8/5/1885 - "No object seems to be too high or remote for human endeavour. It is not strange that some of these attempts should stagger the faith of all but the boldest imaginations. A notable example of this class is the famous etheric motor invented by Keely, of Philadelphia, and the subject of a communication which we (received) from a well-known American lady in Italy. The inventor claims to have found a new force, one that entirely transcends those that have been hitherto appropriated for human use. Heat, steam, electricity, magnetism are but crude antetypes of this new discovery. It is essentially the creator of these forces. It is scarcely less than the 'primum mobile.'
Indeed in reading the exposition of its potentialities one can hardly help doubting whether the concrete matter of our earth is not too weak and volatile to contain, restrain, and direct this vast cosmic energy except in infinitesimal proportions. How shall iron and steel stand before the power which builds up and clasps the very atoms of their mass? Where shall the inventor look for safety discs' to stay his new-found force, when every substance within his reach is but a residuum of the activity of his identical principle? How shall strength of materials avail against the power that gives, and indeed is, strength of materials? This, however, is but a metaphysical doubt, and as the invention has already demonstrated its practical efficiency on a small scale, there is a presumption that it may be extended to the higher degrees. At all events, whether the force can or cannot be harnessed to do the daily work of the world, the discovery is one that will mark an epoch in the progress of science and give the inventor and his patrons a meed of immortality. Granted they are but poets building a lofty cosmical rhyme, their work shall have not the less an enduring honour."
New York Home Journal on 8/5/1885 announced Keely had imprisoned the ether - wrongly supposed that the unknown force was the ether itself, not the medium, "as it is now known to be." "Where can the inventor look for 'safety discs' to stay his newfound force ... The invention has already demonstrated practical efficiency on a small scale." [Snell Manuscript - The Book, page 2]
Keely
"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 New Concept of the Universe
A New Keely Motor Raid
A Newly Discovered Law of Physics
Chronology
Ether the True Protoplasm this article referenced in
Experiments Described on His New Sympathetic Attraction
Home Study Course
Homexar
Is Keely the New Mahatma
New Age
New Man
Newton of the Mind
Newtonian
Non-Newtonian
Sympathetic Vibration v Newtonian Physics
19.05.05 - New York Times - Keely Motor Humbug
19.05.06 - New York Times - Keely Spinning Motor