Bessler's En Principia

[johnny874]

  Bill,
I'm in no hurry to build Bessler's wheel. How much I have done, I won't make known.
The work I am currently doing is to work on the design, construction and function of the wheel.
By having taken my time, I have become more aware as to what it will take to "prove" it is Bessler's wheel. Otherwise it could be considered mine which means Bessler would lose out.
And yes, I do have a specific design in mind. Even so, it will take time to make it a Bessler wheel.
And if anyone likes, we could discuss his drawings.

[johnny874]

   @All,
  With Bessler's wheel, it is possible that one of his clues was over looked. It is said that one of his witnesses "saw" a
weight landing on a warped board. In Mt 20 I have circled where a "weitght" lands on a warped board. It is possible that
Bessler himself planted this clue and the question to be asked is why.
If you consider his quote "Here the previous levers work somewhat more peculiarly and raise up special weights and turn outward to the over balance. For this reason side A is always heavier, my friend supposed but I denied. I then reminded him to harness the horse in front."
- Johann Bessler"
then we know the "weight" can rotate in either direction. What is curious about this is that the "weight' stops short of full extension. It pressing against the outside of the wheel gives it no advantage unless it has to do with lifting his "special" weight.
When you guys go to the store, go to the automotive section and look at the hydraulic jacks. And when you look at them, look for them using a long lever that is anchored or allowed to pivot on one end. And then notice how far from the end of the lever where it pivots that it has a link that it moves.
You will see this is quite similar to what Bessler drew 300 years ago. And after you become aware of these similarities, look for how much work the jack can perform, you know, how much weight can it lift with that simple arrangement of a lever and a pump.
And this is the test wheel I am currently building. It will be to demonstrate that by using the same hydraulic principle, that water can easily be pumped around the outside of a wheel. And this is why I do need to take my time with it. I will even be attempting to use 2 seperate levers as bessler shows in hsi drawing but will be adding a thresher also shown in his other drawings. It just makes so much more sense using such a configuration and would allow for much force to be generated with a single lever by using more of it's motion to generate force.
The second picture shows where if a thresher (linkage) is used to operate a pump, it can easily double the force of the long lever because it would be closer to the pivot than the end of the short lever. And with this, it is simply a matter of dividing the length of the long lever by the length of the short lever. If the long lever is as an example 1 meter long and the short lever is 15 centimeters long, the ratio is approximately 7:1.
This would mean that the force the thresher would exert on the outside of the wheel (the pump) would be 7 times as much as the weight on the long lever. And please do yourself a favor and go to the store and look at jacks, you might be surprised how something so small can lift so much weight.

                                                                                                                                                    Jim

[johnny874]

  @All,
Here are a couple pictures of my hydraulic floor jack. It uses a lever that is about 15 inches (37.5 cm's) long
and can lift a maximum of 4,000 lbs. or about 1,800 kg's.
I have marked in the picture where it pivots on the jack and where the "thresher" is located. With Bessler's
wheel, I'll be using 1 lb. (about 450 grams) and pump 1 lb. (450 grams) of water. Using a long lever, I should
be able to generate 10 times the force or I should have 10 lbs. (4.5 kg's) of pressure to pump the water with.
And if pressure per square inch or centimeter is considered, the pump will be about 12 inches (30 cm's) long
and about 2 1/2 inches (6 1/4 cm's) wide. If you do the math, then 30 cubic inches would have a resistant force of about
.030 psi and about .3 psi of force acting on it. In cubic inches, it's about 23 grams of force per square centimeter being applied
to it and a resistant force of  2.3 grams per square centimeter.
Not sure why I shouldn't expect a successful demonstration, hydraulics have been in use for a long time and is possibly an invention that Bessler missed out on because his wheel was kept secret.
Another discovery that Europe may have missed out on (the Chinese made titanium around the time of Jesus) was advanced metallurgy.
While in his drawings he considered round bellows, again, his work was not made known. You see, with round bellows, more air could be pumped than traditional European style bellows allowing for a much higher furnace temperature. And with higher tempertures, exotic alloys could have been discovered which might have aided in the Industrial Revolution in Europe.
So when people think of his wheel, it would have been what he knew about engineering that would have been worth much more than money, it might have changed European History in ways we can't imagine.

                                                                                                                                       Jim

edited to delete the name brand of my hydraulic jack.
edited to add; with the link to some bellows, imagine if it was pumping water.
the idea is pretty much the same and is something Bessler would have seen when
he visited his friends black smith's shop.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkF8Ut46faI

[johnny874]

  @All,
What has helped me with something like this is having a father lime mine who was from Norway.
Besides having become a business manager and Field Engineer, he had also obtained his 1st Mates license with the Merchant Mariner Association.
And I think Bessler's work is something he would have liked.
One way to understand how much force it takes to pump water is to watch some of the videos of Heron's Fountain on youtube.
When you do, observe the height of the column being pumped.
Then notice the height of the tube being filled. This will give a ratio of the force necessary to pump water.
Knowing this, all that is needed is the same ratio of force acting on a bellows type pump. A tube between 2 boards serves the same purpose.

                  Jim

edited to add: with the numbers I've been working with, the tube only needs to open to a depth of about 5/8th's of an inch. This should allow for a ratio of at least 20 to 1 which should be more than enougn for Bessler's wheel to work.

[johnny874]

   @All,
The attached picture is the design I am working to develop.
If you compare this design to Maschinen Tractate 20, you will find many similarities.
For a 30 in./75 cm. wheel, if the tube has a circufrence of 7.75 in./17.8 cm's (approximate).
the warped boards would need to be about 3 1/4 to 3 1/2 or 8.5 to 8.75 cm's wide.
This would mean each (8 total) pumping section would be about 12.75 in./29.45 cm's.
And the depth of the tube (amount is is allowed to open) would be about .5625 in./1.4 cm's.
In the attached drawing, the levers are 11 cm's long  and the shorter levers are 2 cm's long allowing for
a ratio of 5.5 to 1.
The angle between the long and short levers would be one way to time when the most force is applied to the pumps.
Also, with the "threshers" being in a fixed position on the pump, the pumps would maintain their position which would be important.
And with the weights, they have no under or over balance. If the wheel were built and a weight placed on it's rim, then what ever weight it would take to rotate the wheel would be the amount of water needed in the tube to have a similar effect.
Il est vrais, n'est pas ? Schto o tebe Bill ? Alain ? Je veux savoir.