Johann Bessler's Family and his descendants?

Someone recently mentioned the possibility that there might be a living descendent of Bessler's who might have inherited some information about the wheel.  I'm not convinced that there is a chance that this might be possible, but I don't like to rule it out. So what follows is the only information I have to date on his parents, brother, wives and children. It may be that someone might be more familiar with ancestry research than I, and find the limited information below of use in their research.
 
Elias Bessler, (he assumed the other names Johann Ernst at a later date) was the son of the day-labourer Andreas Bessler, and his wife Maria, née  Maucke.  He was baptised in Zittau on 6^th May 1681; his parents having been married in Zittau on 11^th February 1680.   Customarily, baptism took place no more than three days after birth.

His brother, Gottfried, was baptised in Zittau on 26^th May 1688.  There were three other children who all died early or were still born.

Dr. Christian Schumann, the mayor and physician of Annaberg,was persuaded to ask  Bessler to heal his desperately ill daughter. The girl recovered and became Orffyreus’s wife.  Her name was Barbara Elisabeth Bessler née Schumann.  She died 10.05.1726 at the age of 40 from tuberculosis 

Bessler had four children with Barbara Schumann, they were;

1. Name unknown, died before 1726.

2. Maria Barbara Elisabeth, born 5.1.23, married George Conrad Gercke in 1735.  He was a widowed preacher.

3. Johanna Maria Christina, born 9.12.23, died 4.2.24 - aged just three weeks.

4. Carl Friedrich, born 6.10.25. His Godfather was the Landgrave, but he wasn't present at the baptizing. Died 5.5.26  aged seven months.

Infant mortality rate was high in those days regardless of class.  Karl and his wife Amelie, had
seventeen children, fourteen of whom lived long enough to have names, but only nine reached twenty years of age or more. 

 
On January 31st in 1731 Orffyreus married Catharina Elisabeth Krone (born in 1713)
They had five children only one of which survived to adulthood.as below

1. Johanna Magdalena Elisabeth, born 6.4.31

2. Johanna Wohlradina [very strange name] Sybilla, born 15.7.34, died 16.09.43

3. Catharina Conradina 30.10.37

4. Magdalena Catharina, 25.11.39

5 Margaretha Maria, 25.7.45, married Amtmann Kurtzbube in Fürstenberg.

Catharina Elisabeth Krone was the daughter of Castle blacksmith, Johann Adam Krone, who died 14.6.50 in the age of 76.

Besslers father, Andreas, died 19.6.27 in the age of 87, he lived with Bessler for his remailng years as did his mother, Maria.

His brother Gottfried, died 3.5.65 and was buried  in "Orffyreischen Begräbnishaus" (Bessler's crypt) 

'docfeelsgood', a well known and respected forum member of Besslerwheel forum, sadly no longer with us, was convinced that the court blacksmith, Adam Krone might have passed on the secret of the wheel's construction to his children because there is a letter in which, in return for his daugjhter's hand in marriage, Bessler would share everything about his wheel.  There is no evidence that he did so, but just in case there is such a possibility the only potential source might be Margaretha Maria, who married Amtmann Kurtzbube in Fürstenberg.  I do not know whether Adam krone had any other children, but that is also a possble avenue of research.

I think the following explains that 'Amtmann' is a title. ' 

The Amtmann was usually a member of the nobility or a cleric. In towns, he was also often a member of the wealthy classes amongst the citizenship. He resided in an Amthaus or Amtshaus and collected taxes from the district (Amtsbezirk), administered justice and maintained law and order with a small, armed unit.  [wikipedia]

Alternatively a search for any descendants of his first daughter’s marriage to George Conrad Gercke might be worth researching.

Good luck to anyone who wishes to take on this task, please share anything you discover even if it results in a dead end.

EDIT - Some additional informationhas come in from a similar post I made on BW forum.  'Helmholtz' posted the  following.

"1. There was another daughter called Dorothea Christina Sophie who married Emanuel Christian Wolff.
2. One of her sisters married Johann Georg Musi, Hofgeismar, who still lived in 1792.
3. Not Gottfried but his widow died in 1765 and was burried in Carlshaven. I think it would be more interesting if one could trace Gottfried, not Crone, because Gottfried was familiar to Bessler, not Crone.

It was one of Besslers "Privilegia" that he himself as well as his descendants & compagnons should be remitted from paying taxes. When Bessler impregnated Crone's 17-year-old daughter, it might have been a good compensation to call him a compagnon not to share any secrets (why should he?) but the exemption of taxes."


JC

Bessler’s Codes Exist - For What Reason Other Than FYI?

I’ll be away for few days from the weekend but if possible I’ll respond to any comments about things in this post.

I have often argued that I thought that Bessler’s use of various pieces of code such as the atbash cipher or Caesar shift which he used to obtain the name Orffyreus from Bessler, indicated an interest in codes.  He also mentioned that  he had learned about the ‘Book of Nature’, and ‘The Language of Angels’, which are well known allusions to historic writings of a secret nature. His actual use of Hebrew hyroglyphics in one of his books at least supports his claim to have been taught some Hebrew.  I have copies of his panagyrics to Karl which include numerous examples of his favourite obsession with chronograms, including some dated, 1519,1619, 1719, 1819, 1919 and 2019!

There are numerous occasions where he uses alphanumeric codes, easily proven, and also alphabetic substitution which again are not difficult to see.  He also inserts the the initial capital letter of his three enemies, Gartner, Wagner and Borlach on several occasions within a single sentence with the initial letter accentuated. Often the sentence is less than complimentary and is clearly a way of critising the gang of three without actually naming them. I mention these minor examples to show his familiarity and habitual use of such systems for secrecy in writing.

Although these are quite innocuous pieces of code, when comments such as ‘those who seek answers should study this little book’, (paraphrased from memory) are taken into account, one starts to think perhaps there are other pieces of code which may contain more important information.  I have barely scratched the surface of the huge amount of information embedded in these four books, so why is it that so many people dismiss the possible existence of precise instructions for building Bessler’s wheel?

I think it is because no-one has published anything which has been derived from a  deciphered piece of code which even looks as if it might refer to some mechanical design.  To me this is obviously part of Bessler's plan; get people interested in codes, simple ones first, and then hope that they will search out the harder ones and eventually get his full meaning.  But he didn't want this to happen to quickly, hence the difficulty of getting to the truth.

Another possible reason is that since no-one believed him anyway, despite all the evidence that he was telling the truth, those people with a particular competence of code breaking were probably convinced that the physics teachers were correct, and what Bessler proposed and exhibited was impossible.

So given the likelihood that he did intend to publish coded information about the construction of his wheel, that may be why he expended an inordinate amount of time publishing his ‘Orffyreus Declaration of Faith’, containing 141 bible references, some of which don’t exist in any known bible?  Why did he duplicate five of them?  Why did he use 55 verses in chapter 55? I could go on, but why not visit my web site and see what an astounding document within his Apologia Poetica this is? I think he used the passage above to describe in his own words the way his wheel worked to complement his drawings.   See my work on the Declaration of  Faith by Orffyreus at...

http://www.orffyreus.net/

And for more examples of Bessler’s use of codes see my website at....

www.theorffyreuscode.com

The amount of time he must have spent divising and implementing such secret writing must surely have had a purpose, other than to impress or confuse his readers.  What possible purpose could he have had other than the desire to convey secret information to his readers at some point in the future, a future that might not be reached until after he had passed away.

JC

Update for August 2018 - Are there some missing Clues?

I have been finding the occasional half hour or so to work on my Bessler-wheel and I am confident it will be finished some time in September or October.  I’m away for a week in September but I hope to finish it once I return from my brief holiday.

I'm assuming that this latest construction will work - and my test mechanisms does perform exactly as I planned.  There have been minor construction problems which had to be overcome along the way but so far I have dealt successfully with each one.  They are not serious setbacks, typically, a case of rearranging some pieces so they don’t collide with other parts of the same mechanism.

Despite the apparent difficulties in understanding the clues and interpreting them correctly the concept is not complicated and Bessler could have provided easier clues, but then his fear of someone interpreting them too soon, prevented him.  This raises an interesting question.  Did he ever expect anyone to decipher his clues in his lifetime?  One would assume not, in which case, why did he think someone would be able to do so after his death?  Was there some additional clue that he hoped would assist in deciphering his clues after his death.  I mention this because I have not found any evidence that anyone attempted to solve the clues during his life time.

I’m sure that, in the event that he failed to find a buyer for his secret, he intended to leave enough information available after his death to allow people to reconstruct his machine and give him the acknowledgement he so desperately needed.  He commented on that very point in his Apologia Poetica and said he'd be content with post humus acknowledgement if he failed to sell his secret. That document was published in 1715, only three years after his first claim to have built a working perpetual motion machine, so even then he was considering the possibility of no-sale and what he could do about it. 

One can imagine the frustration he suffered, thinking that he could sell his secret quickly and get on with his future plans but then discovering things were not as easy as he had thought.  After only three years he was considering his options, and yet he continued for another ten years at Kassel castle without a sale.  No wonder he was described as ill-tempered and unpleasant.

In my book I surmised that since he sought permission to build a grave or mausoleum in the garden of his house in Carlshafen, it might have contained a clue, but unfortunately the latest estimate is that the garden is now part of a car park in town, so probably the gravestones which might have held a useful clue, have long since been obliterated or lost.

There is the possibility that the Maschinen Tractate drawings which he destroyed were intended to reveal the secret after his death because they would be found in his effects.  But as he wrote, the arrest made him destroy them, because once he was incarcerated someone might have gained access to his possessions, or his wife might have sold them, and the secret would be worthless.

JC

After 300 Years Bessler’s Wheel is Nigh.

One of the endless problems we face, researching Johann Bessler’s claims to have invented and built a perpetual motion machine, is the reaction of the vast majority of people.  It isn’t just the scientists, teachers, theoreticians, historians and other “experts”; it is ordinary people like ourselves who dismiss with either scorn, humour or irritation our tentative suggestion that Bessler might have been telling the truth.

I have never believed that Bessler’s perpetual motion machine supported itself with an internal closed energy supply and those people who mock us for thinking that, must think we are complete idiots. The definition of perpetual motion has altered somewhat in the intervening 300 plus years but I have always believed that it must have an external energy supply and in my opinion, gravity lies at the root of the energy consumed by Bessler’s wheel. Gravity is the best and probably the only force capable of providing continuous rotation to Bessler’s wheel.

The energy supplied by gravity enables the weights to fall, so some people insist that Bessler’s wheel was gravity-enabled not gravity-driven.  If a wheel can be built and the weights within,  fall due to the effect of gravity, and they are configured in a similar way to those within Bessler’s wheel, resulting in the wheel rotating continuously, then I cannot see anything wrong with calling it a gravity-driven wheel.

There are so many ways we use gravity’s force via some other medium, that to suggest it couldn’t have been done in Bessler’s wheel is just ignoring the evidence that his wheel worked.  I know all the arguments repeated parrot fashion ad nauseam against this subject and I have firmly dismissed them over the last few years.  At the beginning I wasn’t sure, but the more I studied it the more certain I became that I was right. Johann Bessler himself was not entirely happy with the designation, “perpetual motion” for his machine, but could only say that it was propelled by the weights.

I once thought it would be possible to persuade a scientist or professor of the truth of Bessler’s claims, and thence get him to devote time and money to studying Bessler’s wheel and in the end develop a working model.  But the reaction to my efforts was universal.  Fear of failure, fear of peer’s bad reaction, loss of reputation, fear of losing job, fear of not getting another, fear of family recriminations and worst of all, loss of standing in a very reputation conscious society.  I did find a scientist who was very interested but he wanted to see a working proof of principle model, before he committed time and money to its development. Nothing has changed.  We are on our own and even when we succeed there will be doubters and a vicious backlash from the intellectuals, and there are even some who suggest that a planet full of gravity-driven wheels will somehow effect earth’s rotation and stability and doubtless they will join in the clamour of discontent and disbelief.

But no one can argue with working gravity-wheel and once it’s design and method of application have been explained they will all eventually have to concur that they were wrong.

JC

A Vicious Circle and a Virtuous Circle.

Someone commented that using Bessler’s wheel to generate electricity was a medieval method and once the wheel’s concept was understood it could be applied for use with other forces such as gravity.  It made me think about other methods we use today which still relate to an origin first invented in years gone by.

Waterwheels have been used for at least 2500 years and although they are slowly going out of use their basic function to supply energy in some form or other is still being investigated in different ways, for instance tapping tidal energy.

Windmills too, are of ancient lineage, at least 2000 years of age, with similar uses, grinding corn etc. Again they’ve been adapted to produce giant electricity generators but with several disadvantages but they do provide electricity as long as the wind blows, and not too hard!

Steam engines are a relatively new invention, although  their first reference goes back 2000 years to Hero of Alexandria.  But we still use a derivative of the steam engine in our giant electricity generating turbines, most of which still depend on steam to power their mechanical rotation.

Finally there are the weight-driven clocks - not, of course, continuous motion in the way the earlier examples work, but similar in some ways.  The first examples at the beginning of this post all depend upon a supply of energy of some kind.  That energy reveals itself in action, moving water, pressurised steam from heated water,  or wind blowing over the sails of a windmill.

But is there an origin either in history or nature, as there is for the above examples, in Bessler’s wheel? Actually all of them rely on a constant supply of energy and despite what we have been taught so does Bessler’s wheel.  This is usually where we part company with mainstream ideology!

Remember that we are taught that perpetual motion machines were declared axiomatically impossible by Hermann von Helmholtz in 1847, because, he declared, no one had ever built one!  An axiom is a statement or proposition which is regarded as being established, accepted, or self-evidently true.  Only Helmholtz did not accept the validity of Bessler’s wheel otherwise the axiom would be demonstrably false.

Most of the above examples obtain their energy from something already in motion and simply draw their energy needs from it.  Wind and water; Bessler’s wheel drew its energy from something in motion too.....weights, falling weights responding to gravity.

I think that no PM machine has revealed itself, other than Bessler’s, because these other kinds of machine were available and more obviously capable of being designed to make use of whatever medium the builders had in mind.  Bessler said that the reason he was successful was that he devoted so much more time and effort in finding the correct principle than anyone else had ever been able do.

Helmholtz  declared that  Perpetual Motion machine’s were impossible because no one  had ever built one.  This is a perfect example of circuitous reasoning and perhaps a literary example of perpetual motion.

Question  - why has no one ever built a perpetual motion machine?

Answer- because Helmholtz says they’re impossible.

Question - why are they impossible?

Answer - because no one has ever built one.

Repeat ad infinitum!

The terms virtuous circle and vicious circle refer to complex chains of events that reinforce themselves through a feedback loop. A virtuous circle has favorable results, while a vicious circle has detrimental results. Bessler's wheel demonstrated a virtuous circle.

JC

Alternative Benefits from Bessler's Wheel?

If Bessler’s wheel should finally materialise and is shown to work due to the effect of gravity on some moveable weights, then we can make a provisional assumption that it might be possible to apply a similar configuration to other conservative forces.

Many here have expressed the opinion that once built Bessler’s wheel would be weak and of limited use.  In my opinion they are wrong and there will be many uses, particularly in third world countries for basic energy generation, irrigation, refrigeration etc.

There is also the potential to creat a reverse system based on the concept behind Bessler's wheel in which a drive is fitted to the reverse design to produce inertial thrust in a particular direction.  There is potential in such a scheme for boats and even space travel. etc.  But there is one more area of science which I think may hold even more potential.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology lead the field in nano energy research.  This complex subject is full of potential uses for nano engineering, but my knowledge is very limited. This quote from an acquaitence at my local university, “Nanotechnology involves the creation and/or manipulation of materials at the nanometre (nm) scale. One nanometre is 10-9 m or one millionth of a millimetre. Nanotechnology is essentially ‘engineering at a very small scale’, and this term can be applied to many areas of research and development – from medicine to manufacturing to computing, and even to textiles and cosmetics”.  Fortunately,  I was talking to someone who used to be a good friend of Mike Senior,  a couple of days ago about my work with Johann Bessler.  This guy is a Professor at Warwick university and it was his idea that if we could prove that Bessler’s wheel worked there were numerous potential applications within the field of nanotechnology.

You can get an idea of the ongoing research by looking at this page

http://www.understandingnano.com/nanotechnology-energy.html

The author lists a number of developments currently being researched and my contact at Warwick University suggested that nano-engineering could make use of the design concept used in Bessler’s wheel.

I cannot confirm or deny the potential but I thought it worth mentioning.  There are people here with far more knowledge and greater intellectual abilities than I have, so I hope perhaps they might comment more knowledgeably than I could?

NB These additional links provided by arktod 1001.

https://imgur.com/a/9Jpin

http://vixra.org/pdf/1512.0276v1.pdf

http://vixra.org/pdf/1404.0097v1.pdf

JC

Simulate or Fabricate?

I moved house two years ago and took the opportunity to throw out most of my old bits and pieces of wheel experiments.  I had hoarded them thinking that I might want to go back at some point to revisit an earlier idea.  But then I realised that after almost 40 years of fabrication I had progressed to the point where I knew instinctively what would or wouldn’t be useful in a new design.  So I bought in new material and once I had my workshop up and running, earlier this year, I set to with renewed enthusiasm to build my latesy version of Bessler's wheel..

And that is my point; I have tinkered with simulations from time to time but have never had the same feedback that I get from actually handling the piecwes, and have dismissed them as a waste of time. Making parts, manipulating them, finding that sometimes they don’t work as you expected, or discovering new movements in the process, or  they inspire new thoughts and designs - you cannot beat actually building the wheels.  It generates enthusiasm for new designs - well it does for me.  BTW, I cannot imagine anyone who is not an incurable optimist ever solving this puzzle.  You need a 100 per cent positive attitude to find the answer.

The design I’m building has been more or less complete in my mind for a couple of years and I am sure that it would be difficult to build a simulation so an actual build is the best thing and anyway you would need to build it eventually just to prove you were right.  Maybe the simulation might indicate that it would not work because of some simple error in the input or the settings.

I’ve seen any number of comments about problems with a simulation and I simply don’t trust them. I’m sure that an expensive simulation software could predict the correct solution, but these off-the-shelf versions seem to me to be full of glitches and are not to be trusted.

Returning to my own build, I set out the design parameters and copied them onto the backboard (the wooden disc which will hold all the parts) and drilled the necessary holes in exactly the right places. I fitted the levers on their swivel posts.  The levers were precisely the correct length.....but when I manually rotated them, two of them touched two adjoining levers, interfering with their actions. Admittedly space was tight and I could have planned for them to have more room, but it is surprising how hard you try for extreme accuracy you can still overlook some small discrepancy in the position of for instance a swivel post.

In fact the accuracy of the positioning of the posts is not vital to success.  A millimetre in any direction would not affect the viability of the design.  So I drilled two new holes and corrected the problem.

It has been often stated that there is only one design that will work,  but is this true? I ask this for two reasons, firstly Bessler said he had several designs which would work, and secondly I am aware of at least one design which apparently works. I have seen the design on paper and I cannot say for sure if it will work, but it seems that a working model was made.  What I can say is that this design is different to mine and I do know that my design is the same as the one Bessler intended to pass on to us. This suggests that there is more than one way to use gravity as an enabler of continuous rotation.

I can see from my own design that it looks possible to create the same effect usng differenr mechanism designs.

So my preference is definitely for fabrication but I know many people swear by simulations and animations. 

JC