Maschinen Tractate

"Further demonstrations regarding the possibility and impossibility of perpetual motion.

NB. May 1, 1733. Due to the arrest, I burned and buried all papers that prove the possibility. However, I have left all demonstrations and experiments, since it would be difficult for anybody to see or learn anything about a perpetual motion from them or to decide whether there was any truth in them because no illustration by itself contains a description of the motion; however, taking various illustrations together and combining them with a discerning mind, it will indeed be possible to look for a movement and, finally to find one in them."

- Johann Bessler, first page of Maschinen Tractate


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Excerpt from pages 16-23, Das Triumphans Perpetuum Mobile Orffyreanum, Johann Bessler, Kassel, 1719

Provided by Al Bacon of Traverse City, MI.
Translation by Ted of Chicago.
Not for distribution.

Except for a small change in the external dimensions of the wheel for raising weights (or so-called "running wheel"), I have organized everything together in accordance with those structures of the previous machine which I had broken to pieces. These small changes occurred by chance and do not need to be defended.

Around the firmly placed horizontal axis is a rotating disc (or lower cylinder) which resembles a grindstone. This disc can be called the principle piece of my machine. Accordingly, this wheel consists of an external wheel (or drum) for raising weights which is covered with stretched linen. The base of the cylinder is 12 Rhenish feet in diameter. The height (or thickness) is between 15 and 18 inches. The axle (or shaft) passing through the center is 6 feet long and 8 inches thick cross-sectionally.

While in motion it is supported by two almost one-inch-thick tapered steel pegs, whose two bearings (or sockets) with two curves around the axle provide the rotational motion of the whole vertically suspended wheel through application of pendula, which can be somewhat modified, as the attached figures at the end of this treatise clearly show.

The internal structure of this drum (or wheel) consists of weights arranged according to several a priori, that is, scientifically demonstrable, laws of mechanical perpetual motion. After the wheel completes a single rotation, or after a single force is applied to the wheel, the motion drives the wheel unceasingly. As long as the wheel’s whole structure does not change, the wheel continues its revolutions without any further assistance from external motive power. Other automatic machines, such as clockwork, springs, and hoisting weights, necessarily require an external restoring force.

The upper weight is not attached to an external mechanism, nor does it rely on external moving bodies by means of whose weight revolutions continue as long as the cords or chains on which they hang permit. As long as it remains outside the center of gravity, this upper weight incessantly exercises universal motion from which the essential constituent parts of the machine receive power and push. These parts are enclosed in a case and are coordinated with one another so that they not only never again reach an equilibrium (or point of rest) for themselves but incessantly seek with their admirably fast swing to move and drive on the axis of their vortices loads that are vertically applied from the outside and are proportional to the size of the housing.

The mechanical wheel not only bears the name of the long sought perpetual motion machine; it deserves to be named for such motion. It uses one of the best known implements for mechanical power, namely, a true circular wheel which rotates about its central axis.

<Bessler then describes the various mechanisms by which the wheel is made to do work: raising a box of bricks, lifting stamps, and turning a screw to raise water.>

Special trials have demonstrated for eyewitnesses that this mechanical wheel is a self-rotating system of several heavy bodies and will be as long as the bodies remain heavy and the universe exists.