Keely and His Discoveries: Aerial Navigation

by Mrs. Bloomfield H. Moore

But let Keely speak for himself in reference to his work:—

“In considering the operation of my engine, the visitor, in order to have even an approximate conception of its modus operandi, must discard all thought of engines that are operated upon the principle of pressure and exhaustion, by the expansion of steam or other analogous gas which impinges upon an abutment, such as the piston of a steam-engine. My engine has neither piston nor eccentrics, nor is there one grain of pressure exerted in the engine, whatever may be the size or capacity of it.

“My system, in every part and detail, both in the developing of this power and in every branch of its utilization, is based and founded on sympathetic vibration. In no other way would it be possible to awaken or develop this force, and equally impossible would it be to operate my engine upon any other principle.

“All that remains to be done is to secure a uniform speed under different velocities and control reversions. That I shall accomplish this is absolutely certain. Some few years ago, I contemplated using a wire as a connective link between two sympathetic mediums, to evolve this power as also to operate my machinery—instead of tubular connections as heretofore employed—I have only recently succeeded in accomplishing successfully such change. This, however, is the true system; and henceforth all my operations will be conducted in this manner—that is to say, the power will be generated, my engines run, my cannon operated, through a wire.

“It has been only after years of incessant labour, and the making of almost innumerable experiments, involving not only the construction of a great many most peculiar mechanical structures, and the closest investigation and study of the phenomenal properties of the substance “ether,” per se, produced, that I have been able to dispense with complicated mechanism, and to obtain, as I claim, mastery over the subtle and strange force with which I am dealing.

“When my present process of adjustment is completed, the force, the mechanism, and all that pertains to it, will be fully explained in a theoretical exposition of the subject, with appropriate diagrams, which I shall publish to the world; through which medium, and my patents, when taken out, a knowledge of all that is required for its commercial employment will be more easily acquired than is the necessary skill required to enable one to safely operate a steam-engine.

“The power will be adapted to engines of all sizes and capacities, as well to an engine capable of propelling the largest ship as to one that will operate a sewing machine. Equally well and certain is it that it will be adapted as a projectile force for guns and cannons of all sizes, from the ordinary shoulder-piece to the heaviest artillery.”….

When Keely obtained continuity of motion (for a time) in his engine he thought that his last difficulty had been overcome: but, up to the present time, he has not succeeded in governing its speed nor in controlling reversions. He has, however, again reduced in size the instrument with which he produces the force. From 1882 to 1884 the “Generator” was a structure six feet long and correspondingly wide and high; but, failing in his attempt to make an automatic arrangement upon which its usefulness in mechanics depended, Keely found a new standard for research in an experiment often made by himself, but never before successful, which resulted in the production of a machine in 1885 which he named a “Liberator”—not so large as a lady’s small round work-table. Continuing his labour of evolution Keely within one year made such astonishing progress, from experiments with this beautiful piece of vibratory mechanism, as to combine the production of the power, and the operation of his cannon, his engine and his disintegrator in a machine no larger than a dinner plate, and only three or four inches in thickness. This instrument was completed in 1886, up to which time his experiments had been conducted upon a principle of sympathetic vibration, for the purpose of liberating a vapoury or etheric product. His later experiments have been confined to another modification of vibratory sympathy; and the size of the instrument used now, ’88, for the same purposes is no larger than an old-fashioned silver watch, such as we see in Museum collections. The raising of a lever with an apparent uplifting expansive force of between 20,000 and 30,000 pounds to the square inch, the running of the engine, the firing of the cannon, are conducted without one ounce of pressure in any part of the apparatus, and without the production or presence of what has been known as Keely’s ether. The force is now transmitted along a wire (of platinum and silver), and when the lever is lowered there is no exhaustion, into the atmosphere of the room, of any up-lifting vapour, as was always the case when the ether was used in this experiment; nor is there any vapour impinging upon the piston under the lever to raise it.

Keely has named this new modification of the one force in nature “Negative Attraction,” which to the uninitiated does not suggest as much as it would had he called it “Negative Humbug.”

The two forms of force which he has been experimenting with, and the phenomena attending them, are the very antithesis of each other. Keely does not feel the shadow of a doubt as to his eventual success in producing engines of varying capacities; small enough, on the one hand, to operate sewing machines with, and large enough, on the other hand, to propel the largest ships that plough the seas. Every fact and feature surrounding the case warrants the belief, notwithstanding the incredulity of all who have not witnessed the progress of Mr. Keely, step by step, that his success will be complete, and his work stand as the most colossal example of the survival of the fittest, in the process of inventive evolution. Cox says: “Not one of the great facts which science now accepts as incontrovertible truths but was vehemently denied by the scientists of its time:—declared to be a priori impossible, its discoverers and supporters denounced as fools or charlatans, and even investigation of it refused as being a waste of time and thought.” “History repeats itself,” and Amiel’s definition of science gives the key to the incredulity of scientists in reference to Mr. Keely’s discovery; for if, as Amiel has said, “science is a lucid madness occupied with tabulating its own hallucinations,” it is not strange that men of science should refuse to investigate what they consider the hallucinations of others.