The Legend of 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 completed my house purchase, and have set up a new workshop so that I can finish my wheel tests, 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.

23rd May 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

Johann Bessler's use of Codes

Did Johann Bessler leave any clues?

Were any encrypted?

Was there more than one kind of clue?

Were they intended to help us reconstruct his wheel or was there some other reason??

Johann Bessler left numerous clues of such a diverse nature that although researchers have made some progress in interpreting some of the clues, in almost every case each researcher has discovered that a different method of encoding them has been used.

My own work on chaper 55 of Apologia Poetica can be seen at http://www.orffyreus.net/

It doesn't reveal any hidden information other than the fact that there definitely is a code and an extensive one.

I have also presented some other codes at my web site at http://www.theorffyreuscode.com./ Again these offer little other than the code and my interpretation of each one, and they appear to be indicating fiurther research is needed in order to understand what they mean.

Øystein has made signifiant advances in deciphering another range of codes totally unrelated to those I have mentioned above.  He has shared with myself some examples of his work and it cannot be denied that what he has found was intentional and therefore authored by Bessler himself.  There is also the work done by Ken B.  Unfortunately I have not had access to his findings so I am unable to verify it but he is planning to publish details shortly and then perhaps we can form an opinion

Where as Oystein's work is a combination of what I might call alphagraphical codes although it doesn't relate to QR bar codes, Ken's has found information in Bessler's portraits.  My own work involves yet another variation on the codes used, this time deducing the author's intention from clues within certain of Bessler's drawings.

Finally there are a number of textual hints which seem on the face of it either meaningless or too ambiguous to be of practical value, however when taken together with other clues, some sense can be made of them.

It is clear from the above and other areas of research that Bessler did indeed intend to leave enough practical informtion to allow us to reconstruct his wheel.  I know that there have been several statements both here and on the forum that we shall never know whether we have reconstructed Bessler's wheel or simply found another way to produce similar results, but in my opinion which comes from informed research, there are a number of pieces of useful information, which indicate why his wheel worked and how, so that the reconstruction of a wheel very similar to Bessler's will be achieved and in the near future.

I think that the detailed explanation in a textual format will be found in Chapter 55 of Apologia Poetica, but the graphic explanations which may be intended to supplement the text version will be found in Bessler's drawings.  Elsewhere there are the hints in the text which suggest the answer may be found in Apologia Poetica, and as I've said above, specifically in chapter 55.  There are also numerous tiny clues which seem to point to 5, 5 and 5 or 55; why the number 5? I think everyone knows my feelings on that, but using the number 5 may also have presented itself as the obvious choice for which chapter to include the extensive codes in, hence chaper 55.  

Also he initiated the whole encodement question by adopting the pseudonym Orffyreus, and you can see more about that on my web site at http://www.theorffyreuscode.com./

From all the hints and statements he made we can be sure that Bessler did intend for his wheel to be rediscovered should he unfortunately die before a buyer could be found - and he stated that he would be content with post humous acknowledgement - if that is not an unequivocal allusion to information being available after his death, then I don't know what it.

J

A Repudiation of Certain Statements made in Comments on this Blog.

It has been suggested here on this blog that "Bessler's wheel requires no energy to prime the weights even though they produce an imbalance providing torque to turn the wheel."

I disagree that the weights are "primed" as you put it, without requiring energy, they have to be lifted in the first place.  This requires energy. On the other hand I agree that the wheels turn according to "known physics".  So your suggestion that your wheel "uses the law of perpetual motion, which requires that no energy is needed to prime the weights ...", does not concur with what you refer to as "known physics"' which does require the consumption of energy.

So, assuming that Bessler did not lie, it is obviously possible to design a way to lift the weights so that they can fall repeatedly and this action must comply with "known physics" , so there is no need to invent a "law of perpetual motion". But the energy to lift the weights after each fall has to be included in the design, it's no use inventing new ways of enabling the weights to overbalance,  hoping that they will rise through the rotation of the wheel.

There is at least one way and possibly more than one, and it can be demonstrated that by incorporating some additional features that each weight can be lifted at the optimum moment in rotation.  This can be achieved with a simple design feature which I'm unwilling to discuss here because I'm writing it up, which easily causes each weight to shoot upwards, just as Bessler described.  I don't expect anyone to believe me without any supporting testimony just as I wouldn't believe anyone else who made such claims.

I will also take issue with the statement that, "you will not find anything in the MT drawings or the codes", not true and my document includes numerous illustrations along with full explanations of some of the clues from MT and some codes which will prove the error in the above quotation.

Finally let me deal with the statement that, "all of Bessler's wheels could theoretically start on their own, it just depends on what state they were left in when they were stopped."  This is demonstrably wrong.  The first two wheels were held stationary when not being demonstrated otherwise they started spontaneously.  Why assume Bessler lied?  It is safe to assume that the many witnesses who were allowed to screw the bolt in and out to slow the wheel down would soon have found the spot in rotation which would allow the wheel stop and remain stationary.  It is also entirely logical that to rotate continuously the wheel must have been in a state of continuous imbalance.  Therefore how could it not start spontaneously?

The latter two wheels could spin in either direction therefore they must have been in a state of continuous balance, as opposed to imbalance, and therefore how could they possibly start spontaneously?  The action of giving them a gentle push in the desired direction led to acceleration in that chosen direction, once one weight was heard to fall.  Once the wheel was stopped it remained stationary, and because a weight had to fall before it began to accelerate, it would not be possible to stop it in a position from whence it could spontaneously begin to rotate.

I have tried to argue logically without using any information I am privy to, which is unknown to readers of this blog, to try to balance some of the statements issuing from the hand of a certain commentator.  Much of this person's output is erroneous, self-opinionated and an example ofself-aggrandisement and should be taken with a large dose of scepticism, as should his claims to imminent success.

JC

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