Keely and His Discoveries: Aerial Navigation

by Mrs. Bloomfield H. Moore

Professor Rowland, in his paper on the “Spectra of Metals,” which he read at Leeds, says that the object of his research is primarily to find out what sort of things molecules are, and in what way they vibrate. The primary object of Mr. Keely’s researches has been to find out all that he could about the laws that control vibrations, and on this line of research he made his discoveries, as to “what sort of things molecules and atoms are, and in what way they vibrate.” One of the editors of the Times, in London, in January, 1891, wrote out this question for Keely to answer:—“What impulse led you primarily into the research of acoustic physics?” Keely replied, “An impulse associated sympathetically with my mental organism from birth, seemingly, as I was acutely sensible of it in my childhood. Before I had reached my tenth year, researching in the realm of acoustic physics had a perfect fascination for me; my whole organism seemed attuned as if it were a harp of a thousand strings; set for the reception of all the conditions associated with sound force as a controlling medium, positive and negative; and with an intensity of enjoyment not to be described. From that time to the present, I have been absorbed in this research, and it has opened up to me the laws that govern the higher workings of nature’s sympathetic, hidden forces; leading me gradually on to the solution of the problem relating to the conditions that exist between the celestial and terrestrial outreaches, viz., polar negative attraction.” Another question asked by the same editor: “What is the main difficulty to be overcome before completing the system for commercial benefit?” Answer: “The principal difficulty rests in equating the thirds of the thirds of the transmitters (i.e., the gold, silver, and platina sections, of which the transmitting wires are composed) to free them of molecular differentiation. The full control of this force can never be accomplished, until pure molecular equation is established between the nodal interferences (that result in their manufacture) and the chord mass of their sectional parts. When this has been done, the chasm between the alternation of the polar forces, which now exists, preventing the inducing of polar and depolar conditions, will be bridged over and commercial benefits at once established as the result. The devices for inducing these conditions, primarily, are perfect: but the pure, connective link on transmission has to be equated, before continued mechanical rotation and reversion can be attained.”

As has already been said, Keely’s researches have all been on the line of vibrations; and it was while pursuing them that he “stumbled over,” to use his own words, the inter-atomic subdivision of the molecule, which released the Geni that for years thereafter was his master. Keely’s attention not having been turned to molecules and atoms, he was not able, in the earliest years of his discovery of the existence of a “force of nature more powerful and more general even than electricity,” to form any opinion as to the origin of the force. He was as one who, in the thick darkness of an underground labyrinth, found himself face to face with a giant, whose form even he could not see to lay hold of in a death grapple; but when a germ of the knowledge that he needed fell on his mind, he was quick to seize it, and the acorn grew into an oak. Here again, to use his own words: “I was as a boulder resting on the summit of a mountain, until an introductory impulse was given to start it on its course; then rushing onwards and carrying all before it, when the goal is reached its concussion will produce the crash that will awaken a sleeping world.”

Priestley proclaimed it as his belief that all discoveries are made by chance; but Providence sends chance, and the man of genius is he who is able to improve all opportunities and mould them to his own ends. In a discovery, says Edison, there must be an element of the accidental, and an important one too; discovery is an inspiration, while an invention is purely deductive. The story of the apple dropping from the tree, and Newton starting with a species of “Eureka,” he rejects absolutely. Maintaining that an abstract idea or a natural law may, in one sense, be invented, he gives it as his opinion that Newton did not discover the theory of gravitation, but invented it; and that he might have been at work on the problem for years, inventing theory after theory, to which he found it impossible to fit his facts. That Keely claims to have discovered an unknown source of energy has not seemed to disturb the equilibriums of some of the men of science who have witnessed the demonstrations of the force, as much as that he should have invented theories in regard to the operation of the laws that control it. For a man who had lived more than half a century without troubling himself as to the existence of molecules and atoms to suddenly awaken to the knowledge of their existence, and to invent theories as to “what sort of things they are and how they vibrate,” was sufficient proof, in their eyes, that he invented his discovery; but men who are, in thought, reaching out into unknown realms, are the very men who are most likely to lay hold of a discovery;—as did Bell, who, speculating upon the nature of sound, filed an invention for his telephone before he discovered that articulate speech could be conveyed along a wire. It was in the same way that Keely, speculating upon the nature of vibration, was led into the field of invention; and while experimenting with one of his inventions, he suddenly stepped into that great unknown territory which lies beyond the horizon of ordinary matter. It took him nearly a score of years to find out where he was. Years of experiment followed before he was able to summon the Geni at will; for when his lever first registered a pressure of 2000 lbs., while subjecting water to the action of multiplied vibrations, he had no idea how to proceed, as far as the number of vibrations were concerned, to repeat the operation. Commencing at a certain point, he increased the vibrations day by day until, six years later, he was able to effect the dissociation at will. But at that time Mr. Keely had too much mechanical work to do to give any of his time to theorizing. He was in the clutches of a speculating Keely Motor Company, whose cry was, “Give us an engine!” and day and night this toiler fought his way in the underground labyrinth, thinking only of a commercial engine. It was not until Macvicar’s “Sketch of a Philosophy” fell into Mr. Keely’s hands that he realized he had imprisoned the ether. This was in 1884, and, four years later, in 1888, Professor Hertz of Bonn announced that we were using the ether, without knowing it, in all electro-magnetic engines. By this time Keely’s researches in vibratory physics had led him well on his way in the construction of hypotheses as to “what sort of things molecules are, and in what way they vibrate.” An hypothesis treats a supposed thing as an existing thing, for the purpose of proving, by experimental demonstration, whether the supposition is correct or not. At a critical juncture, Mrs. J. F. Hughes (a grand-niece of Charles Darwin), hearing of Keely’s researches, became interested in his work; and her book on “The Evolution of Tones and Colours” was sent to Mr. Keely. An expression used by Mrs. Hughes in that work, brought a suggestion to Mr. Keely. The veil of darkness was rent asunder which had enveloped him in what he called “Egyptian blackness,” and from that time he worked no longer in the dark.

Pythagoras taught that the same law which underlies harmonies underlies the motion of the heavenly bodies, or, as Mrs. Hughes has expressed it, “The law which develops and controls harmony, develops and controls the universe.” Mr. Keely, nothing daunted by the vast extent, the stupendous “outreach” of the domain, the boundary line of which he had thus crossed, concentrated all his energies upon “the situation;” thinking thereafter, not alone of the interests of commerce as before, but of the developing of a system, which he could give to science in the same hour that he should hand over, to those whose thoughts were only on financial gain, the inventions that our age is demanding, in the interests of humanity, with the stern voice of the master necessity; a voice that never fails to make itself heard in “the voice of the people.” Experiment after experiment justified his hypotheses, and converted them into theories. To keep pace with the wants of humanity, invention must now walk side by side with philosophy. It took half a century for the “Principia” of Newton to tread down the contempt and opposition that its publication met with; and now progressive knowledge is overshadowing Newton’s vast attainments. Faraday, after discovering electro-magnetic conditions, as related to latent or hidden energy, did not pursue his researches far enough to establish a theory as to the mode of transference of magnetic force, though, in some of his speculations on the line of force, he hit upon truths now advanced in Keely’s theories. The physicists of Faraday’s time could not reach up to him. They complained of his “obscurity of language,” of his “want of mathematical precision,” of his “entertaining notions regarding matter and force altogether distinct from the views generally held by men of science.” It is not then to be wondered at that modern physicists took up lines of research more in accordance with their own views. The experiences of one age are repeated in another age; and the same charges that were brought against Faraday are now brought against Keely; coupled with shameful attempts to prove him to be “a fraud;” a man “living upon the credulity of his victims;” “a modern Cagliostro;” “an artful pretender.” The question is often asked, “Is he not an ignorant man?” Yes, so ignorant, that he knows how ignorant he is; so ignorant, that he asserts with Anaxagoras, that intelligent will is the disposer and cause of everything; and not satisfied with asserting this great truth, he has devoted the remnant of his days to finding out and demonstrating how this cause operates throughout nature. But ignorant as Keely has always confessed himself to be, he knows more of the mysterious laws of nature which hold the planets in their courses and exert their dynamic effect upon the tides, more of the “shock effect” which, brought to bear upon molecules, causes their disruption and supplies the fine fluid thus liberated, that extends the “shock effect,” as Frederick Major has conjectured, to the atoms that compose them. Ignorant as Keely is, he knows that “out of the strife of tremendous forces which is ever going on in nature, is born a creation of law and harmony;” that from atomic recesses to the farthest depth there is naught but “toil co-operant to an end,” that “all these atoms march in time, and that it is no blind cause which originates and maintains all.” Admitting his ignorance, Keely claims with Dr. Watson that “the many who are compelled to walk should not scoff at those who try to fly.” All who agree in believing that “the advance of the modern school of natural philosophy affords no justification for the intolerant and exclusive position taken by certain physicists,” will be ready to examine Keely’s theories, in the light of his demonstrations, even although they have been stigmatized as fallacies. Science owes large obligations to many fallacious theories.

Canon Moseley has said that the perfecting of the theory of epicycles is due to the astrologers of the middle ages; and that but for them the system of Copernicus would have remained a bare speculation, as did that of Pythagoras for more than two thousand years. In the same way that astrology nurtured astronomy, chemistry was cradled by alchemy.

Keely welcomes criticism of his theories, and is able to answer all who come to him with criticisms in a proper spirit. To quote one of his own expressions, “as far as a physical truth is concerned I never throw up the sponge for any one.” Of Professor Crookes, Keely wrote quite recently: “Your friend is wrong in saying that I dabble in chemical heresies. There must be some misunderstanding on his part, for I have never asserted that nitrogen is a necessary constituent of water. I only said that, after a thousand experiments had been conducted, there was a residual deposit, in one of my tubes, of a resinous substance that showed nitrogenous elements, which I could not account for. I consider Professor Crookes one of the greatest of discoverers, and, when he understands my system, he will be one of the first to endorse it.”

A philosophical journalist says of the force discovered by Keely, that “it is harder to believe in than either steam or electricity, because it has no visible manifestation in nature. It does not rise in white clouds from every boiling kettle, or flash with vivid light in every thunderstorm. It does not show itself in the fall of every loosened body to the earth, like gravitation, nor can it be discovered, like oxygen, by chemical investigation. If it exists at all, it is in a form entirely passive, giving no hint of its presence until it is brought out by the patient investigator, as the sculptor’s chisel brings out the beautiful statue from the shapeless mass of marble.

“Working thus entirely in the dark, with an intangible, imponderable, invisible something whose nature and attributes are all unknown, and whose characteristics differ essentially from those of any other known force, what wonder if the inventor’s progress is slow and his disappointments many? Mr. Keely may be deceived, or he may have discovered an actual force which he is unable to harness; but the fact that he is very slow in perfecting whatever discovery he may have made is no proof that he has not made a very great one.

“Far be it from us to say in this age of scientific marvels, that any proposition whatever is impossible of accomplishment; but while we wait for Mr. Keely to make his alleged discovery public, before we become enthusiastic over it, we would not set it down as a fraud and the reputed discovery as a humbug. It is the nature of inventors to be enthusiastic and to think that they are on the eve of success when, in fact, a great deal remains to be done.

“Especially is this the case in the development of a hitherto unknown force. James Watt had a comparatively straight road to travel from his mother’s tea-kettle to his first steam-engine, but it took him many years to traverse it. More than a lifetime elapsed after Franklin drew electricity from a cloud before Morse sent it over a telegraph wire, and Morse himself worked for years to make it available for business purposes; while men are still constantly finding new adaptations of the mysterious force of which that was the first practical application.”