Johann Bessler's Perpetual Motion Wheels Part I

If asked to name the best-ever example of a mechanical perpetual motion wheel, most people would probably cite the wheels of the German inventor Johann Bessler (1680-1745), also known as Orffyreus. While many visitors here will know a lot about Bessler's work, I'll give a summary below for others who may not be so familiar with it.

John Collins' book (top left), and his re-publications of Bessler's works (which include English translations)

Summary

British author John Collins, who has a website at http://www.free-energy.co.uk/, has worked tirelessly to bring as much as possible of Bessler's surviving work to modern public attention. From his own book, and his re-publications of Bessler's books, we learn that on the 6th of June 1712 Bessler first demonstrated what he always insisted was a genuine, stand-alone mechanical perpetual motion machine, in the town of Gera. Over the next four years he built at least three more machines, which have become known by the names of the locations where they were exhibited. The 3 ft diameter Gera Wheel was followed by the 5 ft diameter Draschwitz Wheel, then the Merseburg Wheel, and finally the Kassel, or Weissenstein Wheel. While the Gera and Draschwitz Wheels could rotate only in one direction, the latter two, both of about 12 ft diameter, were bi-directional. That is, after being given a gentle push in the desired direction of rotation, they would then undergo rotational acceleration up to a steady state speed which they would maintain until forcibly stopped. The wheels could do mechanical work such as driving stampers (as used in papermaking), turning an Archimedean screw for raising water, or lifting a 70 pound box of bricks. 

The Weissenstein Wheel successfully completed an impressive fifty-four day period of continuous operation, from 12 November 1717 to 4 January 1718, in a locked, sealed and guarded room in Weissenstein castle, arranged by Prince Karl, the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel. Karl, the only person besides Bessler who is known to have seen the wheel's internal mechanism, promising never to reveal its details, stated that it was "... so simple that a carpenter's boy could understand and make it after having seen the inside of the wheel ... "

Johann Bessler's Weissenstein perpetual motion wheel

Sale price: 100,000 Reichsthalers

Bessler always kept the internal mechanism of his wheels concealed. His single condition for revealing the mechanism was that a purchaser should first pay his asking price of 100,000 Reichsthalers. He had sufficient faith in his machine to state that if it was found to be fraudulent, he would gladly forfeit not only the purchase price, but also his life! And that would almost certainly have happened if he had tried to defraud one of the absolute rulers of the time. Of course from a viewpoint in the often corrupt modern world, Bessler should have added some safeguard against a corrupt, powerful purchaser who might have insisted on initial secrecy, subsequently installing a fraudulent mechanism in order to get the invention, and Bessler's permanent silence, at no cost. But in his day, the most likely purchasers were always princes and kings, men of honour and integrity.

Although Bessler's wheels passed the tests demanded of them, and were subjected to the most minute external examinations, often by persons specially chosen for their theoretical and practical competence, Bessler was never able to obtain the 100,000 Reichsthalers for his wheel. He came very close on one occasion, when Czar Peter the Great of Russia decided to purchase it. Unfortunately, the Czar died shortly before the deal could be concluded.

Another false "explanation"

Earlier in this blog, on 26 April 2014, I showed how a description that originally applied (and was only ever intended to apply) to a non-working wheel has been used in modern times to "explain", erroneously, how the Marquis of Worcester's perpetual motion wheel was supposed to work.

A very similar situation has also occurred with Bessler's wheel. Two years after the Czar's death, Bessler's maid Anne Mauersbergerin signed a statement saying that all his wheels had been fraudulent, and had been turned manually either by herself, or Bessler, or his brother Gottfried. Shortly thereafter, Bessler was arrested, examined and released without charges being laid.

The maid claimed that the wheel's support posts had been hollowed out, and contained a long thin piece of iron which turned the wheel by applying force to the axle journals. Even ignoring the fact that the bearing surfaces of the support posts were repeatedly examined, sometimes with the wheel shifted (and again operating) on other supports, with nothing suspicious being found; to anyone with any practical experience the maid's explanation is ridiculous. Assuming she had been coached by some of Bessler's numerous enemies, it's curious that such a poor explanation was chosen, when more plausible false explanations could have been made.

Where did the maid's "explanation" come from?

I strongly suspect that this erroneous "explanation" originated with Bessler himself, once again specifically to describe an imaginary non-genuine wheel. In his Apologische Poësie Part I section XXXVIII he recounts firstly a purely hypothetical conversation with one of his major critics (Gärtner) who claims that the wheel is driven through a hollowed-out support post, and secondly how he (Bessler) would then correct him (saying that he would have revealed "more than he could ever have wished" to Gärtner, if only his behaviour towards Bessler had been better).

Bessler would never have intended his comment about driving through a hollowed-out support to be taken seriously, for the perpetual motion wheels he actually built, yet that is what has happened.

Disinformation

Perhaps we have here an early example of the use of an implausible explanation to render legitimate information inert, a disinformation technique I may have more to say about later. In any case, the maid's statement and the subsequent arrest proved quite sufficient to discredit Bessler for the rest of his life. He died in poverty on 30 November 1745, possibly by suicide.

My next several blog posts will be about aspects of Bessler's work.