The Legend of Johann Bessler’s Wheel.

The Legend of Johann Bessler’s Wheel.

On 6th June, 1712, in Germany, Johann Bessler (also known by his pseudonym, Orffyreus) announced that after many years of failure, he had succeeded in designing and building a perpetual motion machine.  For more than fourteen years he exhibited his machine and allowed people to thoroughly examine it.  Following advice from the famous scientist, Gottfried Leibniz, he devised a number of demonstrations and tests designed to prove the validity of his machine without giving away the secret of its design.

After more than thirty years he died in poverty.  He had asked for a huge sum of money for the secret, £20,000 which was an amount only affordable by kings and princes, and although many were interested, none were prepared to agree to the terms of the deal. Bessler required that he be given the money and the buyer take the machine without verifying that it worked.  Those who sought to purchase the wheel, for that was the form the machine took, insisted that they see the secret mechanism before they parted with the money. Bessler feared that once the design was known the buyers could simply walk away knowing how to build his machine and he would get nothing for his trouble.

This problem was anticipated by Bessler and he took extraordinary measures to ensure that his secret was safe, but he encoded all the information needed to reconstruct the machine in a small number of books that he published. It is well-known that he was prepared to die without selling the secret and that he believed that post humus acknowledgement was preferable to being robbed of his secret while he yet lived.

I am including some pictures taken from three of the books Bessler published, I have found convincing evidence that the inventor was determined to sell his machine for the £20,000 he asked for it and stated that he’d rather die first than just give it away.  

But there are some hints written by Bessler in those three books, that there are clues scattered around the books suggesting that a determined person could, by thoroughly searching through the books, find that valuable information leading to a successful working wheel.

These pictures by Bessler, plus some pieces of text, contain a huge amount of clues, many of which I’ve found, interpreted and published over a number of years.

 

JC