they steadily accelerated.

It seems obvious to me at least that there must have been major differences between the two versions.  Not in the basic concept that enabled them to take advantage of gravity, but in their individual configurations, in which case it simply does not make sense to use the information about second type of wheel to make the earlier version.

I have suggested that the first thing that might have occurred to Bessler to prove that his wheels weren't clockwork driven, was to make them able to turn in either direction.  To me the logical first step would be to see what would happen if he mounted two wheels on the same axle, each designed to turn the opposite way.  I'm sure this is what he did.  I carried out a similar experiement myself but with two Savonius windmills mounted on the same vertical axle and the result was exactly similar to Bessler's experience.  The Savonius windmills spun im different directions when detached from each other, beginning to spin as soon as the wind from the fan hit them.  But when they were linked, they remained stationary; they needed a slight push and then they began to spin in which ever direction the push came from, but they were unable to achieve much more than half the speed they spun when separated.

So why try to build a dual direction wheel within one wheel when two opposing ones were used by Bessler.  Obviously this is just my opinion but I believe that this is correct.  The Kassel wheel rotated at 26 RPM, less than half the speed of the first two wheels, just as my Savonius windmills did.  But there is a fly in the ointment; the Merseberg wheel, his third one, was also dual directional but it achieved a speed of 40 RPM.  This demonstrates again that you cannot make any assumptions about the size and number of weights, even though we have Christian Wolff's estimate of four pounds for one weight, we have no idea how many there were.  We simply do know what differences formed part of each wheel.  

So keep it simple, try to build a one way wheel capable of turning up to 50 RPM, which starts to turn spontaneously as soon as it's brake is released.  Forget the number of weights which Fischer von Erlach is supposed to have heard, that was a different wheel with potentially a reversing set of weights making additional sounds. Recently I have seen ideas suggested which involved using eight weights to represent the eight planets supposed to have been known about in Bessler's time; it doesn't matter how many planets there are or were; it has nothing to do with Bessler's wheel.

We know that cross-bars, weights and pulleys were used in the wheels, because Bessler said so.  The presence of pulleys suggests rope or some other flexible material was present too.  He implied that there were springs although he didn't say so definitely, which to me says that some kind of spring was present but there are several different ways of using springs as well as many different kinds.

Finally, my own research suggests that Karl, the Landgrave who examined the interior of the Kassel wheel, was overly optimistic when he said that the interior was so simple a carpenter's boy could copy it if allowed a short time to study it. 

JC