John W. Keely, who died in Philadelphia recently, stirred the scientific world some twenty-five years ago with a proposition to revolutionize mechanics by the use of a force called etheric vapor. He announced that he had an engine which went of its own accord. He called it then a "hydro-pneumatic-pulsating-vacuo engine." He had a different name for it every year, and he made about three thousand different engines of the same kind. Engineers, scientific men and capitalists made frequent pilgrimages to Keely's Philadelphia laboratory to see the "Keely motor move." Sometimes it "moved" and sometimes it did not. But Keely always had a great tale to tell. He was always going to startle the world, but never did. Some prominent New Yorkers took Keely seriously enough to raise $100,000 and form a company to put his motor on the market. Keely spent $10,000 of this paying his debts and $60,000 building a worthless "motor." In 1888 he was committed to jail for contempt of court for refusing to explain to a committee of experts the working of his machine. Keely Motor stock, when last sold on the market, March 9, 1879, was quoted at 4.5.

Was John Ernest Worrell Keely of Philadelphia the greatest inventor of all time, or was he the most remarkable impostor that ever lived? Was he the discoverer of a new natural force or motor more powerful than steam, that can be put to practical use? This latter, in brief, was his claim, and the problem has agitated the public mind for twenty-five years. With the death of Keely last week it appears further from settlement than ever. Without taking out a single patent or constructing one really workable machine he organized the Keely Motor Company, capitalized at $5,000,000. and spent $275,000 of other people's money in machinery. Keely's alleged discovery was that of a method of disintegrating water, by means of musical vibrations, into its component molecules, and of thus developing a vapor of an elasticity and expansiveness which far exceeded those of steam. In fact, his excuse for not demonstrating practically the availability of his new motive power was its excessive intensity, which defied the control of ordinary machinery and needed engines of unusual strength to confine it within bounds. The same reason was given for not permitting any one but himself to manipulate his apparatus, and curious investigators were warned that they risked their lives if they meddled with it except under his supervision. Edison once offered to give a bond in any amount that could be agreed upon to protect the exposure of Keely's effected, and generate a force that could fire a gun or move tons of inertia. He gave experiments of this nature at Sandy Hook Proving Station in 1888 alleged secret if he could be permitted to enter the workshop of Keely and assist him jointly in the mechanical development and application of his mysterious force. This offer was rejected, and the skepticism regarding Keely was not diminished. Keely was an expert in the theory and art of music. He was a master of the theory of harmony. He was not only an instrumentalist, but a composer, and in that attainment lay the primary element of his alleged discovery. This was a strange relation or affinity between the forces of nature and harmonic forces. He went so far as to advance the startling proposition that the rotation of planets in their orbits was produced by the alternating power of atomic energy. He said he had pursued the analysis of his theme to the eighth power, where he reached the substance of luminosity, and there, without attempting to theorize further on the origin of things universal, he stopped and put all his skill and mental resources to the task of harnessing the power of atoms to the economy of life. Twelve years ago, about half the period of his experimentation, he abandoned the molecules of water as the basis of his task and directed his attention solely to the molecules of air. He said that in the course of this work he had produced a dynamic energy of 10,000 pounds to the inch in a Torricellian vacuum. He said he could exhaust the air from a tube, getting a vacuum as nearly perfect as could be in the presence of Lieutenant Zalinski, and other students of science, some of whom were profound skeptics and insisted on the theory that Keely used nothing but compressed air. Zalinski was then busily engaged in the study of pneumatics, which subsequently resulted in his development of the pneumatic dynamite gun, -the type of weapon from which the Vesuvius last summer hurled her earthquakes at Santiago's forts. Their particular mission was to witness the experimental firing of Keely's so-called vaporic gun, but Keely, who was in great good humor that night, gave them the whole show and seemed hugely pleased as their attitude of polite incredulity gradually yielded to the appearance of utter mystification. Lieutenant Zalinski subsequently expressed the confident belief that the explosive force behind the bullets fired from Keely's little yacht cannon was nothing more nor less than compressed air, and as a recognized, expert Lieutenant Zalinski ought to know, but he was polite enough or discreet enough to express no such opinion that night in the presence of Keely. Among the other experiments shown that evening was Keely's surprising feat of raising a 700-pound weight at the long end of a six-foot lever with a one-inch fulcrum. He professed to accomplish this by simply connecting his generator with a small piston acting on the lever. Lieutenant Zalinski, however, looked the lever and the weight over carefully, and then asked Keely whether he thought the force of the etheric vapor would be powerful enough to raise the long arm of the lever with the added weight of the lieutenant's manly form perched upon it. Keely good naturedly thought he could do the trick quite easily. So Zalinski climbed up on the end of the lever, finding a foothold on the great iron weight and teetered there smilingly balancing himself in midair. Keely turned a few stopcocks. Then there was a slight sound in the generator and up shot the long arm of the lever with such force as to hurl the lieutenant up among the cobwebs in the rafters almost as promptly as Zalinski's gun now hurls its dreaded earthquakes. The pneumatic expert came down safely and with his good nature unruffled. As he brushed the dust from his slouch hat he expressed himself as quite convinced that there was power under that lever. But he was conservative enough, even then, to express no opinion as to the nature of that power. Many investigators, scientific and otherwise, have seen Keely's experiments. United States Government experts have witnessed them. Capitalists with millions at their disposal have sought to control his inventions: yet there has always been an unreadiness on the part of the inventor to do anything practical. He was always just within reach of the goal, but he never got there. If an imposter, he was certainly an extraordinary one. Few men could have maintained for twenty-five years so successful a game of trickery, not only enlisting the sympathetic interest of such distinguished gentlemen as the late Professor Joseph Leidy, of the University of Pennsylvania; George H. Boker, late Minister of the United States to Turkey, and the late John Welch, Minister to the Court of St. James, but also conjuring thousands of dollars from the pockets of more or less hard-headed capitalists and New
York men of affairs, who took him and his motor so seriously as to invest heavily in various devices. Whichever view one takes of Keely, therefore, warrants more than a passing interest in the man's personality. He was endowed with the physique of a giant and a marvelous energy and vitality. Six feet or more in height, with a herculean frame, he was in appearance, at least, a man born for great things. His swarthy face with its heavy growth of black beard and mustache was the very embodiment of an artist's ideal of self-reliance and great strength of character. And every ounce of this tremendous force and vital energy seemed to be directed toward the achievement of his purpose. It has been said often that, while Keely's twenty-five years of unkept promises have emptied the pockets of not a few of his followers, he himself has luxuriated at his home in damask furniture and carpets of softest nap. Keely, as a matter of fact, lived fairly well, but neither lavishly nor ostentatiously, and he spent far more time during those twenty years in the dingy little shop, with its wires and cylinders and dismantled relics of previous experiments, than he did at his own hearthstone. The man's fingers were the best possible evidence of his unflagging industry. The grasp of his hand was like the clutch of a vise. His palms were as hard as bone and usually as soiled as those of a coal heaver. His years of strumming at wires and working in iron, copper and steel had developed great callous knobs at the ends of the fingers until the digits of this giant were as hard and twice as thick and broad as those of fingers on the hands of a healthy human being. Keely could not fairly be called a man of culture. His manners were more gruff than suave, and he frequently in conversation murdered the Queen's English outrageously. He maintained considerable interest in church affairs. For years he was a regular attendant, with his wife, at the services of the Memorial Baptist Church, near his home, at Broad and Master streets, Philadelphia. He was a generous giver, too, when the collection plate was passed, and there were those among the skeptics who cited these characteristics as only further proofs of the man's cunning in playing what they called his gigantic confidence game. Keely withal was a man of sensitive nature. He was keenly alive to the many slings of ridicule of which he was the target, but his whole bearing was that of a man who hopes and expects to live to confound his enemies, and who in the meanwhile has no time to bother with their gibes. It was doubtless this almost superb air of self-reliance which, if not genuine, was a masterly piece of simulation, that so often enabled him to win the confidence of shrewd, calculating men of business. Some of his most enthusiastic supporters ten or fifteen years ago were men who had been skeptics, but who had been won over not less by his dominating personal force than by the seeming miracles that he showed them in his little shop. As a rule he did not hold their confidence as readily as he won it. His chronic delays and reiterated excuses wore out their patience finally, and the stock of the so-called Keely Motor Company has been repeatedly unloaded, but only to be taken up by some new and equally sanguine converts. And so this bubble, if bubble it be, has been tossed from hand to hand for twenty five years, but never quite effectually pricked. No patents were ever secured with devices which Keely invented[1]. Charles B. Collier, a lawyer of New York, was retained by Keely and his company in 1896 to apply for letters patent on the Keely inventions. Detailed drawings were made and elaborate provisional specifications were written. The designs were never completed in a form to be submitted to the Patent Office. Some months ago Mr. Collier, observing Keely's failing health, suggested some plan for preserving Keely's secret in the event of death. He proposed that a crucial test of Keely's mechanisms should be made in the presence of himself, of Lancaster Thomas, a director of the company, and of George H. Howard, a patent attorney at Washington, so that they could dismantle, adjust and operate the devices as Keely did. The proposition was submitted to the board of directors on October 8 last, and tabled. Mr. Collier then withdrew from his professional relations with Keely and the company, after having been associated with Keely as his counsel and a director in the organization for more than ten years. In every respect was Keely a remarkable man. He had been a musician, an Indian fighter on the plains, a circus performer and a sleight of hand artist. He was born in Philadelphia in 1837. His father's parents were German and French. His mother's were English and Swedish. His grandfather was a composer and a leader of an orchestra in Baden-Baden. His father was an iron worker. His birthplace was a little two story frame house, which stood until a few years ago at the corner of Jacoby and Cherry streets. Both his parents died before he was ten years old and he went to live with his grandparents. They thrust him into the world at an early age, and for several years he was a wanderer. He fought Indians in the West, was wounded and was taken to a hospital. Coming back to Philadelphia after a life of adventure, Keely became leader of an orchestra. Then he drifted into mechanics, and in 1874 he announced that he had an engine that would go of its own accord. Some prominent New Yorkers took Keely seriously enough to raise $100,000 and form a company to put his motor on the market. Keely spent $10,000 of this paying his debts and $60,000 building a worthless "motor." In 1888 he was committed to jail for contempt of court for refusing to explain to a committee of experts the working of his machine. Mrs. Bloomfleld Moore, who had literary and scientific tastes, had a faith in Keely bordering on fanaticism, and spent something like $100,000 on him. All his work was done in the little shop in Twentieth street. Entrance was made from the street through a large door into a room in which was a carpenter's work bench, some powerful winches and an assortment of tools, and on one side was an immense box, bound with iron bands, with a cover so "heavy that tackle was arranged above it for lifting it. It was closed and padlocked, and was said to contain machinery not in use. A large door led into a room on the same floor at the rear of the first one. A stairway to the second floor led to a landing on which were parts of abandoned machinery. A small room on one side of this contained a large desk, with books, instruments and drawings. On the opposite side of the ianding was a room somewhat larger, with many expensive looking instruments or machines, some of which he exhibited in operation.
Whether it was a jealous guardianship of some secret, the discovery of which might have pricked the bubble, or merely, as Keely himself said, that he could not tolerate any imputation against his honor, he was usually quick to resent anything like an attempt at prying into the mysteries, especially if the investigator seemed to have undertaken the task in a skeptical or captious spirit. I have seen him on one night the embodiment of courtesy itself, carefully taking to pieces his intricate mechanical structures and apparently with the greatest frankness exposing to view their innermost parts. On the very next night, perhaps, if he had some cynical customer to deal with, and one whose long purse the president and directors of the company hoped to enlist in their cause. Keely, to the chagrin of those directors, would fly into a passion at the merest suggestion of chicanery or collusion and would refuse to go on with the performance. The apparatus, plans, manuscripts, etc., which Keely died possessed of are now the property of the Keely Motor Company. The president of the company, is. L. Ackerman of New York, is confident that Keely had discovered a powerful new force. The inventor's wife claims that he left a manuscript of 2000 pages with her, explaining the whole system and the work he has done. The only difficulty may be, as it has been hitherto, that Mr. Keely's explanations do not explain anything. In scientific circles the impression prevails that the last page in the history of the Keely invention has been turned.
[THE SAN FRANCISCO CALL, SUNDAY, DECEMBER 11, 1898 pg. 21]

[1] Keely Patents