Keely and His Discoveries: Aerial Navigation

by Mrs. Bloomfield H. Moore

KEELY’S SECRETS. 1888.

Part I.

Science is to know things.—Herodotus.

Knowledge is developed by experience from innate ideas.—Plato.

Truth is not attained through reflection, but through immediate intuition. “We neither originate thought nor its form.—Aryan Teachings.

It may be said that if all things come from only one cause or internal source, acting within itself, then motion and matter must be fundamentally and essentially one and the same, and we may look upon matter as being latent force and upon force as being free matter.—Franz Hartmann, M.D.

John Worrell Keely—the discoverer of compound inter-etheric force, as the result of more than twenty years of persistent effort to apply this force to the operation of machinery has, at last, been enabled to produce partial continuity of motion in his engine; but, up to this time, he has not so mastered this subtle force as to control reversions. The development of his various discoveries has been one uninterrupted work of evolution, reaching, within the last year, he thinks, the sphere of perfect vibratory sympathy, both theoretically and practically. The proof of this is found in the fact that he now transmits vibrations along a wire, connected at one end with the vibratory machine which is the source of power, and at its other end with the engine or cannon, as the case may be, which is operated by such vibratory power. Until recently, comparatively speaking, Keely stored force, as he generated it, in a receiver; and experiments were made by him in the presence of thousands, at various times, for the purpose of testing the operations of this force, liberated in the presence of his audience and stored up in this small receiver. The editor of the Scientific Arena thus describes what took place at one of these exhibitions, when he was present:—“The confined vapour was passed through one of the small flexible tubes to a steel cylinder on another table, in which a vertical piston was fitted so that its upper end bore against the underside of a powerful, weighted lever. The superficial area of this piston was equal to one-half of a square inch, and it acted as a movable fulcrum placed close to the hinged end of the short arm of this lever, whose weight alone required a pressure of 1500 pounds to the square inch against the piston to lift it.

“After testing the pressure by several small weights, added to that of the lever itself, in order, to determine how much power had already been accumulated in the receiver, the maximum test was made by placing an iron weight of 580 pounds, by means of a differential pulley, on the extreme end of the long arm of the lever. To lift this weight, without that of the lever supporting it, would require a pressure against the piston of 18,900 pounds to the square inch, counting the difference in the length of the two arms and the area of the piston, which we, as well as several others present, accurately calculated. When all was ready, and the crowded gathering had formed as well as possible to see the test, Keely turned the valve-wheel leading from the receiver to the flexible tube, and through it into the steel cylinder beneath the piston, and simultaneously with the motion of his hand the weighted lever shot up against its stop, a distance of several inches, as if the great mass of iron had been only cork. Then, in order to assure ourselves of the full 25,000 pounds to the square inch claimed, we added most of our weight to the arm of the lever without forcing the piston back again.

“After repeating this experiment till all expressed themselves satisfied, Keely diverted his etheric gas to the exciting work of firing a cannon, into which he placed a leaden bullet about an inch in diameter. He conveyed the force from the receiver by the same kind of flexible copper tube, attaching one end of it to the breech of the gun. When all was again in readiness he gave a quick turn to the inlet valve, and a report like that of a small cannon followed, the ball passing through an inch board and flattening itself out to about three inches in diameter, showing the marvellous power and instantaneous action of this strange vapour.”

The difficulty encountered by Keely in his old generator of etheric force grew out of the fact, in part, that the vaporic power produced was so humid that he could not, when he attempted to utilize it, obtain its theoretical value in work. This difficulty has been entirely overcome by dispensing with the water which he used in liberating etheric force, by his old generator; and, by this departure, he has attained a success beyond that which was anticipated by himself, when he abandoned his original line of experiment.[1]