More cold, and a cold.

Well I shouldn't be criticised for having good intentions but even the safest-seeming plans can suddenly become too hard to accomplish - they can go astray at nature's whim. Only days ago I believed the cold snap was over. Soon I would be back in my workshop to finish my final prototype (as I like to think of it); Christmas day followed with all the glad familial diversions it brings; more of the same on Boxing Day, to recover and then the freezing temperatures returned and I awoke with a throat that felt as if broken fingernails were wripping it apart! A fresh fall of snow of some 8 inches is forecast and it looks though my plans have been scuppered again!

It is only just over a year (November 5th) since I had a large portion of my right lung removed to rid me of a small benign tumour. I asked if I needed to take any precautions after my surgery and was told "no, just steer clear of infections"; I saide "OK - for how long?" "For ever" was the response.

So = now I have an infection and I have to keep warm - what a "*^$-8:/><*!"

I have finished my 'paper' on the workings of the gravitywheel and I'm ready to go public but just let me try to complete this final fiasco first ! (I love alliterations - in fact I find 'front'-rhymes fascinatingly fortuitous. The repetitive rearrangement of rhyming rear-end rhymes rate rather less rewardingly for reasons I realize are probably personal.)

I'll be back as soon as possible, confidence is sky high!

JC

Too cold! Time is short! More Bessler stuff decoded.

Since the weather has been consistently on or below freezing since my last blog entry, it has proved extremely uninviting and inhospitable in my workshop; so I have not been in there, other than for about twenty minutes a couple of days ago, when my finger actually stuck to a piece of metal I was trying to attach. I am desperate to finish construction but I'm thwarted at the moment, but there is still time before the year's end!

I've used the time to write up another description which I intend to publish on my web site and it should satisfy those who are convinced I've lost the plot or think I'm some poor deluded soul who builds gravitywheels in the air.

Even at this late stage I have made further progress in deciphering Bessler's work and I doubt that anyone else knows why Bessler included the 'Die Andere Figur' and the adjacent one in 'Das Tri...'. On the face of it there is nothing useful in the drawings so why bother to include it? Yes it has a simple bit of number code but there is more, as there always is with Bessler. Happily for me, it only serves to confirm what I already know.

JC

Yin yang, Tesla and Bessler.

In 1997, I wrote about the principle of yin and yang in my biography of Johann Bessler. I argued that it had very little provenance and yet it was widely revered as a philosophy. I know this word, provenance, is usually attributed to paintings and describes records or documents authenticating them or the history of their ownership, but I was trying to describe the odd lack of explanation of its origin and development. I am fully aware of the philosophy behind this important symbol and have read a number of theses on the subject but there is absolutely nothing which explains its derivation or origins and I suggested that perhaps it derived from a design for an actual machine - many eons ago, as the SciFi books say. This is not the place to enlarge on my theory but suffice to say that all references to yin and yang include descriptions of various kinds of energy and that and the lack of provenance was the basis for my idea.

I went on to compare the yin yang design with the design of the Savonius Rotor, but subsequently I felt that there was too little substance to add to my suppositions on this matter to pursue it and I had more or less dismissed any thought of further research from my mind - other than using the device as my avatar on www.besslerwheel.com - until today. Imagine my surprise to discover a link between yin and yang, something I call Bessler's principal and a diagram by Tesla. I don't wish to reveal anything more at this stage but I cannot help but marvel at the strange circuity of events that we encounter in a more or less haphazard manner throughout our lives, which seem to have a connection, however nebulous. I don't use the word circuity in its implied sense of a roundabout way of doing something, but more in the sense of a circuitous connection between two or three apparently disparate events which seem to add up in the same way that two plus two equals four.

I don't think I'm a gullible fan of mysteries and the so-called suppressed inventions, so I try to treat gossip and rumour ,with a generous helping of salt, as unsubstantiated and prefer to work out the truth myself where possible, but I once saw a sketch which was reputed to have been drawn by Tesla which, he apparently said, showed the shape that all energy derived from. There were some similarities to the yin-yang symbol. I have been unable to locate any copies of this sketch although I have looked from time to time and its possible that I have a copy in my Bessler archives somewhere. I shall endeavour to find it and will post it here if I'm successful - or someone else locates it and sends me a copy. How reliable the information is that Tesla did really draw this sketch, I don't know, but at least it makes an interesting coincidence if nothing else - and I can confirm there does seem to be a link between the yin yang symbol and Bessler's wheel.

JC

Hostage to fortune.

My seeming confidence in my ability to successfully reconstruct Bessler's wheel may seem like I have given a hostage to fortune - and yet, despite the limited time left to achieve my goal, as far as my wager goes, I remain buoyantly unconcerned at the possibility of failure. The reason for my apparently disproportionate feeling of optimism lies, not in my current construction, but rather in the sure and certain knowledge that I know what principle lies behind Bessler's wheel and which powers it. I can say without any fear of correction that there has not been a single suggestion by any person, past or present, which explains this principle, although there have been a number allusions to it in a general way but which have missed the truth by a whisker or two. Because of this knowledge, I'm confident that I shall succeed, if not this month then next month or the one after.

Now before certain people jump on this carefully considered comment as a sign that I am getting ready to admit failure, I would like to assure them that I have not failed as I have not finished the construction. However, I have heard it said that when man hatches plan, God dispatches man, so I have taken time to record my thoughts on this matter and have taken steps to ensure that, should my end arrive prematurely, my efforts will not have been in vain and hopefully we shall see this miracle of simplicity, operating around the world . Antoine de Saint-Exupery once wrote, "A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away". I cannot say that this design is perfect but it is extremely simple to understand - if only it were as easy to construct!

My insurance in case of a sudden exit from this world has taken considerable time to complete and that task has looked more attractive to me than contemplating the prospect of standing in my workshop during the weather we have been subjected to during the last two weeks. But that task is done; the sun is out; it's very cold but dry, so back to work!

JC

My new frictionless and wobble-free wheel

Recently I have managed to refrain from giving updates on my attempts to reconstruct Bessler's wheel because time keeps slipping by and my frequent estimates for completion slip away too. I was receiving a certain amount of flak, good-humoured I hope, but it made me think twice about making promises I might not be able to keep. However I have had a few emails requesting an occasional update so this is the situation at present.

The current prototype is still under construction and looks like it will be finished before the end of the year - in order to win my wager with Bill! I have built a new wheel stand for this model because the previous one looked so bad when compared with those I see posted from time to time and I anticipate posting pictures of this one, working or not. The bearing supporting the wheel has been improved with the addition of a bicycle front wheel bearing and there is very little friction to interfere with any spontaneous rotation that might occur - I wish!

I have argued repeatedly that friction should be the least of our worries because we wish to build a wheel which will do work, and therefore overcoming friction would be a breeze. But I have to admit that seeing the new backplate spinning easily and without the lateral wobble which seemed to be an intrinsic component of all my previous models, I'm now converted to relatively friction-free assemblies. The wobble I referred to had a tendency to throw my previous mechanisms into disarray, so it is all to the good that it has been eliminated. I remain confident that this design will work.

JC

Gravitywheels and bogywheels

The email address for this site uses the word bogywheel and it has been pointed out to me for the umpteenth time that this spelling is incorrect and it should be spelled bogey or bogie. Bogie wheels are used, typically under railway carriages and I think they are called wheel trucks in the USA. I was well aware of this fact and deliberately mispelled it because I intended it as an acronym for Bessler/Orffyreus GravitY Wheel, BOGY wheel for short.

This brings me to something that has bothered me for some time. I used the word 'gravitywheel' because the wheel is driven by gravity - alone. Everyone knows that I am firmly of the opinion that Bessler's wheel only required gravity to work - no other forces were necessary for its continuous rotation. This viewpoint is certainly not universally agreed with, even among those who support my contention that Bessler was genuine. To try to answer such criticism I have attemped to argue the point from time to time, for instance, via my web site at http://www.gravitywheel.com/ under the heading 'The Collins Conjecture'. My words have bounced off the skins of the vast majority with little effect and I have to admit that the arguments were probably too speculative, confusing and poorly worded and what we need is something that is simpler to understand.

I have argued that because gravity is a conservative force does not mean that it cannot be used as we desire and that wind and water flow are also conservative which we already use for energy. There is one major problem with likening gravity to the wind and flowing water; despite the fact that it can be argued that each force is conservative and therefore capable of being tapped directly for such purposes as generating electricity, both wind and water act directly on windmills and water wheels, respectively, while gravity wheels require the addition of weights. It seems to me that there must be a better way of comparing the three forces to obtain a deeper
understanding.

To compare the three forces under the same circumstances the following would have to apply. To drive a gravitywheel requires that moveable weights should act on the wheel to cause it to overbalance and turn, or alternatively, a succession of falling weights from some external source; for a windmill to be tested under the same strictures we should have to picture a test in which we released into the wind-flow a succession of objects, helium-filled balloons for example, each carrying a small weight, which were designed to hit the blades of the windmill causing it to turn. But we would need endless numbers of balloons striking the windmill on one side to keep it turning. The same test could be applied to water flow; there would have to be a succession of floating objects striking a submerged wheel in such a way that it too turned.

Under these circumstances, the wind would be driving the weights, not gravity. No one would seriously suggest that that was the way to turn a windmill and it is obvious that if you tied the balloons to the blades of the windmill that it would not turn in the wind just because of the pressure of the wind on the balloons. But that is what we are suggesting with a gravity wheel. To solve this problem We have to design a weight-driven wheel that reflects the interaction between the wind and the windmill blades.

JC

Two principles and Orffyreus or Bessler?

This has been an interesting week for me. I am still finding difficulty in allocating enough time to building Bessler's wheel according to my design. But during one of the brief moments when I managed to get to work on it I discovered that there are at least two completely different ways to achieve the same result i.e. a gravity driven wheel. My original design and the second method each use the same kind of mechanisms, but obviously configured slightly differently. The second method looks easier to build and once I've finished the first design I shall build another wheel according to the second method. This seems to back up Bessler's claim to have built wheels which worked on different principles. They are different but one leads to the other.

I have also had subjective confirmation that my design is right because of questions raised in http://www.besslerwheel.com/. In some of Bessler's more literary descriptions of his wheel the inventor makes use of metaphors to aid understanding and at the same time confuse. Two metaphorical descriptions had left me clueless as to the reason for their inclusion, but recent references to them brought them back to my mind and at last I understood them - and as I've said before, the understanding of these descriptive clues seems to come after the solution arrives which is a pain but also useful in confirming that you are going the right way. As I said this is a purely subjective experience and open to the accusation of self-delusionment!

Someone wrote to me expressing doubt that I should refer to the inventor as Bessler because he chose the pseudonym, Orffyreus. I have wavered from one view point to the other ever since I first began to write his biography , "Perpetual Motion; An Ancient Mystery Solved?" I decided on using the name Bessler rather than Orffyreus almost as casually as flicking a coin to make the decision, simply because I could not make my mind up which was better. I think he would approve of my use of his real name because I have written so extensively about the reasons for the name change that no-one could be in any doubt as to whom I am referring to, which ever name I use.

He adopted the name Orffyreus for a very good reason; he wished to make people question the name and seek the reason. This, in my opinion, he did to provide a pointer to the use of alphabetic substitution and alphanumeric codes - and we all now know the reason for that. It was his intention to provide encoded information about the design of his machine for posterity.

JC