Hi
Steve
I’ am very interested in wanting to know more about Rowley, what kind of relationship was there between Rowley and Bessler, did they communicate often, Is there any surviving writing’s by Rowley about his thoughts on perpetual motion.
Ken
did weights roll, or just fall, in Bessler's wheel?
Moderator: scott
re: did weights roll, or just fall, in Bessler's wheel?
All material motion requires a source of energy, a body to store the energy, and the energy of motion.
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re: did weights roll, or just fall, in Bessler's wheel?
Hi Ken,
John Rowley was Master of Mechanics for King George 1 and a contemporary of John Harrison the inventor of the Marine chronometer. He was regarded as the finest mechanic in England and made clocks and watches and mathematical and scientific instruments for many, including Sir Isaac Newton.
Rowley visited Kassel and examined Bessler's wheel and was convinced that it was genuine. He didn't write to Bessler as far as I can tell but did some research among the libraries of London searching through books on PM. He became famous (or infamous) for declaring that Bessler's wheel was real and was probably responsible for the establishment of the fund to buy Bessler's wheel. Unfortunately the stock market nose-dived at that precise moment, otherwise we would probably not be here discussing the wheel but using it and its descendants!
There is no record of what Rowley actually saw, only circumstantial evidence that he was there and he saw the machine and spoke passionately about it.
JC
John Rowley was Master of Mechanics for King George 1 and a contemporary of John Harrison the inventor of the Marine chronometer. He was regarded as the finest mechanic in England and made clocks and watches and mathematical and scientific instruments for many, including Sir Isaac Newton.
Rowley visited Kassel and examined Bessler's wheel and was convinced that it was genuine. He didn't write to Bessler as far as I can tell but did some research among the libraries of London searching through books on PM. He became famous (or infamous) for declaring that Bessler's wheel was real and was probably responsible for the establishment of the fund to buy Bessler's wheel. Unfortunately the stock market nose-dived at that precise moment, otherwise we would probably not be here discussing the wheel but using it and its descendants!
There is no record of what Rowley actually saw, only circumstantial evidence that he was there and he saw the machine and spoke passionately about it.
JC
re: did weights roll, or just fall, in Bessler's wheel?
I only realized too late that life was short.
re: did weights roll, or just fall, in Bessler's wheel?
Hi all
(Das Triumphirende Perpetuum Mobile Orffyreanum)
Bessler wrote:
“This upper weight incessantly exercises universal motion from which the essential constituent parts of the machine receive power and push.�
The way I understand universal motion to be, is an object that is free to move in any direction, or am I wrong in reading it that way.
Ken
(Das Triumphirende Perpetuum Mobile Orffyreanum)
Bessler wrote:
“This upper weight incessantly exercises universal motion from which the essential constituent parts of the machine receive power and push.�
The way I understand universal motion to be, is an object that is free to move in any direction, or am I wrong in reading it that way.
Ken
All material motion requires a source of energy, a body to store the energy, and the energy of motion.
re: did weights roll, or just fall, in Bessler's wheel?
I can see it now. The Bessler conference. Where all the people come to show off their wheels and wheel ideas. Who will get the Bessler Trophy? John Collins will be doing a book signing, Balance and unbalance test in the show. Come one come all, we all get on the bus for (The Bessler Mystery Tour.)
To be totally honest. It sounds like a lot of fun to me. But some of us would have trouble getting the money up and time off to get there. :(
To be totally honest. It sounds like a lot of fun to me. But some of us would have trouble getting the money up and time off to get there. :(
Last edited by AB Hammer on Fri Aug 15, 2008 12:19 am, edited 1 time in total.
"Our education can be the limitation to our imagination, and our dreams"
So With out a dream, there is no vision.
Old and future wheel videos
https://www.youtube.com/user/ABthehammer/videos
Alan
So With out a dream, there is no vision.
Old and future wheel videos
https://www.youtube.com/user/ABthehammer/videos
Alan
Yeah a tour sounds like fun but with a non existing budget that's a bit difficult, and I'm from Belgium! Let alone people that have to come overseas. Unless some rich fella sees gathering active minds more important than spending it on some other crap then there's a chance:p. Common you PM loving millionaires, we know you're out there.
Hey, I'm in Australia and willing to get a small dinghy boat and start paddling!
If cost is an issue, lets have a virtual conference on the web.
Actually lets have a web site dedicated to Bessler research. Say a discussion group or forum and say call it BesslerWheel.com
What a great idea! He, he!
(Alan, just sell two more armours and I'm sure you could afford a world tour. Just get rid of that apprentice of yours to save some money!)
If cost is an issue, lets have a virtual conference on the web.
Actually lets have a web site dedicated to Bessler research. Say a discussion group or forum and say call it BesslerWheel.com
What a great idea! He, he!
(Alan, just sell two more armours and I'm sure you could afford a world tour. Just get rid of that apprentice of yours to save some money!)
re: did weights roll, or just fall, in Bessler's wheel?
You know what I'd love to know.Weights were heard hitting the side of the wheel going down.
Where did the weights hit ? I mean more precisely 2 o'clock? 3 o'clock? 4 o'clock?.
The observer that noticed weights hitting the down side...I just wish they would have elaborated one more iota
Attempt only the impossible.
re: did weights roll, or just fall, in Bessler's wheel?
Hi ovyyus and everyone, It's been a long long while. I was dabbling in this again lately.
So, first, I guess then there is no evidence that the weights in the machine rolled about in it in any fashion. Rather, what evidence there is suggests the weights just swung or pivoted or something like that. The eyewitness accounts are maddeningly terse but it seems pretty telling that none of them mentioned any rolling sound, while in contrast Wolff for example went so far as to say he surmised the weights were attached to the perimeter.
I'd meant to respond to ovyyus's observation that devices in Bessler's period could be remarkably refined and complex so one shouldn't suppose that Bessler's contraption was necessarily crude, simple or rough. When I said I supposed the craftmanship would have been primitive, I meant this relatively speaking; I didn't mean to cast aspersions on where engineering and metalworking and so forth stood as of the early 1700s. (And some months ago I saw in the news the working reconstruction of the ancient Antikythera mechanism, which is awesome indeed.)
Based on the scanty objective information and eyewitness comments about the wheel, and also the Maschinen Tractate, I still can't help supposing it wasn't loaded with gears and fine parts and such, but was (-relatively-) simple. First of all, the MT itself is mostly a bunch of -relatively- simple designs. The physical setup can get fairly involved, but conceptually they don't seem so complex. Well, some of them do.
More than that, looking at the basic facts, I'd suppose the machine had to be simple in design, in order to have the high tolerance for irregularities, imprecisions and wear and tear of various kinds. (I'm tending to discount what Bessler said, and tending to credit the eyewitness accounts.) This was not a chronometer. The machine had heavy parts banging around, more or less, in a big heavy wheel spinning around rapidly and "noisily", with at least some portion of rough parts. It comprised, in addition to the covering, "several cross pieces of wood framed together". It "rotated with great force and noise." Any interior apparatus would have had to revolve with the wheel--and it is hard to suppose that a complex mechanism would have well withstood the thousands of revolutions and vibrations. Wolff, for one, described a board in the interior as (simply) "slightly warped", a choice of description that seems to indicate he at least saw no sleek-looking surface or apparatus. The thing contained "an iron spring that gave a loud noise as it expanded upwards" as Bessler prepared it for motion. And so forth. None of this indicates any sort of refined instrument.
Of course, perhaps above all there's the fact that Count Karl described the mechanism that he saw as quite simple. Even if he misconstrued as simple what was not really so simple, at any rate he expressed no marvel about any apparent complexity to it. (With him, as other eyewitnesses, they seem potentially as interesting and useful for what they omit to say, as what they do say, though I realize one could speculate forever to no purpose.) And on the scanty facts it's hard to see why Karl would lie about it. Even without the Count's observation, the other facts that seem more or less reliable make me doubt there was a complex mechanism within the machine.
I also think that the fact that there was a reversible version of the wheel tends (tends) to suggest a relatively simple design, though of course it doesn't prove a thing.
If there was any high degree of precision involved in the construction of wheel, I'd suppose it could be only in a part designed to trip or regulate a larger overbalancing or other driving mechanism, somewhat as a delicate escapement leads to the regular movement of hands on a clock. But, again, my understanding is that any interior apparatus would have had to revolve together with the wheel, likely incurring, over the hours and weeks, substantial wear and tear, loosening, and so forth, unless Bessler was an absolutely stellar craftsman for that age.
So, first, I guess then there is no evidence that the weights in the machine rolled about in it in any fashion. Rather, what evidence there is suggests the weights just swung or pivoted or something like that. The eyewitness accounts are maddeningly terse but it seems pretty telling that none of them mentioned any rolling sound, while in contrast Wolff for example went so far as to say he surmised the weights were attached to the perimeter.
I'd meant to respond to ovyyus's observation that devices in Bessler's period could be remarkably refined and complex so one shouldn't suppose that Bessler's contraption was necessarily crude, simple or rough. When I said I supposed the craftmanship would have been primitive, I meant this relatively speaking; I didn't mean to cast aspersions on where engineering and metalworking and so forth stood as of the early 1700s. (And some months ago I saw in the news the working reconstruction of the ancient Antikythera mechanism, which is awesome indeed.)
Based on the scanty objective information and eyewitness comments about the wheel, and also the Maschinen Tractate, I still can't help supposing it wasn't loaded with gears and fine parts and such, but was (-relatively-) simple. First of all, the MT itself is mostly a bunch of -relatively- simple designs. The physical setup can get fairly involved, but conceptually they don't seem so complex. Well, some of them do.
More than that, looking at the basic facts, I'd suppose the machine had to be simple in design, in order to have the high tolerance for irregularities, imprecisions and wear and tear of various kinds. (I'm tending to discount what Bessler said, and tending to credit the eyewitness accounts.) This was not a chronometer. The machine had heavy parts banging around, more or less, in a big heavy wheel spinning around rapidly and "noisily", with at least some portion of rough parts. It comprised, in addition to the covering, "several cross pieces of wood framed together". It "rotated with great force and noise." Any interior apparatus would have had to revolve with the wheel--and it is hard to suppose that a complex mechanism would have well withstood the thousands of revolutions and vibrations. Wolff, for one, described a board in the interior as (simply) "slightly warped", a choice of description that seems to indicate he at least saw no sleek-looking surface or apparatus. The thing contained "an iron spring that gave a loud noise as it expanded upwards" as Bessler prepared it for motion. And so forth. None of this indicates any sort of refined instrument.
Of course, perhaps above all there's the fact that Count Karl described the mechanism that he saw as quite simple. Even if he misconstrued as simple what was not really so simple, at any rate he expressed no marvel about any apparent complexity to it. (With him, as other eyewitnesses, they seem potentially as interesting and useful for what they omit to say, as what they do say, though I realize one could speculate forever to no purpose.) And on the scanty facts it's hard to see why Karl would lie about it. Even without the Count's observation, the other facts that seem more or less reliable make me doubt there was a complex mechanism within the machine.
I also think that the fact that there was a reversible version of the wheel tends (tends) to suggest a relatively simple design, though of course it doesn't prove a thing.
If there was any high degree of precision involved in the construction of wheel, I'd suppose it could be only in a part designed to trip or regulate a larger overbalancing or other driving mechanism, somewhat as a delicate escapement leads to the regular movement of hands on a clock. But, again, my understanding is that any interior apparatus would have had to revolve together with the wheel, likely incurring, over the hours and weeks, substantial wear and tear, loosening, and so forth, unless Bessler was an absolutely stellar craftsman for that age.