thumb|Johann Bessler (Orffyreus)
Johann Ernst Elias Bessler (ca. 1680 – 30 November 1745), known as Orffyreus or Orffyré, was a German entrepreneur who claimed to have built several perpetual motion machines. Those claims generated considerable interest and controversy among some of the leading natural philosophers of the day, including Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Johann Bernoulli, John Theophilus Desaguliers, and Willem 's Gravesande. The modern scientific consensus is that Bessler perpetrated a deliberate fraud, although the details of this have not been satisfactorily explained.
Life and career
Bessler was born to a peasant family in Upper Lusatia, in the German Electorate of Saxony, circa 1680. He went to school in Zittau, where (according to his own account) he excelled in his studies and became a favorite of Christian Weise, the rector of the local Gymnasium. After he left school he began to travel widely, seeking his fortune. Having saved an alchemist from drowning in a well, he was rewarded with instruction on the fabrication of elixirs. After that Bessler earned his living as a healer and an unlicensed physician. He was also an apprentice watchmaker, until his fortunes improved when he married the wealthy daughter of the physician and mayor of Annaberg, Dr. Christian Schuhmann.
Bessler adopted the pseudonym "Orffyreus" by writing the letters of the alphabet in a circle and selecting the letters diametrically opposite to those of his surname (what would modernly be called a ROT13 cipher), thus obtaining Orffyre, which he then Latinized into Orffyreus. That was the name by which he was generally known thereafter.
Orffyreus's wheels
In 1712, Bessler appeared in the town of Gera in the province of Reuss and exhibited a "self-moving wheel," which was about in diameter and thick. Once in motion it was capable of lifting several kilograms (pounds). It was there that in 1717 he constructed his largest wheel so far, in diameter and thick. In a letter to Sir Isaac Newton, 's Gravesande reported that, when pushed, the wheel took two or three revolutions to reach a maximum speed of about 25 revolutions per minute. The wheels at Merseburg and Kassel were attached to three-bobbed pendula, one on either side, which presumably acted as regulators, limiting the maximum speed of revolution. He indicated that the wheel depended upon weights placed so that they can "never attain equilibrium." This suggests that it was a kind of "overbalanced wheel," If the maid's confession were true, the testimonies by Prince Karl, 's Gravesande, and others about the conditions under which the wheel was tested and exhibited must be flawed.