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June 28, 1991
KEELY2.ASC
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This file is from the December 3, 1898 Scientific American.
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The Death of John Keely
With the death of John W. Keely, one of the most curious delusions
of the nineteenth century passes away. Over thirty years ago Keely
announced that he had discovered a mysterious power of immense
capabilities of industrial application, and ever since that time he
has been more or less in the public eye.
For a generation scientific men have laughed at the news of the
wonders of Keely's discoveries, but Keely died before he had ever
given a satisfactory demonstration that his ideas could be
successfully adapted to commercial use. (??? B.S)
One part of Keely's invention was certainly practicable. He
understood thoroughly the art of getting money upon schemes which
would have turned the head of that early adventurer, John Law, in
his Mississippi Schemes.
The capitalization of the Keely Company was $5,000,000, and so far
as his counsel knows, no statement has been left by Keely that
discloses the secret of his motor, and the only legacy of the
corporation may be the mechanical apparatus in the Keely workshop,
minus the secret by which it might be operated.
In some respects Mr. Keely was a remarkable man. He was an expert
in the theory and art of MUSIC, and he was not only an
instrumentalist, but a composer as well, and was, by reason of his
attainments in this line, enabled to find the primary element of his
alleged discovery.
This was supposed to be a relation or affinity between the forces of
nature and harmonic forces. He said he discovered a sympathetic
vibration CONNECTING THE WAVES OF SOUND WITH THE DISTURBANCE IN THE
MOLECULES OF MATTER, and also found in the process of this peculiar
disturbance an energy unkown to the sphere of dynamics.
His first experiments were made with drops of water in a vacuum.
The first mechanical property he developed from this series of
experiments was the force of ADHESIVE ATTRACTION, which he assumed,
in his own statements, to be RELATED TO THE POLAR CURRENTS OF THE
EARTH.
Page 1
Next he alleged that he had developed the FORCE OF PROPULSION,
revealing a POSITIVE as well as a NEGATIVE energy.
Just as the chemical separation of the molecules of water produce
electro-magnetism, he adopted the theory that he could DISINTEGRATE
MOLECULES by the SYMPATHETIC VIBRATION OF TONES producing a subtle
and HIGHER FORCE CORRELATED WITH MAGNETISM.
He made startling propositions relative to the rotation of the
planets, etc., and many other equally wild and chimeric ideas.
About twelve years (1886) ago he abandoned his experiments upon the
molecules of water as the basis of his texts and directed his
attention to the molecules of the air. He stated that he could
produce a dynamic energy of 10,000 pounds to the inch in a
Torricellian vacuum.
He gave some experiments at the Sandy Hook Proving Grounds, in 1888,
in the presence of a number of skeptics. Keely declared he could
exhaust the air from a tube, getting a vacuum very nearly perfect,
and could thus generate a force that could fire a gun or move tons
of matter.
Whatever the substance was that Keely carried in his steel tube, it
was apparently INEXHAUSTIBLE, which MILITATED AGAINST THE IDEA THAT
HE USED COMPRESSED AIR. (how do we downplay this, they ask???)
Keely devised an enormous number of mechanisms to aid in convincing
skeptics that this mysterious atomic energy could be put to
practical use. He died without effecting this purpose, and whether
the mass of the manuscript which he left will be of any value or
not, remains to be seen.
Keely surrounded himself with a halo of mystery and worked for a
long time in the most absolute secrecy, making extravagant claims
and promises as to the miracles which he would perform with his
mechanism, the "inter-etheric liberator."
Here is a specimen of one of the bulletins which regularly emanated
from the laboratory. In 1875 he proposed, in about six months, to
run a train of thirty cars from Philadelphia to New York, at the
rate of a mile a minute, with ONE SMALL ENGINE. He said:
"I will draw the power all out of as much water as you
can hold in the palm of your hand. A bucket of water
contains enough of this vapor to produce a power sufficient
to move the world out of its course. An ordinary steamship
can be run so fast with it that it would be split in two."
Keely used to give astonishing exhibitions at his laboratory, which
mystified everyone. The wand of the prestidigitator and the slate
of the medium were exchaned in his person for a couple of tuning
forks and a violin bow. He struck his tuning forks and set a brass
ball running at 600 revolutions a minute.
He would rasp a violin bow over a tuning fork and the apparatus
would RAISE A HEAVY WEIGHT, the power exercised, he said, being
equal to a pressure of 25,000 pounds to the square inch.
Page 2
Some of those present at the seances, which occurred in 1885,
thought they had witnessed miracles, others concluded that they had
been humbugged. Some of the stockholders were not satisfied that
they had not been duped, and very naturally, they wanted the
mysteries explained.
Legal proceedings were instituted, and on November 17, 1888, Keely
was committed to jail for contempt of court in refusing to obey an
order to explain the workings of his machine to a committee of
experts. (assuming they could even comprehend it...)
He did not, however, remain in jail very long. To the very last he
never failed to get financial support, which enabled him to live
very comfortably and pay for all his experiments.
The SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN regularly took up the claims of Keely and
exposed the fallacy of the principle upon which they were based.
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Vangard notes...
In the light of modern scientific discoveries, the work of
Keely is shown to have been far ahead of even our time. A pity
that magazines wrote such negative and obviously biased
articles without investigating in depth.
Many of the scientists who visited Keely, including Hertz and
Tyndall, declared that Keely had discovered a force beyond
their ability to comprehend, let alone duplicate.
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as this paper covers, please upload to KeelyNet or send to the
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Thank you for your consideration, interest and support.
Jerry W. Decker.........Ron Barker...........Chuck Henderson
Vangard Sciences/KeelyNet
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Jerry at (214) 324-8741 or Ron at (214) 242-9346
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