Ignorant and impatient shareholders thought only of their own material advantages and dividends. They were Keely's first enemies, with their sensational and premature advertisements of results and "200 horse-power engines ready to patent, etc.," whilst the poor man was still struggling with his tremendous problem—i.e. to control the force that he had discovered.
He attempted this first by confining it, but it blew everything to atoms, and his own fingers off into the bargain!
Occultists—including Madame Blavatsky—always declared this latent atomic energy was a fact, but that Keely would never be allowed to demonstrate it, for the world was not yet prepared for such a tremendous dynamic force to be let loose upon it, and that the most serious abuses and disasters would follow, if once he succeeded in bringing his discovery into practical working order.
They said it would be one of two things: either Keely's experiments in this direction would continue to fail in the crucial point necessary, or that if he succeeded it would be his own death warrant, lest any mischief should accrue from his making his methods public.
In view of these pronouncements, the succeeding events in Keely's career are interesting.
The Times (U.S.A.) of 6th March 1898 contained the following announcement, under Keely's own signature:—
After twenty-five years' labour I have solved the problem of harnessing the ether (which elsewhere he says is only the medium of the force he discovered) and adapting it to commercial uses. I have finished experimenting.—My work is now completed.
(Signed) John W. Keely.
On 18th November of this same year he died.
Within two months, his generous friend and patron, Mrs Blomfield Moore, followed him to another sphere. Keely's final discovery of the means of "harnessing the ether," as he calls it, was through holding it in rotation instead of in confinement.
I am allowed to quote an extract from a private letter with regard to this statement.