The Keely Motor Company was founded by John Ernst Worrell Keely and a group of businessmen in Philadelphia, 1874. The purpose was to fund Keely's research into and eventual perfection of the famous Keely Motor. Keely built, in the course of his work, over 129 models and variations of his motor. Sometime around 1889 he succeeded in making his motor run properly demonstrating a 250 hp unit designed to power a locomotive from Philadelphia to New York and back. [see also The Keely Motor Company; see also A Visit to Mr Keely - Astounding Performance of the Keely Motor]
Keely Motor Co. started 1874, when he was solicited to allow the company to be formed, and offered a share of the proceeds for developing his invention. [Snell Manuscript - The Book, page 2]
"For ten years Keely's demonstrations were confined to the liberation, at will, of the energy he had "stumbled over" while experimenting on vibrations in 1872; and his efforts were put forth for the construction of "the perfect engine," which he had promised to the Keely Motor Company. He made the mistake of pursuing his researches on the line of invention instead of discovery. All his thoughts were concentrated in this direction up to the year 1882. Engine after engine was abandoned and sold as old metal, in his repeated failures to construct one that would keep up the rotary motion of the ether that was necessary to hold it in any structure. Explosion after explosion occurred, sometimes harmless to him, at other times laying him up for weeks at a time.
Two more years were lost in efforts to devise an automatic arrangement, which should enable the machine, invented by Keely for liberating the energy, to be handled by any operator, and it was not until 1884 that steady progress was seen, from years to years, as the result of his enlarged researches. When Keely was asked, at this time, how long he thought it would be before he would have the engine he was then at work upon ready to patent, he illustrated his situation by an anecdote: "A man fell down, one dark night, into a mine; catching a rope in his descent, he clung to it until morning. With the first glimpse of daylight, he saw that had he let go his hold of the rope he would have had but a few inches to fall. I am precisely in the situation of that man. I do not know how near success may be nor yet how far off it is."
August 5th, 1885, the New York Home Journal announced that Keely had imprisoned the ether; and, as was then wrongly supposed, that the unknown force was the ether itself; not the medium of the force, as it is now known to be." [Bloomfield-Moore] [Ether the True Protoplasm]
See Also
A Visit to Mr Keely - Astounding Performance of the Keely Motor
Aerial Navigation
Affairs of the Keely Motor Company
Agreement between Bloomfield-Moore and Keely
Air-ship
B. L. Ackerman
Bennett C. Wilson
Boekel Selected
Boekel
Chronology
Clara Sophia Jessup Bloomfield-Moore
Denies Keely was an Impostor
Disgusted Keely Motor Men
Etheric Force Identified as Dynaspheric Force
Experiments Described on His New Sympathetic Attraction
Expressing Confidence in Keelys Motor
Fake News
Helpers on the Road and Hinderers
Inventor Keely in Jail
Keely - Historical Documents
Keely and His Discoveries
Keely Chronology
Keely in Contempt of Court
Keely in Contempt of Court2
Keely Motor Company
Keely Motor
Keely Not Yet In Jail
Keely Out On Bail
Keely Spinning Motor
Keely
Keelys Mechanical Inventions and Instruments
Keelys New Company
Keelys Sunday in Jail
Latent Force and Theory of Vibratory Lift for Airships
Law Suit
Letter from Charles Collier to Scientific American
Motor Keely Gets Angry
Moyamensing Prison
Mr. Keelys Contempt
Mrs. Moore on the Keely Motor
Newton of the Mind - Keely's Air-ship Described
stock company fraud
Moore's commitment to support Keely
The Doom of Steam
The Keely Motor Company
The Keely Motor - Formation of Company
The Keely Motor Experts
The Keely Motor Secret
The Key to the Problems. - Keelys Secrets
The Motor Gets Into Court
Veil Withdrawn
Victor Hansen
Was Keely a Fraud
Was Keely a Fraud?
Was Keely Imprisoned for stock fraud
Was Keely Imprisoned for stock fraud?
William Boekel
William C. Strawbridge
Yellow Journalism
Collier's Letter to Scientific American
Report of Charles Collier on The Keely Motor Company
Keely Motor Company - Minority Report to Stockholders