Johann Bessler’s Use of Alphanumerics.

In addition to his search for the solution to designing and building a perpetual motion machine Johann Bessler was also fascinated with the subjects of numbers, alphabets, alphanumerics and chronograms.  This obsession might have been heightened by his visit to Prague where he learned about codes and ciphers.

He used his name to encode information about the number five and fifty-five.  Potentially this clue pointed to the pentagram and/or chapter 55 of his second book Apologia Poetica(AP).  This chapter is full of coded stuff which I go into more on my websites at www.theorffyreuscode.com and www.orffyreus.net

His first two illustrations, one in Grundlicher Bericht (GB) and another version in Das Triumphans…(DT) include a lot of numbered parts.  Using just the numbers 1 - 24, he obtained a total of 660 which divided by 12 gives 55.  Why divide by 12?  Because Bessler cleverly embedded a clock in the same two drawings showing the 12 hours. This is the one from DT.

By drawing the lines of perspective within the illustration you can find a clock.  This is confirmed by the eight o’clock line which includes two items numbered eight. Taking the 660 and dividing it by the clock’s twelve hours we obtain 55 

His next illustration in DT was the Die Andere and Secunda Figua which was one illustration in two parts.  He uses just the numbers from 1 - 10 which totals 55. Addingh all the numbers used on the left side totals 28, but those on the right add up to - you guessed it, 55!  

The last illustration was of his wheel driving an Archimedes screw pump and included labelled parts, but this time he used the alphabet, labelling parts from ‘a’ to ‘t’, plus one part labelled 10, although it also looked like the letter ‘w’.  I checked the list of numbered parts and it did show a 10 and not a ‘w’.  Why not use the letter ‘u’ to follow his use of the letter’u’?

Maybe by using Bessler’s favoured Caesar shift system, we find that ‘w’ is equivalent to the letter ‘j’, ‘j is the tenth letter.  So why? I think it was a hint to read the alphabetic in this figure as both alphanumerics as well as the atbash. Any way the totals are as follows.

There are 39 numbers totalling 355. The letter ‘e’ is as usual missing from the left side, but that was how he highlighting the number. Adding the 5 to 355 to give 360,  and brings the number total 40 - so 20 for each half.  360 divided by 20 equals 18, the basic pentagonal number, snd of course 360 divided by the missing 5 equals 72, one fifth of the pentagon.

I could go on because there’s so much more, but although this is interesting it’s just another pointer to the number 5 and 55, which can point to the need for five mechanisms, and/or chapter 55 in his Apologia Poetica which has the 141 Bible references, and for a look at my attempts to decipher it see my web site at http://www.orffyreus.net/.      

More hidden, more useful,  information to follow.

JC