I have an idea about what Besslers wheel and mechanisms might have been based on so I want to share it just to see what others think.
A while ago I posted this -
The idea is based around things switching states.Another thought I have had is one that I wanted to post separately about but may be relevant to the previous one.
In electronics when people talk about signal processing there are two main trains of thought and that is digital and analogue.
I think its fair to say that most people on the forum wouldn’t think about the Bessler wheel as a digital system. However Bessler does hint at a digital embellishment on the Toy Page. One is the hammer men and the other is the jacobs ladder. Both these systems have the capability to switch states.
Why are digital systems used rather than analogue?
Most of us think of a computer as a digital device but the early computer systems were mainly analogue. One of the reasons that computer systems are digital is because a digital system has lower power requirements and these lower power requirements can be linked to Besslers wheel to a certain degree.
How do they handle power more efficiently?
Think of it this way.
Watts = Voltage x Current so you need both Voltage and Current to produce heat in an electrical component like a resistor or a transistor.
When a transistor is turned on resulting in 0V across its collector and emitter and say 100ma flowing through it that would be 0 x 0.1 = 0 Watts.
If on the other hand the transistor is turned off then the supply voltage may be across the collector and emitter but no current flowing through it so if the supply was 5V this would be 5 x 0 = 0 Watts.
Either way with a perfect transistor there would be no heat.
In reality there are no perfect transistors so there is usually a tiny voltage across it when its turned on but it is the time it takes to turn off and on that is the problem and because it cant do it instantaneously there is a certain amount of time when both the voltage and the current is present.
The hammer men may be a good indication that something switches on Besslers wheel but the knocking sound is also another give away.
Perhaps the best indication is what Bessler said about the excess weight rising really quick. Only something that switches abruptly does that.
To be honest I find it hard to imagine a better example of that than the one that Robinhood demonstrated. If that isn’t a switch then I don’t know what is. The weight suddenly switches from one radius to another and because of the sudden switch the wheel immediately accelerates.
On this thread I have very often wrote about the idea of hanging weights having the ability to be in two different places in no time at all. This is exactly what that idea does. It switches from being felt at the bottom of the wheel to further up at a smaller radius.
Its understandable that people tend to avoid sudden movements on the wheels that they design because for one thing it seems harder to control such movements and more inevitable that something is going to collide in a negative way.
However with some of the things hinted at by Bessler that things moved quickly its hard for me to dispel the notion that something abruptly switched almost like a digital circuit.
A while ago I was messing around with a simulation in Algodoo and at times the beams would lock up and the mechanism would behave differently.
If you look at the last 2 sims / pictures I posted you will see that both seem to hold their weights out quite far.
The first one does but the second one is really just oscillating. The first cant work because the weights are just being forced into position and there is no oscillating like the second one and the second one oscillates nicely but its weights never get held in an overbalanced state.
My thinking is what if like the transistor example above Bessler went for the middle ground. Sometimes his weights where swinging and at other times they latched into position and keeled the wheel then unlatched so they could once again swing from their pivots.
Sounds kinda simple and I can almost hear you say well if that’s possible prove it.
In all honesty I don’t know if I can but I have seen at least one mechanism behave a little like this and it happened by accident.
Anyway it would be nice to have other peoples thoughts on this and I will try to dig out a decent Sim example of what I am saying tomorrow and post it.
Graham
