Was Bessler for real?

[John Worton]

Hi Alan,

I am very pleased that you are going to test-build my design.  I will do everything I can to help you.

I have answered your question regarding weights (and leverage) in my answer to Dr / John’s question, and given more information which will be of use.  I am concerned that Dr / John got the idea that the large weight moves in and out from the axle: it does not.  Only the small weight moves in and out.

Aluminium would be my first choice for building my design, but I don’t have the facilities or the money.  I am a woodworker and have a reasonable workshop, which is why all my designs are made in wood.  I used nylon bushes and stainless steel pins to create plain bearings.  I think wood is not the best thing to use. The main problem has been to have enough strength around the bearings for the wood not to split. This is why my designs got so big.  Also, because the wood might split I have had to laminate and cross-grain it to give it extra strength; this takes a lot of time.  It would take me months to build my 1.7m radius wheel from my template.  A look at my static wheel ‘Eurydice Returning’ on my website will give a good idea of what is involved for me!

I too have ‘built so many wheels I know what to look at’ I know exactly what you mean by that.  That is why I stopped building wheels and concentrated on the armature alone: I realised that when the armature is correct, that’s it!  I would only need to make copies of it.  It should only be necessary for you to build one overbalancing beam to prove the worth of the design; that is, two armatures back-to-back (or 180 degrees apart).  This should revolve very slowly as Bessler makes clear in Apologia Poetica Verse XXXIII.  When the overbalancing beam (or crossbar as Bessler calls it here) is correct then more can be made and added to make a proper wheel with some power.

Verse XXXIII
“If I arrange to have just one cross-bar in the machine, it revolves very slowly, just as if it can hardly turn itself at all, but, on the contrary, when I arrange several bars, pulleys and weights, the machine can revolve much faster, and throw Wagner’s calculations clean out of the window!”
Johann Bessler, Apologia Poetica (Kassel: self published, 1716-1717), Part One, Chapter Two: The Rebuttal, verse XXXIII, as translated and reproduced in John Collins, Poetica Apologia by Johann Bessler (pseud. Orffyreus) Edited and Published by John Collins (Leamington Spar: Permo Publications, 2005?), p.340 and 341

I did not understand your point about how ‘negative leverage’ might apply to my design and it concerns me that you may not quite have ‘got it’. The small weight on the longer arm does control the large weight, from approximately 1 o’clock to 5 o’clock, and the large weight controls the small weight from approximately 1 o’clock to 8 o’clock.  The big weight and the small weight take turns to control each other; that’s how the wheel works.  All weights, whether large or small, are ‘in control’ when they are on the heavy side of the wheel.
Perhaps you, and perhaps Dr / John have slightly misunderstood what is going on for the exactly the same reason that I got stuck for ages; you think that it is the large weights that are driving the wheel?  This is not the case; it is ‘the revolving mass of everything’ (of which the large weights are only secondarily a part) that delivers the power we will be able to use at the axle.  It is the small weights that are ‘in control’; it is the small weights that are ‘The Drivers’.  Cute: isn’t it!

John

The link to my website is; http://factumpoetica.org/

[Dr]

Hello again John Worton: I read your response and thanks for clearing that up about the heavy weight. So the way I see it you have a weight ratio of 13:1, and a leverage ratio of approx. 7:1. Please forgive me for being dense, but today I woke up with a splitting migrane, and I still have the blasted thing! Im having a hard time vizualizing at what point your weights make contact with the wheel to make it turn. You made it sound like the complete mechanism, (large weight, small weight and levers are all on the same bearing) At some point they have to come into contact with the wheel to make it rotate.

[AB Hammer]

Greetings John Worton

I did not understand your point about how ‘negative leverage’ might apply to my design and it concerns me that you may not quite have ‘got it’. The small weight on the longer arm does control the large weight, from approximately 1 o’clock to 5 o’clock, and the large weight controls the small weight from approximately 1 o’clock to 8 o’clock.  The big weight and the small weight take turns to control each other; that’s how the wheel works.  All weights, whether large or small, are ‘in control’ when they are on the heavy side of the wheel.

I understand the intent very well. I have designs that for instants do this. 1lb moves one inch down and lifts 4lbs four inches up. This is also what Bessler said you should be able to do. Then you have to consider CF effects can neutralize all actions until it slows to a craw. I will admit that I do not show all what I know until the time is wright. But if I work with something that is open it will remain open. So like you have shown your design so I work openly with the understanding that as it is drawn it is yours. The similar ones that I have done and designed are similar in the intent but not in the execution of the design. This will be true with many inventors who have worked on this goal on this track of thinking. Credit will always be given by me to whom it belongs. The wheel is bigger than all of us.

Alan

[christo4_99]

My wheel is only 4' 7" . Seriously if the weight that's hanging at the bottom (in the photo at the above mentioned website ) can be lifted then the thing will rotate . Let's not forget that it takes leverage to do work . If you are claiming Bessler's design/secret you will have to come up with something a lot more revolutionary/innovative than this to convince me. I have done exactly what I am asking you to do or I wouldn't ask it . I don't down you for your effort but there are wheel designs posted galore that won't work and NONE posted that will ...not like Bessler's . So go back to the drawing board . I don't show anything because what I know is VALUABLE and VALID. Why should I give it away so people can forget who I am like they did Bessler. I realize that things are going badly because of oil and such but if the technology is valid then it will find it's way into your hands , maybe just not for free,maybe cheaper than anything else .

[John Worton]

Hi Dr John,

Sincere sympathies with the migraine thing: I had that real bad in my teens and early twenties, so I know what it’s like.  Fortunately, I ‘grew out of it’ as they say and now only get one mild one about every five years.

Yes, leverage ratio of 7:1; that’s pretty straightforward.  However, the lead weight ratio of 13:1 is not, this is obviously influenced by the weight of the armatures themselves; how you have constructed them and what you have made them out of.  There is for example a good deal of ‘leverage weight’ in an extended armature with no lead weight in it.  It is interesting to note in this context that Bessler says that in a correctly constructed working wheel “ an odd extra pound added here or there makes no difference” and even more interesting to note that he says in AP XLVI that it “runs around whether laden or empty”.  I have dealt with the latter point in my drawing The Crab on my website. In an un-laden wheel there is no ‘firing’ up and out of the small weight on its armature and the motion resembles the human gait: “A runner runs”: as Bessler also says in AP XLVI.

Words are slippery difficult things, but they are the best things we have to communicate with.  For my part I am doing my best with them and I am very aware of their limitations and the possibilities for misunderstandings.  You may have noticed for example that I do a lot of quotation marks around words in recognition of the potential ambiguity that my choice of word may contain.  If we were discussing the internal combustion engine and I said piston ring or big end we would all know we stand.  Discussing the Bessler ‘engine’ (see I did it again!) is a bit trickier.  None of the parts have yet been named and the process not understood.  I am sure you are not dense and assume you have not awarded yourself a phd or an MD.

You say you are having a hard time visualizing “at what point (the) weights make contact with the wheel to make it turn”, and that “At some point they have to come into contact with the wheel to make it rotate” Do they? Why?

John

The link to my website is; http://factumpoetica.org/