Apologia Poetica Translation

[AgingYoung]

A steam engine is less effecient in a blizzard than on a hot summer's day.

A. Gene Young

[fAtnhapy]

Not to be a buttinski but since no one has posted on this tread since December perhaps the musing of a newbie will be forgiven. I have read this entire thread and a couple things occur to me that I did not see mentioned.
First the phrase
Greed is the root to evil
appears in a passage where the rest of the lines are assumed to be a description or hint about the working of his wheel yet this particular line seems not to "fit" or at least no one has tried to interpert it as having any relationship to the construction of the wheel. I suggest it's possible that he was making the point that too much eccentric or too much weight or being too aggressive in going for power or out of balance would result in failure.
Secondly MT138 (the toys) seemed to draw much attention as did the "back and forth like a crab" or "forward and backward like a crayfish" but I saw nothing suggesting that this description fits the movement of the toy very well. Could he have been describing the movement of the see-saw as crablike?
Also pertaining to MT138 being unusual as it possesses more than one MT number as if the drawing was a collection of several unrelated devices. While that may be just what it is it is also possible that the mulitple numbers are designed to prevent the unworthy from viewing it as a single mechanism. It is not hard to view item "A" as depicting broken columns nor see a motion in the toys tucked between items "E" and "B" ratcheting themselves upward with a crablike motion. Or maybe I've just been staring at this stuff too long and I am starting to see things! :0)
fAt

[rlortie]

fatnhappy,

I find your suggestion of "Greed is the root to evil" a every good possibility.

My own research has taught me that the less imbalance one attempts to achieve the more inertia and or velocity can be achieved. After all a wheel than can maintain even a couple of ounces of COG will run, providing the axle friction is not excessive.

I also have my thoughts about the hammer men. As you say if you stare long enough things start changing perspective. I believe the hammers are dropping to the side and below the anvil. Another way to put it would be to say they are askew. As each hammer takes it turn at falling it is also directed toward the viewer. This in turn causes the toy to fall forward in the ratcheting motion you describe. This forces it to shift, throwing the opposing hammer out repeating the process. For half the cycle it would be upside down.

Such a device would lay in the bottom of a wheel with teeth or cogs and constantly keep turning over not unlike a hamster wheel.

It acts the same as the jacobs ladder depicted to the right. only it stays in one place within the wheel as the wheel turns.

This is just a speculative hunch and thrown out as food for thought.

Ralph

[ken_behrendt]

fAt...

You've raised some interesting points in your post:

Greed is the root to evil...

I suggest it's possible that he was making the point that too much eccentric or too much weight or being too aggressive in going for power or out of balance would result in failure.

My interpretation of this line is that Bessler was saying that those who try to obtain a working gravity wheel solely for money are immoral people. This would seem odd in light of the huge payment Bessler was demanding for his invention. Yet, I do not think he started out that way. Initially, I believe he was strictly motivated by the challenge of finding the "Holy Grail" of mechanics...a working gravity wheel. However, ten exhausting years of deprivation and tribulations later changed that initial motivation. Bessler now needed the huge payment as compensation for the enormous effort he made and to be able to "get on" with the rest of his life and realize some of his other dreams.

I suspect that he secretly despised this change in motivation that occurred in him during his quest for the secret. Being a religious man, he must have agonized over his new need to reap the financial reward of this labor rather than just give his invention away freely for the betterment of humanity. Because he was unable to put aside the finanical considerations of the invention, the word "evil" in the line could be how Bessler considered himself!

Of course, you could be right that the line refers to some mechanical property of his wheels. For example, the unending effort or "greed" of the weights' CG to reach the punctum quietus location could be considered "evil" because it forced the wheel to turn endlessly.


I am of the belief that the reference to the crab in the "little book" passage being able to move back and forth is a reference to the two-directional wheel's ability to rotate in either direction. A crab has 8 legs that enable it to move, and I think that the bi-directional wheels were moved in either direction by the action of 8 shifting weight mechanisms located along their outer rim.

I think your interpretation of MT138, however, is not correct.

I think the "broken columns" referred to are the upright supports that contained the bearing plates on which the axle pivots rotated. These columns are "broken" because they had cutouts in them that allow the axle pivots to be lowered onto the bearing plates.

As far as the motion of the figures on the famous "toy page" are concerned, I will have more to say about them in my next "...Updates" post over in the Community Buzz forum.


ken

[fAtnhapy]

Ralph, a weight that could "climb" whether it was in the bottom of the wheel or somewhere else certainly would solve the problem. Getting a weight to shift it's COG upward is not difficult, to get it to contunually repeat that motion is another matter but that is what Bessler described with his "children playing amoungst broken columns". I believe he stated that the children used a weight too heavy for them to lift to step up using it as a leg. Then with a pivot steping up on the next column. That describes a climbing weight to me. The pivioting you describe on the toy would fit that bill at least in part.
Would you agree that it's possible the storks bill and ladder on either side of the toy could be depicting a "stairway" for the toy to climb?
fAt

[fAtnhapy]

Thanks Ken, I agree that his greed comment certainly could be as you describe it or a similar senerio how ever as you point out wanting money for the wheel being deemed evil would certainly be putting himself into an awkward position. All the other lines describe some feature of the wheel perhaps this one does too. Or a dual meaning was as we know not beyond him. As Ralph points out and I have witnessed if you get carried away with offsets or out of balance it does seem to punish you.
As far as the whole wheels action being compared to that of a crab I can't see that personally maybe a abalone. :0)
If the broken columns were outside the wheel as in the wheel supports themselves the rest of his description wouldn't fit. Plus why describe cryptically something everyone could see. Thanks for the response.
fAt

[ken_behrendt]

fAt...

When Bessler wrote:

Children play among the pillars
with loud heavy clubs.

I think the "pillars" could be the vertical supports and the "heavy clubs" could be the wooden pieces of the stamping machine that could be powered when it was placed up against the rotating axle, but, at you point out, that would be describing the exterior mechanics of the devices and not their interiors. However, I guess you could be right and that this could also refer to some internal component inside of the wheel like a weight mounted on a swinging lever.

When that shining day finally arrives when we have Bessler's secret mechanism, then we will be able to go back to these verses and say "Wow! So that is what he meant by that!". I eagerly look forward to that day...


ken

[fAtnhapy]

Isn't it interesting that a piece of text could be written that ten people would read and get ten different interpertations and all ten be left convinced that the other nine are wrong. :0)
It would never have occured to me that children rolling heavy weights from broken column to broken column could remotely be refering to the axels.
fAt

[ken_behrendt]

fAt observed:

Isn't it interesting that a piece of text could be written that ten people would read and get ten different interpertations and all ten be left convinced that the other nine are wrong.

Alas, quite true. This is one of the major obstacles involved in Bessler research. One quickly discovers that there can be a variety of interpretations for any description in the Bessler literature. I blame it all on Bessler and his secretive tendencies. Or, as one of my professors once stated, "When the facts are few, the theories are many...". If we had enough unambiguous and detailed facts, then we would not all be here debating the meaning of something Bessler wrote...we'd be off in our shops making some finally adjustments on our working gravity wheels!


ken

[rlortie]

fatnhapy,

Would you agree that it's possible the storks bill and ladder on either side of the toy could be depicting a "stairway" for the toy to climb?
fAt

Yes I would agree that the stork bill and ladder could be endless. encompassing the radius of the wheel. It is one method that can shoot holes in the "changing hight for length scenario. As the hammer men rock back and forth horizontally, the hammers are not only moving in an X,Y, plane but also Z. One cannot readily realize that this can be accomplished without first considering that the toy is rotating either, away or toward the viewer.

I first thought of this as a probability while working with claudio's design. He was also on to it!

I connect this unproven concept to believe that the top that turns itself over is the discerning clue Bessler spoke of. I believe the depiction of the top is only to tell us that it turns over referring to the hammer toy.

Ralph

[fAtnhapy]

Thanks, no one said this would be easy, if it was it would have been solved a couple hundred years ago and this board would have been reduced to attempting an explaination of the John Titor issue.
I suppose we should count our blessings! :0)
fAt

[Fletcher]

fAt .. the John Titor issue was an interesting one that I had long forgotten about. Do you have a link or an update ?

[jim_mich]

For those who don't know about John Titor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Titor

Web site with lots of recent info about John Titor http://www.johntitor.com/

[fAtnhapy]

Ooops. I feel a sidetrack coming on! I appologize in advance. LOL
fAt

[rlortie]

Hopefully all side tracking will cease with jim _mich's above post and links.

Any one wishing to discuss John Titor. Please start a new thread preferably in the Off Topic forum.

I feel that this thread is on a good roll here, and I for one wish it to stay that way for a change.

Fatnhapy,

Have you ever used a bumper or handyman jack to jack up an object. upon reversing the "up" position to the down after so much weight is removed the jack will ratchet down on its own gravity. A handy man jack works on the same principle as the hammer men, only in a vertical position.

It is very possible that the falling ratchet action in the flopping hammer toy ratcheting on the ladder and or scissor jack would offer the same action. The answer lies in the center of gravity in a vertical 2D reference of the the hammers. in order for them to oscillate back and forth as they flip the lower would have to have the necessary COG to force the mechenism to slide horizontally. This is easily conceived within the "Z" plane of action. I also see the accumulation of kinetic and inertial energy in this mechanical motion.

Ralph