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

Challenging the Belief that it is Not Possible to Obtain Energy from Gravity

In my last post I commented that gravity might not be an energy source, just as we have been taught and continue to be so - but many years ago I came to the conclusion that this must be wrong.  My reasons for this are briefly discussed below.

If we believe (as I do) that Bessler told the truth then his implication that gravity provided the sole means of energy for his wheel means that gravity can be used as the ultimate source of energy for the wheel, even though we have been taught that this is impossible.  Please read on for my explanation.

The many tests and demonstrations the wheel underwent, all indicate that what Bessler said was true, and since he did not dare to cheat because being found cheating could lead to execution by the axeman, we have to accept his assurances.  In support of this we have the word of a knowledgeable man, Karl the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel, known for his absolute integrity, that the machine was genuine because he had studied the interior.

Dismissing these points means that it is unlikely that anyone will ever find the solution to Bessler's wheel, despite the fact that we know it worked.

Apologies for briefly going back to basics.  In the case of a conservative force the total work done in moving a particle between two points is independent of the taken path. When an object moves from one location to another, the force changes the potential energy of the object by an amount that does not depend on the path taken.

In other words, in the case of gravity, if something is dropped it loses the potential energy it had at a higher point.  But we can restore it by lifting the object dropped, back up to its higher point

In the case of a non-conservative force the energy that it removes from the system is no longer available to the system for kinetic energy.

So our problem lies in finding a way to lift the fallen weight back up without using any additional forces other than gravity.

This is said to be impossible because the energy expended in dropping the weight has to be found in order to lift it back up again, but the energy has already been spent so there is no way to use gravity to lift it back up again - even though gravity is a continuous force, and a non-conservaive force could not drive a wheel of continuous rotation. Therefore it has to be a conservative force driving Bessler's wheel.

I have suggested the following argument countless times and people still don't get it.  The interface between gravity and Bessler's wheel is the weights.  Gravity makes the weights fall, and the weights make the wheel turn.

Interfaces play a major part in all types of motion. Wind and sails, steam and piston, flowing water and waterwheels, etc.  In each case an energy source provides the impetus and the interfaces react to provide motion.  So it is with gravity, it provides the force and the weights react to it.

Returning to my point about Bessler's wheel and not looking for an additional source of energy, everyone has been looking for this mysterious energy source that has been  suggested, for many years.  They have been unsuccessful because no such other source exists and neither is it necessary.  Steam, ambient temperature changes, bellows, live animals have all been suggested but nothing has been able demonstrate a similar power output which Bessler's wheel did relying purely on gravity

Therefore we must assume  that there was no other force used, and that leads us to the only possioble conclusion, Bessler found a way to use gravity alone to drive his machine, and that leads us to the final conclusion and it is this;

There is a way to configure the weights so that they respond to the effect of gravity by creating an permanent excess weight on the downwards side of the axle.  In confirmation of this, even when the wheel is stopped the overbalancing effect is still in operation and only the brake prevents the wheel from turning.  This overbalancing is produced automatically as soon as either a weight falls, or a weight has already fallen.  No other scenario can explain this feature of the wheel.

We can calculate the work done by gravity in making a weight fall by multiplying the mass of the weight times the distance it falls vertically, so at least we are allowed to assume gravity does do work!  The assumption that we cannot use gravity as an energy source relies totally on empiricism, a definition of which is, 'by means of observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic,'   In other words the conclusion that gravity cannot be an energy source relies not so much on theory and logic as by observation.  In other words no one has even been able to configure the weights to make wheel rotate continuously therefore it must be impossible.

If you are still reluctant to accept the premise that gravity is a source of energy consider the following. British clockmaker William Clement produced the first longcase clocks around 1680. It could run for a week without having the weights raised to restart the clock.  That's a week of gravity power.  But now consider this.

The Clock of the Long Now, also called the 10,000-year clock, is a mechanical clock under construction, that is designed to keep time for 10,000 years. The project to build it is part of the Long Now Foundation.

https://www.wired.com/2011/06/10000-year-clock/ 

The project was conceived by Danny Hillis in 1986. The first prototype of the clock began working on December 31, 1999, just in time to display the transition to the year 2000. At midnight on New Year's Eve, the date indicator changed from 01999 to 02000, and the chime struck twice. The two-meter prototype is on display at the Science Museum in London.

As of June 2018 , two more recent prototypes are on display at The Long Now Museum & Store at Fort Mason Center in San Francisco.

The manufacture and site construction of the first full-scale prototype clock is being funded by Jeff Bezos' Bezos Expeditions, founder of Amazon, with $42 million, and is on land which Bezos owns in Texas.

A clock designed to run for 10,000 years purely on the force of gravity.  Do you still think gravity is not a source of energy?

JC

Are There Any More Doubting Lions Roaring Around?

I borrowed the title of today's blog from Bessler's own words challenging those who disbelieved him to come and sit by his machine as it revolved.

I note that the the old familiar doubt about the truth of Bessler's claims has reared its ugly head again, on the Bessler wheel forum.

I published my book about Johann Bessler in 1996, and I thought I did a pretty good job of providing as much evidence as possible about Bessler and his machine and the tests, and the witness reports, and the letters about him, to him and by him.  I wrote and published the book because I was convinced of his sincerity about his machine.  Not only was the evidence convincing but you could feel the sncerity in the pain and anguish he suffered and emoted in detail in Apologia Poetica.  In my opinion no scam artist could write with such evident sincerity about his feelings about the rejection of his machine.

So when I read that someone who is relatively new to the forum keeps repeating the mantra, "if Bessler was telling the truth," or "perhaps Bessler lied,"  and often misquotes incorrectly passages from the book and all manner of untruths and half truths, I'm tempted to stop trying to persuade people of Bessler's ingenious machine and how much benefit it could bring to the planet earth in these difficult times. Why can't people only their write their ideas once they are in possession of the correct facts?

But in fairness to all those who aren't as familiar with the legend of Bessler's wheel as I am, I admit that over 300 years of schools and universities hammering the facts that perpetual motion machines are impossible and gravity cannot be used as Bessler seems to imply, is a paradigm that is going to take more than an ancient retired engineer (me!) berating them from a small insignificant blog, to persuade them that they are wrong.

There does seem to be the perennial question over the role of gravity in Bessler's wheel. Over the years I have come to accept that gravity itself cannot be regarded as a source of energy and the nuances of the connection between gravity itself and the force that drove Bessler's wheel are subtle and hard to explain, but this is my opinion.

Bessler implied that gravity was the source of energy but he did not say so explicitly.  He simply said that it was the excess weight, or extra heaviness on one side of the wheel that caused the wheel to overbalance, but we and thousands like us have been working on that theory for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years.  He did not use the word 'gravity' because that word was coined almost accidentally by Sir Isaac Newton when he used it in his famous book, Principia' and in Besslers day that was largely unread by anyone other than the top philosophers of the day.  Newton's book was written in Latin, the universal language of learning, and he used the word 'gravity' as the Latin for 'heaviness' to describe this force we all call ‘gravity’ now.  But in Bessler's day they use words such as preponderance which can  mean superiority in weight or significance. This meaning relates to the word's Latin roots in the word praeponderare, which means "outweigh."  So looking for the word ‘gravity’ in Bessler’s papers will result in none being found.

Why have our teachers told us it is impossible?    Because gravity is a conservative force and the energy expended in causing a weight to fall exactly equals that  available to raise it again, and only then if you omit the energy used to overcome friction.

A weight can fall through any path, straight down or around in a curve, all that matters is the straight line vertical distance traveled.  These two factors mean a weight would have to fall in a closed loop, zero energy would be used, which would be impossible.  The assumption is that this rules out any chance of a weight driven wheel. working.

But they deny that it is possible to configure the movement of the weights to create a variation which would break open the closed loop making an asymmetrical loop.  If you study the argument if depends upon the motion of one weight around a circle, but we have always attempted to find a way to include various movements of each weight during its path around the circle in an attempt to create a variation on the closed loop which would achieve continuous rotation.  BTW note my preference of the phrase 'continuous motion' or 'continuous rotation' rather than 'perpetual motion', I just think its more accurate and less inflammatory.

NB I forgot to say that even though gravity is a conservative force and isn't a source of energy, the transfer of energy from the force of gravity to the weights is undeniable because it is this transference which enables the weights to fall.

My own wheel has been designed with a break in its closed loop which provides for a variable between each side of the centre of rotation and I am confident will lead to continuous rotation, but I didn't think of it myself, but was only able to work it out with Bessler's help!

Anyway whatever the result, work continues albeit slowly to the grand or not so grand finale.

JC 

My Hopes and Intentions for the Summer of 2018.

I have been planning to publish a video of a working Bessler wheel for a couple of years, (I haven’t got a working one yet!) ever since I found what I believe to be the true design or concept which formed the basis of the device.  I also intended to publish an explanation and demonstration of the details of the extensive range of clues which I uncovered.  These plans have been largely on hold for most of the last two years, firstly due to our decision to move house to a smaller property, which unfortunately lacked a workshop, and latterly to a string of random but serious illnesses within our family that required our presence almost daily.

Our circumstances are improving and I have managed to create a small working area in a somewhat reduced garage space and begun construction of the machine which I hope to have finished within a few weeks.  If in the end, the machine I have built does not work, as I freely admit, is a possibility, I shall immediately publish details of the discoveries I’ve made including the design of my wheel.

My hope is that someone will take my information forward and succeed where I failed, but of course I don’t think I will fail!

Once this machine is up and running no one will be able to deny that gravity may be the cause of the rotation if not the source of energy driving it.  I shall look forward to seeing the numerous red faces among those many people who scorned my determination to prove Bessler’s claims were genuine and who dismissed my suggestions; one called me a snake oil salesman (had to look that one up!) and  others just regarded me as a fool.  One thing in this field of research, you do acquire a thick skin!

So many ‘experts’ derided the subject of my book about Bessler, dismissing all the evidence as either contrived, misread or blatantly exaggerated.  Any discussions about the book began with the basic premise that such a machine as Bessler described is axiomatically impossible and therefore Bessler must have been lying. 

This has been the whole problem right from when Bessler himself tried to convince the authorities that his wheel was a perpetual motion machine as it was known then.  Yet here we are 306 years later and the position is exactly the same; prove it by revealing the workings or shut up and go away!  Fortunately I decided many years ago not to take the patent route for several reasons, so I shall be happy to reveal how it works......when it does (or doesn't!)

JC

Bessler the man versus his achievements.

When I began to publish information about Johann Bessler, I stuck strictly to the facts as I knew them then, so I included Bessler’s own comments about his life and feelings and emotions.  I also described the reactions of other people, not just their reactions to his claims, but as well, their impressions of Bessler the man.  These were important details to include, but to me, the most important facts were those relating to his wheels; the descriptions of them and the tests they were required to undergo; were the tests exhaustive, sufficient and carried out as well as possible given the times they lived in?

I believe they were as good as could be expected, given that Bessler did not wish to divulge the design concept.  He also had the benefit of Gottfried Leibniz's advice on the kind of tests he should arrange.  The tests do, in my opinion, provide the strongest evidence that Bessler’s claims to have discovered the secret of a machine which showed continuous rotation enabled by gravity.  They were absolutely genuine.

It does seem to me that some people on the forum are only now studying the mind of the man, rather than his works, to find fault with everything about him.  They suggest thst he was a showman, a conman, he told lies etc.  Those things are true but do not negate the other evidence.  We have no conception of how people survived in those days, there were no state handouts, no where to go for help and a man had to live on his wits just to find food and accommodation.  Once he had successfully completed the first part of his burning mission in life; to find the solution to perpetual motion; Bessler set about finding a way to publicise it.  His previous actions however morally dubious, do not necessarily mean that everything about him was unprincipled - he did what he had to do to survive.

So when discussions are taking place about the mind of the Bessler please make allowances for the times he lived in, his limited education and Leibniz’s opinion of him.  Leibniz was one of the cleverest and most accomplished men of the time and he called Bessler his friend and asked for people to make allowances for his manners as he had not been brought up to accomodate the correct etiquette of those far off days.

History  is full of accomplished scientists, inventors, authors and painters, whose works are widely admired, but most of whom had the usual human weaknesses.  Many showed personality disorders such as paranoia, dramatic, overly emotional or unpredictable thinking or behavior and manipulative, exploitative interactions with others.  But they were still admired for their accomplishments and Johann Bessler too, will be admires for his determination to find the solution to Perpetual Motion, once his machine has been proven.

JC

Precautions Against Loss of Information

Recently someone asked me if I had made provision for the publication of my discoveries about Bessler’s wheel, in the event of my early demise.  I gave the question some thought and began to appreciate the difficulties in making such an arrangement.  Creating the document is the easy part.  Publishing it is easy to, if you have somewhere in mind; I considered BWF and this blog.

The difficult bit is asking someone to publish it according to the instructions with the document, at a time when they care least about such a trivial matter, and probably wouldn’t have an idea about how to go about it.  One could of course consign the completed document to a trusted friend and ask him to publish it, but how would he know you had passed away?

It seems obvious that news of my death might percolate around this little community eventually but my recent experience says no.  Mike Senior, my friend who translated every word of Grundlicher Bericht, Apologia Poetica, Das Triumphirende and Maschinen Tractate; not mention the hundreds of letters to German libraries, museum, record centres etc, translating my words into German and their’s back into English for me to read, died  eighteen months ago and I didn’t find out for six months.  I only found out when I did a search of the death notices in the local newspaper.  I thought he was in and out of hospital for hip replacement so at his request did not visit him.

Yesterday I heard news of another friend who was about to make me famous or infamous!  Nick Turnbull died a year ago from cancer. Nick was a firmer TV producer for a Granada Television.  He was also a director, author publisher and TV pundit.  He had interviewed me at length twice and was in the process of putting a pilot of the propose film forward at an international film festival.  The film was provisionally called "Believing in Bessler"; he warned me that competition was stiff and not expect too much, but when I didn’t hear from him for several months I tried to contact him several times, but no luck.  It was a chance meeting with a mutual friend that led to my discovery of his death.

So you see my point?  There are legal ways of having the process arranged but I can’t be bothered going that route, but doubtless I shall think of something.  These deaths do make one aware of the transitory nature of our existence.  I’m 73 and feeling in pretty good health, but you never know what’s around the corner.  It makes me realise that I’d better stop procrastinating and get on and finish my wheel!

Bessler found a way to publish after his death; unfortunately he made it too difficult to interpret his information.  I think I'm there but until that blasted wheel materialises its still just empty words.

JC

Karl, the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel, Found Bessler’s Wheel was Easy to Understand.

When I began my biography about Johann Bessler, I had already completed several years research into his life, acquiring many documents, as well as much additional information from historic records, and I decided to publish everything I had found, concentrating on evidence provided by Bessler himself, and as much as possible from witnesses.  I hoped to provide enough of an incentive to persuade others to seek Bessler's solution.

I believe that Bessler fully intended to sell his machine if at all possible, but he seemed right from the beginning, to think that he might have to accept post humous acceptance, which is why he left as an alternative enough clues so that some one later, after his death, could still discover his secret.  To that end I was certain that Bessler would not have included any lies about his machine although he definitely wrote ambiguously at times.  Lies could be challenged by a purchaser of the wheel, after the event, and Bessler sought acceptance to higher social circles, through the sale of his machine. Lies, would not help either in the sale nor its aftermath.

As for the evidence of the eye witnesses, obviously they could not see inside the machine but they did their best to provide descriptions as accurately as possible.

It has therefore puzzled me from time to time to see many valiant, determined efforts to replicate Bessler's wheel, while undoubtedly making erroneous assumptions or just discounting some evidence that we can assume was accurate, in order to complete their designs as they saw them, or according to their pet theories.

I refer, for instance, to the frequent declaration that Bessler's wheel had eight weighs.  Where did this figure come from?  There is the letter to Sir Isaac Newton in which Fischer von Erlach describes the "sound of about eight weights landing on the side towards which the wheel turned". But this refers to the Kassel wheel, capable of turning in either direction and requiring a gentle push in either direction to start rotating, and which gradulally accelerated to full speed.  Fischer spent at least two hours with the wheel and could only say that there were about eight weights.  We can only speculate about the examination, but I'm sure Fischer attempted to define exact;y how many weight he could hear landing, and yet he couldn't be precise, which suggests that there was a lot of distracting noises occurring at the same time.

Let me explain why this eight weight assumption is wrong; let us return to Bessler's first two wheels which were only able to turn in one direction.  They were able to begin rotation as soon as the brake was released.  Not only does Besssler tell us that these two could begin to rotate spontaneously as soon as the brake was released, but we also know that many spectatorres were encouraged to screw a bolt in and out to slow or bring the wheel to a halt, by simply making the end of the bolt rub against the side of the wheel, and unscrewing it to release it to allow it to regain full speed.  The wheel did not require a push to start, it started spontaneously.  But why did Bessler invent a wheel which could turn in either direction?  To answer the accusations from some people that the wheel must have been wound up.  Bessler believed that the two directional wheels would answer that criticism.

He set out to design this two way wheel and it has always seemed to me that the first and most obvious solution might be to set two wheels, linked together on the same axle, to see what would happen, but with one set to drive the wheel in the opposite direction to the first one.  Obviously this would remove the spontaneous start, but perhaps a push might set them of spinning, and depending on which direction the push was given might provide accelerating rotation.in that direction.

But here is another assumption which Occam's Razor would appear to rule out. Suppose there exist two explanations for an occurrence. In this case the simpler one is usually better. Another way of saying it is that the more assumptions you have to make, the more unlikely an explanation is. So when I see people ignoring the simplest explanation for the design of the two way wheels, by suggesting some clever mechanism which would allow both directions from one set of weights I'm extremely sceptical.  Why complicate what may be a simple solution to the two way wheels?

The eight weights applies to the two-way Kassel wheel; some weights may have been padded to remove or reduce the sound of their impact; this means there may have been one more for eac direction; this could add up to five weights for each direction, not four.  Bessler even admits to adding felt on his earlier wheels to deaden the sound they made. For someone today to be designing a one-wheel with eight weights is therefore illogical; designing a two-way wheel before you've designed a successful one way wheel is also illogical.

In my opinion the one-way wheels required five mechanisms.  The two-way wheels require five mechanisms for each direction.  This is something I have established to my own satisfaction, but that is not to say that some other configuration requiring more weights is not possible, but for me its a case of Occam's razor again.

JC

Johann Bessler and the Orffyreus Code

On 6th June, 1712, in Germany, Johann Bessler (also known by his pseudonym, Orffyreus) announced that after many years of failure, he had succeeded in designing and building a perpetual motion machine.  For more than fourteen years he exhibited his machine and allowed people to thoroughly examine it.  Following advice from the famous scientist, Gottfried Leibniz, he devised a number of demonstrations and tests designed to prove the validity of his machine without giving away the secret of its design.

After more than thirty years he died in poverty.  He had asked for a huge sum of money for the secret, £20,000 which was an amount only affordable by kings and princes, and although many were interested, none were prepared to agree to the terms of the deal. Bessler required that he be given the money and the buyer take the machine without verifying that it worked.  Those who sought to purchase the wheel, for that was the form the machine took, insisted that they see the secret mechanism before they parted with the money. Bessler feared that once the design was known the buyers could simply walk away knowing how to build his machine and he would get nothing for his trouble.

This problem was anticipated by Bessler and he took extraordinary measures to ensure that his secret was safe, but he encoded all the information needed to reconstruct the machine in a small number of books that he published. It is well-known that he was prepared to die without selling the secret and that he believed that post humus acknowledgement was preferable to being robbed of his secret while he yet lived.

I became curious about the legend of Bessler’s Wheel, while still in my teens, and have spent most of my life researching the life of Johann Bessler (I’m now 72).  I obtained copies of all his books and had them translated into English and self-published them, in the hope that either myself or someone else might solve the secret and present it to the world in this time of pollution, global warming and increasingly limited energy resources.

It has recently become clear that Bessler had a huge knowledge of the history of codes and adopted several completely different ones to disguise information within his publications.  I have made considerable advances in deciphering one of his codes; the simplest one, and I am confident that I have the complete design.  Due to unfortunate family circumstances I am currently unable to complete the build I have undertaken but shall return to it as soon as possible and I sincerely believe that 2018 will see the reconstruction of Bessler’s wheel.

Johann Bessler published three books, and digital copies of these with English translations may be obtained from the links to the right of this blog.  In addition there is a copy of his unpublished document containing some 141 drawings - and my own account of Bessler’s life is also available from the links.  It is called "Perpetual Motion; An Ancient Mystery Solved?"  Bessler published three books; "Grundlicher Bericht", "Apologia Poetica" and "Das Triumphirende..."

I have also published Bessler's collection of 141 drawings and I have called it Maschinen Tractate, but it was originally found in the form of a number drawings of perpetual motion designs. Many of these have handwritten notes attached and I have published the best English translation of them that I was able to get. Bessler never published these drawings but clearly intended to do so at some point.

For some ideas about Bessler’s code why not visit one of my web sites at www.theorffyreuscode.com

One last thing.  Perpetual Motion machines have been utterly proscribed and Johann Bessler’s claims ridiculed - however, it seems that more than a handful of scientists have now come to the conclusion that it might theoretically be possible to design a mechanical system which is continuously out-of-balance and therefore will turn continuously using the repeated fall of weights for energy.  Gravity but not directly.  These open-minded people remain tight lipped for now, awaiting proof of their hypothesis.

JC