– JAMES B. COLLIER, a Philadelphia lawyer, announced the other day that within two months the Keely motor, which for twenty-five years has been “on the eve of completion,’’ would at last be presented to an astonished world in full working order. This familiar declaration has moved another Philadelphian to make some remarks in which the unkind phrase “old fraud” is used, and to call attention to a paper which he read before the local Engineers’ Club not long ago. In it was detailed the result of his examination, made at the request of KEELY’s faithful backer, Mrs. BLOOMFIELD H. Moore, of what the greatest of secret keepers had to exhibit. Such examinations by scientific men have been attempted so often, and so often have been stopped just short of the point at which an explanation of the mystical machine's real nature would be discovered, that Mr. SCOTT’s experience need not be described further than by saying that it was exactly like all its predecessors. At its close he had gained no new knowledge, but he had acquired a strong suspicion—two of them, in fact. The first was that talk like that in which Keely indulges when discussing the force he calls "apergy" would convince an alienist that KEELY’s place is in an asylum, and the second was to the effect that all the phenomena presented were produced by the use of compressed air. Furthermore, Mr. SCOTT felt sure that certain platinum wires, which KEELY said were solid, really were tubes through which the air was supplied to the engine. This belief he was not allowed to confirm or disprove, and the “‘test’’ simply made another skeptic.

Published: March 26, 1898
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