THE RIVAL “MOTORS. ”??It is more than a year since Mr. Keely first announced that his new “motor” was nearly ready to begin its great work of supplanting steam, horses, small boys, and all other previous motive powers. All that he wanted was a pailful of water and a generator. Since that time he has repeatedly completed his generator, but he still delays to begin his great supplanting process. Probably he his been unable to obtain the needed pailful of water. Indeed, this is the only explanation which wilt account for his delay, unless we accept the hypothesis that his alleged motor is a delusion. The Philadelphians, among whom Mr. Keely resides, are now conducting a Centennial Exhibition, and they may have made the price of water proportionate to the prices which they charge for board and hack-hire. In that case poor KEELY cannot, of course, afford to buy water by the pailful, and is hence compelled to let his generator remain ?inactive until the Exhibition is over. Meanwhile, Mr. Daniel Cook, of Mansfield, Ohio, has invented another motor which promises to completely eclipse that devised by Mr. Keely. As might have been expected, since it is the invention of a Western man, the Cook motor requires no water. It consists simply of a generator, which generates unlimited quantities of electricity, and of an engine, in which the? force of electricity is trained to do the inventor's bidding. Hitherto scientific persons have found it extremely easy to generate electricity in small quantities, but they have never been able to generate enough to be of any use. There are scores of learned scientific men who are truly capable of taking a cat into a dark closet and of rubbing her fur the wrong way until it sparkles and crackles with electricity; but if they were to be asked to fill, say an eight-quart pail with the electricity thus evolved, and to construct even a one-cat-power engine in which to use the subtle fluid, they would immediately begin to talk about the correlation of species or the survival of forces, and thus endeavor to conceal, under a cloud of scientific terms, their utter inability to accomplish the task proposed. It is true that Dr. FRANKLIN, who was once caught in a thunder-storm while flying a kite, sustained a severe shock from the electricity which passed down the string. He could not, however, be properly said to have generated the electricity thus collected from the clouds, and his subsequent insincerity in excusing his want of sufficient knowledge to come in when it rained by alleging that he flew his kite in a thunder-storm as a scientific experiment, casts doubt upon his entire account of the affair.
The truth is, electricity has never yet been produced, much less bottled, in large quantities, by any scientific person, and the utmost that science can do in that direction is to produce a few sparks with the common domestic cat, or a small stream with the help of a galvanic battery.
Mr. COOK, on the other hand, has discovered a method of generating, not merely currents, but whole floods and oceans of electricity, at a ridiculously small cost. His generator needs no fuel, but when? once put in working order will generate electricity by the hogshead for a practically unlimited period of time. This electricity he proposes to supply to the public in quantities to suit customers, and he claims that as fuel and light if will speedily supersede coal and gas. It is, however, “chiefly as a motive power that he values his invention. It can be applied to all the purposes for which either steam or gun powder? is now used, and is infinitely more powerful than either. With it he has repeatedly performed the interesting experiment of sending “chunks of iron” through the roof of his house and out into space, beyond the reach of the earth's attraction. This clearly demonstrates the tremendous power of the new motor, but it is doubtful if Mrs. SMITH fully appreciates the grandeur of the feat of hurling “chunks” of iron through her ceilings, or if the natives of other planets approve of the recklessness which sends ?the same “chunks” flying about their heads. Mr. Cook has become so elated with the success of his chunk experiment that he thinks he can navigate space by machines propelled by the same force which hurls his chunks of iron through Mrs. SMITH’S dining room ceiling and spare bed. There is no doubt that if iron can be shot beyond the sphere of the earth’s attraction, other missiles could be similarly projected, and there are probably scores of men who would be as willing to have all their wives’ relatives thus hurled into the inter-stellar spaces as Artemus Ward was to have his wife’s relatives enter the Army. No person, however, will be willing to lead the way in such a hazardous expedition into space, and Mr. Cook will have, for some time to come, to devote himself to the benevolent work of converting his neighbors’ cats into improved comets, which will circle forever round the sun with glistening eye-balls and with streaming and expanded tails.
While there is no more reason to doubt the truth of Mr. Cook’s assertions than there is to doubt those of Mr. KEELY, it is annoying to reflect that neither inventor has yet fully perfected his respective motor. It is announced that the Cook motor is to be patented and laid before the public in the Fall, but very possibly something will intervene to delay its completion still longer. Perhaps the most satisfactory proof which these two great inventors could give of the genuineness of their claims? would be for Mr. KEELY to shoot Mr. COOK into space with the electric motor, and to subsequently blow himself into fine particles with his own water-pail motor. There would then be an end of all uncertainty as to these two great inventions, and there would also be a satisfactory end of the two inventors. The world has a great respect for inventive genius, but when a man continually announces for a long period that he has invented a new motor which he is never quite ready to exhibit, the desire to kill him, and thus silence his aggravating claims forever, becomes one of the strongest? passions ever developed in the human breast.?? Published: August 16, 1876? Copyright © The New York Times
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