Sympathetic Vibratory Physics

NOTE: In Keely's time it was well founded dogma that atoms were indivisible. See quantum chronology. Keely's etheric force was the result of dissociated atoms. As everyone knew at that time atoms could not be dissociated the only thing they were familiar with was compressed air so that is what they said Keely produced or used. See Keely Chronology.

"But a telephone may be conceived to ask questions. "Tell me again," I asked. "what the Keely force is?"

It is," he replied, "a condition of sympathetic vibration associated with the terrestrial polar stream, positively and negatively."

"But what known force does it most resemble? Give some standard of comparison.''

"It is not like steam," said he, ''nor electricity, nor compressed air, nor galvanism - it is none of those, and it is not akin to any of them." [Keelys Secret - He Explains His Mystic Force]

"Again, I have repeatedly seen, in Mr. Keely's workshop, a receiver with a capacity of twenty-six gallons, containing his vapor at a pressure of 10,000 lbs. to the square inch; I have seen this vapor conducted through a tube of one-tenth inch bore to an engine which was propelled by it at a speed of about 1500 revolutions a minute, developing a power of certainly ten horses. This fact I can corroborate by the testimony of scores of persons: among them some of your best known and most influential citizens. You think that we confound "pressure with power." We understand, probably as well as you do, the distinction between "pressure" and vis viva. You may say, accepting the fact, that it is compressed air. If so, please enlighten us as to the means whereby it could be so compressed; You may say that it is a gaseous product from chemical action. Remarking that this vapor is totally negative in its properties and pure as mountain air, please inform us from what chemical substances it may, in your opinion, have been produced. I append hereto some communications addressed to me on this subject." [Letter from Charles Collier to Scientific American]

DEAR Sir:--Having constructed for John W. Keely, Esq., the multiplication with which he operated on the 10th of November, 1874, referred to in your report, I desire to state that said multiplication is correctly represented in the sectional drawing made by Mr. J. Snowden Bell, and now in your possession. I further state that, in said multiplicator, there are no secret chambers or recesses in which chemicals or compressed air could be contained, and no spaces not fully accessible to a stream of water passed through the apparatus; further, that, in said apparatus, there are no pistons or moving parts other than valves." [Letter from Charles Collier to Scientific American]

6th. I am of the conviction that the vapor is not generated by any chemical decompositions or heat, and that it is not atmospheric nor compressed by an external connection.

7th: I was present upon one occasion only when Mr. Keely essayed an "expulsion," as he terms it,--that is, the operation of generating the vapor; and the result was not sufficiently conclusive whereon to base a conviction of its integrity, although such imperfection of the development was very reasonably attributed to the imperfections of the original and rude instrument of generation.

In conclusion, my assertion, in the communication referred to, was that I have never endorsed the integrity of the Keely motor; and my declaration is, I do not now do it, and for the manifest reason that I am wholly ignorant of the manner in which the vapor is generated; and in the consideration of a physical operation, I could not, in the absence of a knowledge of its elements, endorse the declaration of any one.

My position has been confined to reporting that which I have seen. I have said, however, and I now write, that Mr. Keely has submitted to me a cold vapor of an expansive energy of fully 10,000 lbs. per square inch; that in its character and in the instruments of its generation it is wholly novel; and that, if he can generate it with the facility, economy, density and continuity that he declares, he has arrived at a result hitherto unattained, and one that is as valuable as it is novel; but until I am in the possession of the elements of generation of this vapor, I cannot arrive at any satisfactory conclusions as to its merits.[Letter from Charles Collier to Scientific American]

"Louder sounds the horn, till in a minute or two the metal globe begins to revolve. The horn stops, the globe stops. Again the horn resounds, again the globe turns, and the stronger and more continuous the blast, the more swiftly whirls the globe. You snip the thread apart with your scissors, and the ear of the globe has grown dull; no sound can awake it to motion again. Does a man need to be an expert in physics after he has seen that marvel repeated a few times, and has moved all the apparatus freely hither and thither, to testify that the rapid revolution of that metal globe was not caused by compressed air, coming in concealed tubes from a hidden reservoir, or that a silk thread is not the highway usually cast up for electricity to travel?" [Dashed Against the Rock]

President B. L. Ackerman of the Keely Motor Company, after a meeting of the Board of Directors of the company held yesterday at the office of the Treasurer of the company at 31 Broad Street, gave out a statement denying the published assertions that compressed air or electricity was the force used by Keely in his much-talked-of motor.

The statement claims that the tubes spoken of were discarded by Keely many years ago and that in all his experiments since 1887 solid wires only have been used. Up to that time, it is stated, he was working upon a theory of etheric or vaporic force and used the tubes for the conveyance of this force; but after 1887 he became convinced that he had discovered something still more perfect in what he called vibratory sympathy. It was said that a concealed electric wire was found when Keely's workshop was recently cleared out. This President Ackerman states was the remnant of the wires of a burgler alarm, and was in no way connected with the force used in the Keely motor. [Denies Keely was an Impostor]

"Discussion of the matter has not seemed profitable in the absence of such a demonstration; but now it seems proper to note an apparently new status of Mr. Keely's affairs, as shown by some experiments conducted last Saturday in the presence of a number of visitors. Some, at least, of these visitors were qualified for critical observation, and the note-worthy fact is that Mr. Keely was able to produce, under their close inspection, a dynamic result which none of them pretended to account for by any known law of physics, outside of that which Mr. Keely claims as the base of his operation. He evolved, almost instantaneously, according to the united report of those who were present, a substance having an elastic energy varying from 10,000 to 20,000 pounds per square inch, and instantly discharged or liberated it into the atmosphere, without the evolution of heat in its production, or of cold on its sudden liberation. These phenomena alone would seem to establish that the substance he is dealing with is one hitherto unknown to science.

"It seems rather frivolous to dismiss this matter with the supposition that trained specialists are to be hoodwinked by concealed springs, buried pipes for the introduction of compressed air and the like. Surely such gentlemen ought very easily to determine at once whether the surroundings and conditions of the experiments were such as to favour any kind of legerdemain; and if they found them so, it is strange that they should spend some hours in investigating that which has been asserted to be 'a transparent humbug.'

"The appearances are that Mr. Keely has at least removed his enterprise from the domain of ridicule to that of respectful investigation, and this, after all, is great progress." (The Daily News) [What Keely Has Discovered]

“The power of the engine to do efficient mechanical work was abundantly demonstrated in sawing wood, running turning lathes, etc., in the room over-head, connected by belting from the pulley attached to one of the trunnions, and also by a plank pressed down on this driving pulley, in order to check its motion by friction, with the weight of two men resting on the plank.

“With the actual running of this engine as an incomprehensible mystery, and with the demonstrated fact of a successful application of its mechanical power to do work, there can no longer be any manner of question but that Mr. Keely has made startling discoveries both in a new and undreamed of motive power and its mechanical application to machinery by new methods as astonishing as they are novel.

“That he uses compressed air or any known gas, as charged and insisted upon in the Scientific American, is absurd and totally impossible to conceive of, when we consider the available space for such compressed gas or air in all the cylinders put together which Mr. Keely employs. Besides, the phenomena accompanying the discharges of this gas or vapor after each experiment are entirely different from those of compressed air or ordinary gas.

“Mr. Keely justly complains that the Scientific American editors keep up the hue and cry of humbug and fraud against him, and at the same time have refused the most urgent invitation extended to them to come to Philadelphia and witness the operations of his discoveries before ridiculing them. It is a withering disgrace to the boasted progress of this age that any editor of a paper which flaunts “scientific” as a part of its title, should be afraid to witness and investigate a claimed new discovery before expressing an opinion upon it, lest it should render his journal unpopular with the unprogressive fogies of his patronage. Such spirit of journalistic cowardice is not only reprehensible, but detestable in the highest degree, and no paper pretending to be progressive should be considered worth reading by any thinking man so long as it fears to investigate any and all questions of science, philosophy, and mechanics which may come under its notice, and then give its readers the benefits of its unprejudiced opinion, let it strike where it will.

“It is only proper here for us to state that during the early experiments of the exhibition we were intensely distrustful of the mechanical relevancy of the bowing of the forks and of other vibratory performances in order to generate the wonderful force Mr. Keely evidently exhibited, but supposed them to be a sort of ruse or blind for the purpose of diverting the ingenuity of inventors present, who might otherwise pry into and discover the secret of his motive power. This apprehension we frankly stated to Mr. Keely, not at all intending it as an imputation against his honesty, though he thus took it, in the excitement of his experiments, and for which remark we afterward apologized. Suffice it to say, we came very nearly being voted out of the exhibition for unguardedly expressing our skepticism, in which case, had it occurred, this report would never have been written.

“But fortunately, after seeing the operations of the engine, the tuning fork difficulty became a matter of little consequence - a mere bagatelle in the way - as we asked ourself the serious question - if this sphere really revolves as we see that it does, and if it must so act contrary to all known or conceivable laws of mechanics, may not this so-called etheric vapor, which is capable of such unique performance, be all that Mr. Keely claims for it? And if this be a reasonable conclusion, my not such an unknown and inexplicable force be actually generated or liberated by the inexplicable agency or sound-force as correlated to the cohesive force which holds the particles of the air together? In all candor, as we contemplated what we had seen as simple facts, we were forced up dead against this problem: If the engine itself really does what we saw it do, in total defiance of every known force which was capable of doing such work might possibly be eliminated from the primordial constituents of the oxygen and nitrogen of the air by the interaction of sound and cohesion, combined possibly with the presence of electricity?

“In our continued editorial in this number of THE ARENA, and which will be concluded next month, on “How Substantialism Solves the Problems of Science,” we have shown, as will appear at the close, something in philosophy and science just as marvelous and inexplicable on any known principles of physics as anything claimed by Mr. Keely, but about the truth of which no scientific can have a shadow of doubt. If, for example, a bar for the solid metal Palladium, under the mild influence of a negative current or electricity that would not be felt by a kitten, will expand its texture one-twentieth (which no mechanical effort could effect) in order to take into its pores 900 times its own bulk of hydrogen gas, thus mechanically compressing the gas to a solid as firm as the metal itself, a work which a powerful steam engine could not accomplish, all of which we show to be absolutely true, may not the correlation and interaction of the forces of sound, electricity, and cohesion, through certain sonorous appliances and manipulations, evolve an inter-atmospheric vapor of hitherto unknown expansibility, and which will also give out the working energy of a steam engine with a trifling expenditure of mechanical force for its origination, as Mr. Keely insists, no greater than that of the negative electric current to which we have just referred? As an able scientist insists, if Mr. Keely’s discovery shall prove to be really what it claims to be, it will only be another overwhelming confirmation of the general truth of Substantialism in its solutions of nature’s manifold problems, by the interaction and correlation of the substantial forces.

“What the probable value of Mr. Keely’s discoveries will prove to be, it is difficult if not impossible to predict. If his large engine, now nearly completed, shall prove as successful in operation in proportion to its size as has the smaller one whose working we have tried faithfully to report, there is no question in our mind that the doom of steam as a motive power is only a question of a little time. [A Visit to Mr. Keely - Astounding Performance of the Keely Motor, A. Wilford Hall, editor, Scientific Arena, July, 1886.]

"Little by little he [Keely] learned the laws which governed the unknown force, and now he never has an explosion. Mr. Keely has not preserved any secrecy with regard to his experiments, but on the contrary he has lost much time in exhibiting the production of this force to those who desire to see it. For instance, some years ago be stopped his work on the graduating of his engine to take his liberator to pieces, in order to show its interior construction to Sir William Thompson and Lord Raleigh: these gentlemen, misled by Professor Barker's assertion, that Keely was deceiving his dupes with compressed air, refused to witness his experiments. This was in 1884.

"There is no "secrecy to be abandoned," therefore. The question to be settled was not one of secrecy, but whether Mr. Keely should continue his experimental research, unimpeded by exhibitions, until he should succeed in perfecting a commercial engine; or whether he should first convince scientists that he is not a modern Cagliostro as he has been called, and that he is a discoverer of an unknown force.

"The ground taken by those who urged the latter course was that the interest of the Keely Motor Company would thus be better served; reasoning that, when scientists have been convinced that Mr. Keely's researches are in a field comparatively unknown to them, the cries of execration be drowned in the applause which would resound throughout the world as the result of his stupendous labours became better known.

"For this end several scientists were invited to witness the present stage of experiment, which Mr. Keely had reached in his efforts to provide his provisional engine with a governor, and Dr. Leidy was one of the number who, after witnessing the experiments on May 28th, 1889, confessed himself convinced that Keely was dealing with some unknown force. [Keely Supported by Eminent Men of Science]

"Had Keely been better understood, science might have been marching with giant strides across this unknown realm during the many years in which men of learning have refused to witness the operation of the dissociation of water, because one of their number decided, in 1876, that Keely was using compressed air. Fixing bounds to human knowledge, she still refuse to listen to the suggestion that what she has declared as truth may be as grossly erroneous as were her teachings in the days when the rotation of the earth was denied; this denial being based upon the assertions of all the great authorities of more than one thousand years, that the earth could not move because it was flat and stationary. Herodotus ridiculed those who did not believe this. For two thousand years after the daily rotation of the earth was first suggested, the idea was disputed and derided. The history of the past, says General Drayson, who claims to have discovered a third movement of the earth, teaches us that erroneous theories were accepted as grand truths by all the scientific authorities of the whole world during more then five thousand years.* Although the daily rotation of the earth and its annual revolution around the sun had been received as facts by the few advanced minds, some five hundred years before Christ, yet the obstruction cause by ignorance and prejudice prevented these truths being generally accepted until about three hundred years ago, when Copernicus first, and afterward Galileo, revived the theory of the earth's two principal movements. Human nature is the same as in the days when Seneca said that men would rather cling to an error than admit they were in the wrong; so it is not strange that General Drayson, as the discoverer of a third movement, has not received the attention that he deserves, although his mathematical demonstrations seem to be beyond dispute.

"With Keely's claim, that latent force exists in all forms of matter, it is different; for it is susceptible of proof by experiment. In the days when the sphericity of the earth was denied, for the asserted reason that the waters of the oceans and seas on its surface would be thrown off in its revolutions were it so, because "water could not stay on a round ball," the statement could not be disputed; the theory of the laws of gravitation being then unknown. Copernicus and Galileo had nothing but theories to offer; consequently it took long years to overcome the bigotry and the baneful influence of the great authorities of the time. It is otherwise with Keely, who, for fifteen years and more, has been demonstrating this discovery to thousands of men; some of whom, but not all, were competent to form an opinion as to whether he was "humbugging with compressed air," or with a concealed dynamo, or still more absurd, with tricks in suction, as asserted by a learned professor.

"Now that some our men of science have consented to form their opinions from observation, without interfering with the lines of progressive experimental research which the discoverer is pursuing, there seems to be no doubt as to the result; nor of the protection of the discovery by science. Truth is mighty, and must in the end prevail over mere authority." [A Pioneer in an Unknown Realm]

"A correspondent in Invention, London, writes December 12, 1891: "We have at various times in these column alluded to the investigations of the Philadelphia scientist, J. W. Keely, and this researcher - who is now stated to be engaged in finding a method whereby the power* which he professes to have discovered can be employed as a motor in the place of steam - is just now the object of considerable attention in the press of the United States. To summarize the present state of the criticism to which this man is subjected, we may mention that for some time past The New York Herald, among other papers, has been printing a series of articles that have been recently prepared by an American inventor named Browne, professing to show how Keely has, for nearly twenty years, been deceiving expert engineers, shrewd men of the world, some few university professors and others, by the use of compressed air, obtaining testimonials of his discovery of an unknown force in nature. In reading his articles any one who has seen the photographs - as the writer has done - of the researching instruments discarded by Keely, in past years, and those that he is now employing in their place, cannot fail to detect the misstatements and misrepresentations made.

"Mr. Browne (?) even overrides the testimony of the late Professor Leidy, Dr. Willcox, Dr. Koenig, Dr. Brinton - the Baltimore Physicist - Dr. Tuttle, and the engineers Linville and Le Van, all of whom have tested the force used by Keely, and admitted that no electricity, no magnetism, no compressed air is used. Without endorsing in the slightest anything that Keely has discovered, or claims to have discovered, we think that, with the English love of fair play, both sides should always fairly be heard before either is condemned, and as Mr. Keely has consented to instruct a well-known English physicists in his method of producing the force handled, there is every change of the truth being known, and the correct state of the matter divulged to the scientific world at large, when, mayhap, this rival inventor may have to retract his assertions or stand a suit for libel. We do not say it will be so - we only assert it may be. Professor Brinton, who has made a study of Keely's methods, writes this month to a friend in London:- "The expose of Keely's alleged methods continues each week. Some of the proposed explanations are plausible, others are plainly absurd. They only serve to attract renewed attention to Keely. I have written to the editor to ask him to arrange a meeting for me with the writer, but I have not yet been able to discover the Mr. Browne,* of Brooklyn, who is the suppositions author." [An Appeal in Behalf of the Continuance of Keelys Researches]

"It is now three years since Keely invited certain English men of science (experimenting in the same field where his explorations commenced) to examine his Liberator; which was dismantled for the purpose and all its parts assembled for examination before being put together for the production of etheric force, when these men refused to visit his workshop, and it has been said that a Professor of the University of Pennsylvania prevented the investigation by his assertion that compressed air is the force used by Keely with which to dupe his audiences. A schoolboy's knowledge of the change of temperature always accompanying the compression of air would prevent such an assertion from being made by anyone who had witnessed the operation of the Liberator in the production and storage of etheric force, during which there is not the slightest change of temperature. Had these English scientists, with their knowledge of acoustics, been present on the occasion referred to, no such groundless assertion would have possessed any influence with either; and the world of science would have sooner known and acknowledged the nature and the worth of this great discovery.

"These are some of the problems which Mr. Keely has had to solve before he could adapt his vibratory machinery to the etheric flow. The true conditions for transmitting it sympathetically through a differential wire of platinum and silver have now been attained, after eight years of intense study and elaborate experiment. The introductory indications began to show themselves about two years ago, but the intermissions on transmission were so frequent and so great as to discourage Mr. Keely from further research on this line. Then came one of those "inspirations" which men call "accident," revealing to him "the true conditions" necessary to produce a sympathetic flow, free of differentiation, proving conclusively the truth of his theory of the law governing the atomic triplets in their association. Differentiation, by compound negative vibration of their neutral centres, causes antagonism, and thus the great attractive power that aggregates them becomes one of dispersion or expansion, accompanied by immense velocity of rotation, which carries its influence through the whole volume of air, 230 cubic inches contained in sphere, within its 33 1/3 chord of its circle of coincidence. By this wire of platinum and silver the current of force is now passed to run the vibratory disk, thus altogether upsetting the "compressed air" theory of Professor Barkes, Dr. Hall, and others of less note. [Sympathetic Vibratory Force]

"The distinguished men of science, Profs. Leidy, Brinton and Koenig, who investigated Keely's work in 1889-90, testing the current of force produced with the most sensitive galvanometer of the University of Pennsylvania, publicly asserted that it was free of electricity, magnetism or any known force scoffing at the less than school-boy knowledge, which had, in 1876, pronounced it to be compressed air.

"Ricarde-Seaver, an European electrician, who, after investigating, returned to London and gave testimony in favor of the discoverer, was asked to withdraw his name, when the balloting was about to take place for membership at the Athenaeum Club, by the very man of science(2) who had proposed him sixteen years before, the only reason given being his espousal of Keely's claims as a discoverer. [Dogmatism of Science]

"Of this philosophy Professor Daniel G. Brinton has said, "It is so simple, beautiful and comprehensive in its vibratory theory that I hope it will be found experimentally to be true. To me all commercial and practical results, motors, air-ships, engines are of no importance by the side of the theoretical truth of the demonstrations of this cosmic force. As soon as Dr. Koenig is prepared to report on the purely technical and physical character of the experiments, I shall be, in fact I am, ready to go into full details as to their significance in reference to both matter and mind. It will be enough for me if Dr. Koenig is able to say that the force handled by Keely is not gravity, electricity, magnetism, compressed air, nor other of the well-known forces. Let him say that, and I will undertake to say what the force is." Tests were made last year by Dr. Koenig and Dr. Tuttle, a Baltimore physicist, in the presence of other men of science with the most sensitive galvanometer belonging to the University of Pennsylvania, all of whom were satisfied that no known force had been detected. [Progressive Science]

"The appearances are that Mr. Keely has at least removed his enterprise from the domain of ridicule to that of respectful investigation, and this, after all, is great progress." [Introductory]

"The assumption appeared to be that musical notes produced vibrations which affected the "chords of mass" of the things operated on, and the "polar currents" were in some manner induced to participate in the strange results. I know nothing about that; what I know is, that the things which took place were not caused, so far as I or the scientific gentlemen present could detect, by either steam, electricity, or compressed air. Meanwhile, Mr. Keely asserted that the efficient cause was a discovery of his own; and so far as I was concerned, he might as well have stopped there, inasmuch as I was able neither to contradict him, nor to comprehend a word of the alleged explanations wherewith he favored the company. [Scientific Creation]

"We call this the sphere of the natural; but, when we come to higher workings of natural laws with which we are not familiar, we designate them as "supernatural" ; and scientists, witnessing some of Keely's experiments, like those of overcoming gravity, of rotation of the needle of a compass, [This is effected by polarization and depolarization, and the rotation of a non-magnetic needle by molecular differentiation; both needles revolving nearly 120 times in a second] of the disintegration of water, etc., and not believing in any workings of laws unknown to them, have followed in the footsteps, still unobliterated, of the narrow-minded, bigoted persecutors of Galileo; and have denounced Keely as "a modern Cagliostro". When men of more extended research have been on the eve of investigating for themselves they have, until 1889, been deterred from doing so by the representations made to them that Keely was "using compressed air to humbug his audiences". Until Professor Leidy and Dr. Willcox gave their attention to Mr. Keely's claims as the discoverer of a new form of energy, the way was not open for Mr. Keely to disclose his conjectures, his hypotheses and his theories. Regrettable as this fact has seemed to be, it is now seen that any previous revelation of his discovery, other than to scientists, might have been premature, so little did Keely himself know, until within two years, of the developments he has at last reached in his work of evolution. The time was not ripe for the disclosure: "God never hurries". He counts the centuries as we count the seconds, and the nearer that we approach to the least comprehension of his "underlying purpose," the better fitted are we to do the work he assigns us, while waiting patiently for our path of duty to be made clear to us; like the labourer, in Tolstoi's Confession, who completed the work that had been laid out for him, without understanding what the result would be, and unable to judge whether his master had planned well. If the prophecies of Scripture are fulfilled, the twentieth century will usher in the commencement of that age in which men and women will become aware of the great powers which they inherit, and of which Oliphant has said that we are so ignorant that we wholly fail to see them, though they sweep like mighty seas throughout all human nature. [True Science]

We have at various times in these columns alluded to the investigations of the Philadelphia scientist, J. W. Keely, and this searcher - who is now stated to be engaged in finding a method whereby the power which he professes to have discovered can be employed as a motor in the place of steam - is just now the object of considerable attention in the press of the United States. To summarize the present state of the criticism to which this man is subjected, we may mention that for some time past The New York Herald, among other papers, has been printing a series of articles that have been recently prepared by an American inventor named Browne, professing to show how Keely has, for nearly twenty years, been deceiving expert engineers, shrewd men of the world, some few university professors and others, by the use of compressed air, obtaining testimonials of his discovery of an unknown force in nature. In reading his articles any one who has seen the photographs - as the writer has done - of the researching instruments discarded by Keely, in past years, and those that he is now employing in their place, cannot fail to detect the misstatements and misrepresentations made.

Mr. Browne (?) even overrides the testimony of the late Professor Leidy, Dr. Willcox, Dr. Koenig, Dr. Brinton - the Baltimore physicist - Dr. Tuttle, and the engineers Linville and Le Van, all of whom have tested the force used by Keely, and admitted that no electricity, no magnetism, no compressed air is used. Without indorsing in the slightest anything that Keely has discovered, or claims to have discovered, we think that, with the English love of fair play, both sides should always fairly be heard before either is condemned, and as Mr. Keely has consented to instruct a well-known English physicist in his method of producing the force handled, there is every chance of the truth being known, and the correct state of the matter divulged to the scientific world at large, when, mayhap, this rival inventor may have to retract his assertions or stand a suit for libel. We do not say it will be so - we only assert it may be. Professor Brinton who has made a study of Keely's methods, writes this month to a friend in London: - "The expose of Keely's alleged methods continues each week. Some of the proposed explanations are plausible, others are plainly absurd. They only serve to attract renewed attention to Keely. I have written to the editor to ask him to arrange a meeting for me with the writer, but I have not yet been able to discover the Mr. Browne, of Brooklyn, who is the suppositious author." [The Connecting Link Between Mind and Matter - Keelys Progress - Part 2]

Anxious to raise the stock in public estimation for speculative purposes, they undertook, among other maladroit measures, to obtain the endorsement of two or three professional "experts," who took the opposite course from what they were expected, and in a labored effort to lay bare the "deceptions" of Mr. Keely, exposed their own ignorance of the principles they professed to teach, besides committing the egregious blunder of attempting to criticise what they knew nothing about. They represented institutions with high-sounding names, which caused their adverse criticisms to influence the press, and so satisfy the public that Mr. Keely was an impostor, and his Motor a "deception." They attributed his wonderful power to compressed air.

This was an attribution of ingenuity greater than was possessed by the whole scientific world; for air never had been compressed to one-half the extent necessary to the display of energy witnessed by these "experts."

Their ignorance was illustrated by their intimation that a hydraulic screw pump, which Mr. Keely had used for testing the density and strength of metals, might be employed for working up a compression of air to ten thousand pounds - an idea most absurd in the simplest novice, to say nothing of professors in physics and dynamical engineering.

This apparatus is upright in position, and has five distinct parts or columns; called the central column, two side columns, the front and back stand-tubes. These stand-tubes are similar in appearance, but are opposite in action. The two side columns are alike. The central or main column is larger than the other four combined, and more complex in structure. Neither heat, electricity, or chemicals are employed. compressed air forms no part of the product, as supercilious "critics" called scientists, have supposed. Air is water-locked in some of the chambers and tubes, where, by its elasticity, introductory impulses are given to the water when equilibrimn is disturbed. This disturbance is effected by the movement of an outside lever operating a four-way valve within. There are no other metallic movements inside, except the working of three independent valves. The apparatus, therefore, is practically without wear, and not liable to get out of order.

This order is reversed in the case of the "American Machinist," which comes in at this late hour and puts itself on record as a skeptic. This it does on the opinion of one Charles H. Emery, D. Pd., of New York, who, upon witnessing one of Mr. Keely's recent exhibitions, like several other "experts," got compressed air on the brain.

Mr. Keely's refusal to suspend operations in the presence of twenty gentlemen (who did not desire it), to hear Mr. Emery deliver himself of his compressed air theory, and then to take the machinery apart and convince him of his error, started him on a hunt about the neighborhood for a steam engine that might be found working up compressed air for Mr. Keely's use. [The Doom of Steam]

We call this the sphere of the natural; but, when we come to higher workings of natural laws, with which we are not familiar, we designate them as "supernatural;" and scientists witnessing some of Keely's experiments, like those of overcoming gravity, of rotation of the needle of a compass,* of the disintegration of water, etc., and not believing in any workings of laws unknown to them, followed in the footsteps, still unobliterated, of the narrow-minded, bigoted persecutors of Galileo; and have denounced Keely as "a modern Cagliostro." When men of more extended research have been on the eve of investigating for themselves they have, until 1889, been deterred from doing so by the representations made to them that Keely, was "using compressed air to humbug his audiences." Until Professor Leidy and Dr. Willcox gave their attention to Mr. Keely's claims as the discoverer of a new form of energy, the way was not open for Mr. Keely to disclose his conjectures, his hypotheses and his theories. Regrettable as this fact has seemed to be, it is now seen that any previous revelation of his discovery, other than to scientists, might have been premature; so little did Keely himself know, until within two years, of the developments he has at last reached in his work of evolution. The time was not ripe for the disclosure. [Vibratory Physics - The Connecting Link between Mind and Matter]

"I want you, Sir," Keely went on, turning to Major Seaver, "to examine my machines from the standpoint of the sceptic. Calumny has asserted that I have them connected by a hollow steel wire by which I employ compressed air.

"I want you to satisfy yourself especially on this point. You are entitled to lift the motor off the bench, to place it where you like and it will still function.

"The first demonstration I will give you is that of starting the motor by a note of music, otherwise vibration. I want you to do this yourself. You will take this violin, pass the bow across the strings. At first you may not succeed, but you will eventually."

Major Seaver took the violin. He was fully ten feet away from the machine he was supposed to start. For fully five minutes he tried note after note, but nothing happened. He handed the violin over to Keely.

Perhaps it was due to his long years of practice, or it may have been owing to his unusually keen musical hearing, but the fact remained that in one stroke of the bow an immediate response was heard in the machine. The buzz from it grew louder every second until its speed became so great that, although bolted firmly on the bench, it rocked the whole place.

In demonstrating what appeared to be the overcoming of gravity for aerial navigation, Mr. Keely next showed us a model of an air-ship weighing about eight pounds. When the differential wire was attached to it, it also rose floated, or remained stationary, at whatever height he wished it to be.

This remarkable demonstration of this model air-ship, it must be remembered, was shown us at the Keely Laboratories in 1890, some thirteen years before the brothers, Orville and Wilbur Wright, flew the first aeroplane in (Carolina in 1903 and the Brazilian Dumont flew) in France in 1906.

Keely allowed Major Seaver to make, without hindrance or opposition, whatever investigations he wished. The Major in the end freely confessed that he could find no evidence of "hollow wires," compressed air or electric power used in any way in Keely's demonstrations. (See Eye Witness Accounts)

As we returned to New York on the train the next day he summed up his meeting with the inventor by saying: "I can only come to the same conclusion as Professor Leidy and Dr. J. M. Wilcox 'that Keely has command of some unknown force of most wonderful mechanical power.'"

In spite of this, this really great inventor, or as Keely preferred to be called, "discoverer," was no nearer to financial success than before. Major Seaver had to report to his company, Barnato Brothers of London, that until the moment arrived when Keely produced a mechanical device to take the place of his violin there could be no prospect of success of "the Keely Motor," from a commercial point of view. [A Modern Wizard The Keely Motor And Its Inventor]

It would seem, by an article in the Franklin Institute Journal for June, on "Cerebral Radiation", that its writer, Professor Houston of Philadelphia, is in danger of falling into Keely's tracks, as in that paper he sets forth, very timidly it is true, some conjectures of his own, which Keely has been for years demonstrating as theories, in his system of philosophy. Professor Houston's advance in this direction is the more remarkable as it is scarcely two years since he expressed his conviction that Mr. Keely was working with alternate currents of electricity. Within three months after this assertion had been made, Professors Brinton and Koenig, of the University of Pennsylvania, and Professor Tuttle, a Baltimore physicist, tested the force handled by Keely and pronounced it to be neither electricity nor magnetism nor compressed air. [A New Creed]

Seeking to raise the stock in public estimation, as was natural with their speculative hopes, they undertook, among other maladroit measures, to obtain the endorsement of professional experts, who took the opposite course from the one expected and, in a labored effort to lay bare what they called "humbug," exposed their own ignorance of the conditions necessary to compress air by attributing to such a source the wonderful manifestations of pressure they had witnessed. To have effected such results would have required more ingenuity than is possessed by man; for air has never been compressed to one half the extent that would be required to produce the effect witnessed. Their ignorance was still further manifested by a printed intimation that Mr. Keely's hydraulic screw-pump, used by him for testing the density of various metals, might be employed for working up a compression of air to 10,000 pounds - an idea that would appear absurd even to a novice in mechanics, to say nothing of professors in dynamical engineering.

After this experience, Mr. Keely very properly objected to investigations which impeded his progress, and requested that no more should be made until he had perfected his apparatus for liberating energy. This course caused the public to credit the assertions of the scientists, and from that time the Keely motor was very generally regarded as a myth.

Mr. Keely's unwillingness to assert his rights, in his transactions with the company, and his refusal to maintain them by litigation at the cost of loss of time, so precious to him as he has always felt it to be, added to the necessity of harmony while engaged in his work, caused him repeatedly to be the victim of nefarious transactions. Claims made upon him, which would not have stood an hour in any court, were recognized and paid by him from a morbid sense of honor. Many times he has sacrificed large prospective interests, in order to obtain the money with which he has exposed himself to much unjust censure, besides suffering pecuniary losses. As a director no excuses can be made for him; but as he is the chief loser he cannot be accused of complicity in the transactions of the board. His province is not finance, but invention, of which he has the whole burden to carry, and with which his mind is too much occupied to think of guarding against tricks and plots. Every swindling transaction which discourages and defrauds Keely or in any way delays and endangers his success, is a robbery of the rights of the stockholders; and it is doubly dishonorable when officers and directors take advantage of their positions, thus abusing the trust reposed in them as guardians of the inventor's rights and the company's interests.

Mr. Babcock asserts that Mr. Keely did not retain one-fiftieth of the amount of the stock issued representing three of his projected inventions; that not less than half a dozen speculators, in the stock of the company, have each made an average of more than fifty thousand dollars from the enterprise; that high salaries and other profligate ways of distributing the money diverted it from its proper channel, depleted the treasury, detained the progress of the work and disappointed the stockholders. [Aerial Navigation]

"When men of more extended research have been on the eve of investigating for themselves they have, until 1889, been deterred from doing so by the representations made to them that Keely, was "using compressed air to humbug his audiences."" [Vibratory Physics - The Connecting Link between Mind and Matter]

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Etheric Force or Compressed Air