Besslers prime mover and its enabler.

[johannesbender]

https://youtu.be/KgTg4eoje-I?si=dZmdkTZinD5qs-RE
All you have to do is start the wheel in the chosen direction...

In your example the direction of the winding and the escapement's pawl and ratchet determines the direction.

Not at all, the wheel is totally independent of the winding direction and pawl, it doesn't care 🙂
This suggests that the main motor is not affected in any direction by the change of direction of the VISIBLE wheel.

Correct , as i said the direction is determined by the escapement's pawl and ratchet and the winding direction (the wheel has nothing to do with the direction of operation , the mechanism has its own direction ).

[Roxaway59]

Fletcher wrote.

I agree with you, with some small qualifications - average velocity is displacement divided by time - to my way of thinking it is entirely due to a threshold minimum acceleration given ( v = u + at ), and not anything to do with a distance covered per se in the push ( as you say, that would have been noted ) ..

I agree with this. It was only when the wheel was given a certain amount of acceleration that the prime mover consisting of a mechanical positive feedback mechanism was able to take hold.

Robinhood wrote

This is all well and good Fletcher, but does his description not imply; had he applied a gentle force to the wheel without attaining sufficient velocity, for momentum to kick in and take over, the wheel would have turned indefinitely at the slow speed with a continuous gentle push?

I don't think it can be eliminated, but it can't be affirmed either.
Even if we could establish the distinction between the need to turn the wheel "gently" a certain distance, or the need to "gently" reach a certain velocity, would it be telling us anything useful?

A positive feedback loop works a little bit like a switch. Its a kind of all or nothing affair.

The best way to think about it is like a microphone feeding back. When there is enough sound there to keep it going it howls non stop providing its own input.

If you very nearly give it enough sound you hear it ring and then die down quickly like a damped oscillation because it doesn’t quite have enough sound to keep it going.

In the same way on Besslers bidirectional wheels you had to accelerate the wheel enough for the positive feedback mechanism to finally take over and provide its own input which then provided excess energy.

Graham

[Roxaway59]

Well I thought I would post this second block diagram in the hope that we can agree on where the centre of gravity lay around about on both types of wheels when running and at rest.

Also that there would have been an oscillation of the centre of gravity as indicated. I feel like I must confirm this before moving on.

Graham

[Robinhood46]

Graham,
If you draw a vertical line through the centre, to the left of this line is where the COG is, when the wheel is rotating anti clockwise, and to the right of it is where the COG is, when the wheel rotates clockwise.

Any more precision is purely speculation, and we can literally place it wherever we like and find a valid argument for putting it there.
We can discuss probabilities of where it is more likely to be, but until we have a runner, i think we run the risk of misleading our research by confirming an eventual invalid detail.
I wouldn't want to help you decide where the COG is, because i haven't got a clue where it is. Other than to the left or right of the vertical line.

[Roxaway59]

Hi Robinhood I'm not after anything that exact at the moment just that it has to be somewhere as shown and that it has to oscillate. If we can agree on that then all well and good.

Graham

[Robinhood46]

Hi Robinhood I'm not after anything that exact at the moment just that it has to be somewhere as shown and that it has to oscillate. If we can agree on that then all well and good.

I am afraid we will not be agreeing on anything more precise, than somewhere off centre.
Maybe other members will give you the confirmation you are seeking.

[Roxaway59]

I’m going to build this up mainly in block diagram form but I know we have to start looking at the real mechanisms that can behave this way and in doing so get a better understanding of how Besslers wheel worked.

It is my strong belief now that the prime mover was a mechanical positive feedback mechanism.

Basically this would have been mechanical hysteresis.

In the real world mechanisms that have mechanical positive feedback very quickly settle down and a lot of the time latch into a stable state.

This has to happen or it will destroy itself.

The loop that is fed back to the input is always in phase with the input. That’s why when someone turned one of Besslers wheels it felt so light because the machine was helping to turn itself.

Graham

[Roxaway59]

On the toy page there is one mechanism that stands out to me on this and that is the storks bill.

If you operate them the other way round you get an amplification of movement.

Graham

[Roxaway59]

There is another strong reason why I believe the prime mover exhibits positive feedback.

Have you ever noticed how mechanisms that we put on a wheel always seem to impart their same characteristics onto the wheel.

I suppose what I am saying is its like a mechanical version of the apple not falling too far from the tree.

The wheel exhibited positive feedback characteristics because that's what the prime mover did and I am guessing there was eight of them.

Graham

[Fletcher]

I don't think there is any doubt about the gentleness of the push needed to get it going. I think that is plenty clear enough.

I don't.

A wheel that amplifies GPE by constantly and precisely keeping weights out of the centre of gravity and having the ability to regulate its torque capability by automatically increasing its amplification of GPE as greater loads are placed upon it.

I cannot confirm or deny your theory. I personally don't think it automatically increased its amplification. Perhaps it did?...

I believe Bessler specifically designed the loads to match his wheel to show it in its best light.

I suspect whatever mechanism was employed had some natural frequency of replenishment, which encouraged the wheel to turn at a certain speed.

First part .. imagine you are the one about to start the M. wheel turning - you are standing beside it and are going to use just two fingers to give it an initial impetus - being mindful it can't be too gentle else it will just stop - with 2 fingers in contact, and standing outside the railing barrier, and given the reach of your arm in these circumstances, you give it a little shove forward somewhere on the wheel within reach - the impetus is given and the momentum transferred from hand to wheel exterior but the wheel rotation does not wither and die, and instead the wheel quickly gathers pace to 40 RPM ( M. ) or 26 RPM ( K. ) in only 1 and 2 turns ..

Second part .. I agree with T79 in that B. would have designed his wheels to be reasonably robust, and have safe operating tolerances for testing purposes, that did not take it to extremes where stress failure might result in an embarrassing breakdown or failure to lift a load etc - we know this because he said given enough time he could build his wheels big or small, fast or slow, as he wanted - he also said the power could be increased with a big enough wheel ( paraphrased - lack of time to look it all up and quote it chapter and verse ) ..

I also agree with T79 where he says he suspects each wheel had a natural frequency which they chased and maintained RPM at - when at that frequency all internal forces were in equilibrium i.e. no more torque was available to increase RPM further - and this leads to the question of some compensatory ability to 'load match' when RPM drops below the natural frequency under load ..

Here the story is a little murky and we have to use our judgement and balance of probabilities .. Wagner in his First Critique about the M. wheel contradicts himself ..

X. ... the operation consisted only of the removal of the weights, or if the weights, but not the wheel, were reset to their previous position so that the wheel, which had run down considerably before the translocation, would be able to go again for a while after the translocation:

In chapter X. Wagner says the M. wheel had run down in RPM before the translocation tests .. this is not supported by anyone else or any certificate etc ..

XII. ... From this it is clearly shown that the great, alleged 70-pound force depends not on the internal motive principle or the superior force of the weights but on the movement of the wheel because although the wheel was complete, it was never powerful enough to bring its own bulk back to its previous speed.

Here he says after taking the weights out for a translocation test it could not then recover it previous RPM .. this is not supported by anyone else or any certificate etc ..

In fact the opposite is recorded in official certificates and private letters know as the witness statements etc ..

Merseburg ... - Certificate for wheel tested at Merseburg, signed 31st October, 1715
The inventor first put in motion his six ells (11.15 feet) in diameter and one foot thick machine, which was still resting on the same wooden support upon which it had previously been mounted. It was stopped and re-started, turned both left and right as many times as was requested by the members of the Commission, or the spectators. The machine was started by a very light push with just two fingers and accelerated as soon as one of the weights, hidden inside, began to fall. Within about one revolution, the machine had acquired a strong and even rotation, even when a box was lifted, which had been filled with six whole bricks weighing together about seventy pounds.

Wagner re. Draschwitz one-way wheel in his Critiques ..

XXIX. On page I, line 12 seq., the defender assures his readers that the principle of the motion depends on no external assistance, driving, etc., but is solely and simply concealed within. I never doubted that the principle is concealed within the wheel, but it is false to say that the motion depends solely on the internally concealed weights, for the impossibility has already been shown sufficiently above. The weights distributed over the circumference of the wheel give it such a powerfully moving force that a load hung from it does not weaken the rotations noticeably.

Merseburg ... - Johann Weisse, District Magistrate, Merseburg wheel examination, 31st October, 1715
Firstly, the inventor showed us all around and overwhelmingly demonstrated that his perpetual motion machine had no hidden cord as was falsely alleged. The circular machine is about six ells in diameter and has a thickness of about one foot. The inventor started it with the merest little effort. As soon as just one of the internal weights began to fall, the machine started to revolve with such strength that it turned forty of more times a minute, and could only be stopped with great difficulty...the most extraordinary thing I noticed was that the machine showed the same strength and speed during the lifting and lowering of the load...

Draschwitz ... - Acta Eruditorum, Christian Wolff, 1715
... and easily lift weights of sixty to seventy pounds to a considerable height, in a repetitive, equable and continuous movement.

Next .. we have limited information on how and Load Tests were done - it appears from Wolff that rope lifting tests were conducted with a 4 to 1 reduction at the axle making it quite slow - the rope would have been wrapped around the axle a couple of times and when hand-held it made friction with the axle to lift a box - when the box should come down the tension was reduced and the rope slipped I am guessing .. regardless, the observations were that it lifted at 40 RPM as it did unloaded - some of that lift capability would be due to some wheel momentum, but nevertheless I'd expect it to noticeably slow down - it didn't, even if not at its limit ..

We have no knowledge of how the stampers were engaged and what RPM the wheel operated at with them engaged - I assume from the engravings that it was a direct transmission from the get go ..

We also have direct first hand informtion from Fischer regarding the K. wheel - it turned at 26 RPM unloaded and 20 RPM with the water screw in action - that means a direct drive and a constant load - therefore it appears that while there may have been some compensatory load matching ability this did not hold true for a water screw attachment moving that much volume ( under constant load ) of water as the engraving shows ..

IF .. it did have some compensatory load matching ability then a load attached would act as a brake of sorts - and perhaps the act of braking it periodically caused the internal shifting imbalance weights to swing out just a little further in some feedback-compensatory manner and it attempted to recover its natural frequency because of the greater weights gravity torque factor as a result ..

[Fletcher]

A wheel resting on the support it has been mounted on , and a wheel with the ability to move from one set of supports to another , and people being able inspecting the journals and such , contradicts single pieced floor to ceiling fixed supports , but a support lifting somewhat up and down and drawings contradicts short length supports too imo , who knows why they write in such confusing ways.

The fact that the uni directional wheel started on release indicates there was no specific velocity requirement to start if it did so under its own power , but i imagine there was something about the design that made bidirectionality difficult off the bat , because did he not mention it took quite the thinking to design ?

Both B's. engravings and Borlach's independent engraving of the M. wheel all show floor to ceiling supports .. there is no instance where anything else is discussed or shown - in the M. wheel certificate and the independent letters of 'sGravesand and Wolff etc they mention the translocation tests being conducted - and that they carefully and thoroughly inspected the journals etc - this can only be done by inspecting a groove or cut-away channel to sit the axle in, in the side of the floor to ceiling support stands ..

B. said it took him some considerable thought and calculation to design an effective two-way wheel ( paraphrased ) - meaning it was not easy to design its reversibility - they would need latching and directional triggering etc as I see it - maybe spring latching to counter Cf's etc ..

[Fletcher]

I’m going to build this up mainly in block diagram form but I know we have to start looking at the real mechanisms that can behave this way and in doing so get a better understanding of how Besslers wheel worked.

It is my strong belief now that the prime mover was a mechanical positive feedback mechanism.

Basically this would have been mechanical hysteresis.

In the real world mechanisms that have mechanical positive feedback very quickly settle down and a lot of the time latch into a stable state.

This has to happen or it will destroy itself.

The loop that is fed back to the input is always in phase with the input. That’s why when someone turned one of Besslers wheels it felt so light because the machine was helping to turn itself.

...............

There is another strong reason why I believe the prime mover exhibits positive feedback.

Have you ever noticed how mechanisms that we put on a wheel always seem to impart their same characteristics onto the wheel.

I suppose what I am saying is its like a mechanical version of the apple not falling too far from the tree.

The wheel exhibited positive feedback characteristics because that's what the prime mover did and I am guessing there was eight of them.

I agree with your box diagram of where the relative CoM's/CoG's are located Graham, for indicative purposes ..

I also believe strongly that his wheels had a mechanically induced positive reinforcing feed-back mechanism to cause the great acceleration of the wheels in only 1 or 2 turns - and that the system CoM was always located and circulating to right of axle in our examples - that could be called a mechanical hysteresis ..

Lastly, I see it this way ..

A PM wheel requires a positive feed-back mechanism that is based on a periodic and repeating perturbance ( the hysteresis ) ..

To have a feedback system that "gains" we need 3 parts to it, imo - a weight set that when lifted and shifted can cause gravity torque to turn the wheel - a wheel carcass ( axle, spokes, covering etc that do not change radius ) to act as a fly-wheel so that its momentum/inertia is a necessary part of that feed-back system - a prime mover structure to choreograph, order, and coordinate the perturbance and grow the gravity torque imbalance to cause a great acceleration up to speed in 1 or 2 turns - the prime mover also aids the reset and lifting of the "able to swing" weight sets .. imo !

[Fletcher]

.. And imo, the reason why his one-way wheels had to be an "active" forced perturbation type is by ruling-out what they aren't - because, if they were the "passive" let the swinging weights gravitate downwards when they want and be leveraged up with MA to gain GPE at a later time and place to create an imbalance, then the positive imbalance and torque would only be temporary and they would wash-up having equal amounts of positive and negative torque each side of the vertical down thru the axle, and quickly stop at the position of least wheel PE ..

.. And this means they could not start from ANY POSITION, besides the weights needing extra energy input to fully recover their height for the reset after ordinary and expected system energy losses ! ..

ETA .. the two-ways started in force balance/equilibrium at their position of least wheel PE - and after a hand acceleration and momentum input thereafter behaved exactly as the one-ways in motion, except that their interior contained more 'inactive' mass and developed a lesser RPM, imo ..

[Daniel.R]

The bidirectional wheel must have had an active/dynamic OOB quality to it. This OOB quality must have been closely connected to the RPM of the wheel, and it seems to have grown out of balance as RPM increased.

Consider a scenario where you start the wheel in one direction. Before the wheel reaches its maximum RPM, you stop it and make it go in the opposite direction. Would you feel more resistance in this new direction due to weights being statically placed in an OOB position from the previous rotational direction? This does not seem to be the case according to witnesses and demonstrations. The wheel could apparently be stopped at any time and then be accelerated from the new position in either direction with the same gentle force.

IMO, this suggests that he probably used CF and maybe gravity to dynamically and temporarily lift weights into an out-of-balance (OOB) position. The unidirectional wheel however, I see as having weights actively placed on one side of the wheel with the help of the overunity lifting technique that Bessler discovered.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I believe we should focus on understanding his lifting technique. If GPE is being "created," then it is possible to make various perpetual motion mechanisms, not just a self-revolving wheel. The possibilities are endless if excessive GPE has been created.

/Daniel

[johannesbender]

A wheel resting on the support it has been mounted on , and a wheel with the ability to move from one set of supports to another , and people being able inspecting the journals and such , contradicts single pieced floor to ceiling fixed supports , but a support lifting somewhat up and down and drawings contradicts short length supports too imo , who knows why they write in such confusing ways.

The fact that the uni directional wheel started on release indicates there was no specific velocity requirement to start if it did so under its own power , but i imagine there was something about the design that made bidirectionality difficult off the bat , because did he not mention it took quite the thinking to design ?

Both B's. engravings and Borlach's independent engraving of the M. wheel all show floor to ceiling supports .. there is no instance where anything else is discussed or shown - in the M. wheel certificate and the independent letters of 'sGravesand and Wolff etc they mention the translocation tests being conducted - and that they carefully and thoroughly inspected the journals etc - this can only be done by inspecting a groove or cut-away channel to sit the axle in, in the side of the floor to ceiling support stands ..

B. said it took him some considerable thought and calculation to design an effective two-way wheel ( paraphrased ) - meaning it was not easy to design its reversibility - they would need latching and directional triggering etc as I see it - maybe spring latching to counter Cf's etc ..

perhaps that is part of why this sounds confusing and contradictory to me , i remember a post about the wheel being moved about to any location in the room or something like that (perhaps i remember wrong) .

The ken behrend guy had some illustration in his book that i once were able to see on a "test read" or something , where he has drawn the posts with a triangular wedge cutaway where the bearings were located and the axle sat in , apart from him showing that , could you possibly help us with more detail as to where this comes from in writing or images (i may have missed this) ?

Perhaps the following way they viewed from the top and bottom and middle of the the posts , could serve as support of it having a cutaway or groove ?

{removed some quotes here to get to the following quote}

'The inventor first put in motion his six ells (11.15 feet) in diameter and one foot thick machine, which was still resting on the same wooden support upon which it had previously been mounted. It was stopped and re-started, turned both left and right as many times as was requested by the members of the Commission, or the spectators. The machine was started by a very light push with just two fingers and accelerated as soon as one of the weights, hidden inside, began to fall. Within about one revolution, the machine had acquired a strong and even rotation, even when a box was lifted, which had been filled with six whole bricks weighing together about seventy pounds. The weight was lifted by means of a rope conducted through a window by means of a pulley, eight ells (14.8 feet) upwards to the roof, and several Clafter (1 Clafter is about 8.2 feet) down into the yard. The box was lifted as many times as requested.
Furthermore the inventor, Orffyreus, in front of everybody, lifted the perpetual motion machine described above, from its original wooden support. The timber posts were carefully examined both from the top and bottom as well as in the middle, particularly where a small cut was noticed. The same careful examination was devoted to the iron journals of the shaft and to the bearings. However there was not the least vestige of suspicion of fraud observed.
By way of additional proof about its internal motive power, the perpetual motion machine was translocated to another support in such a way that the whole assembly could see over and under, and both sides of the machine; and all present were invited to visit the bearings, but no holes were found, all present examined them with their eyes, but no sign of fraud was there seen. It was possible to translocate the machine and turn it left and right as many times as was asked by the assembled respectable Commission. The machine regained its strong, even and fast rotation each time. The movement was accompanied by quite a loud noise caused by the internal mechanism which lasted until the machine was brought to a forced stop. Nothing suspicious was found.
Finally, it should be noted that right from the start, before the machine was subjected to any testing, all rooms above, below and on either side were examined by the Commission. It was also verified that the stamps were not hollow, and no indication of any mechanism moved by a cord was found.
All that has been written above is the truth, and has been acknowledged by signatures in our own hand without any reservations. This certificate was issued at the respectful, obedient and proper request of the Inventor' - Certificate for wheel tested at Merseburg, signed 31st October, 1715.

come to think of it , there was another quote about a groove for the axle ends , he seems to neglect this detail in drawings .