“Having had the opportunity of seeing Mr. John Keely’s experiments, it has appeared to me that he has command of some unknown force of most wonderful mechanical power.
“Joseph Leidy.”
Invention, in commenting upon the communication, says: “We wish to make it quite clear that we do not identify ourselves with any of the opinions which are expressed in this communication. It is certainly desirable that the motor should be thoroughly tested, and particularly that all the secrecy, which has hitherto been practised in connection with it, should be abandoned. There can be no reason why this invention, if invention it be, should not be published to the world as long as it is fully protected by patents. We agree, however, so far, that Professor Barker’s report, if his visit be paid, will be of considerable interest.”
These remarks of our English contemporary are based upon quite wrong premises. The motor cannot be tested nor patented until it is completed. Mr. Keely’s work is one of experimental research. His machine for the production and liberation of the power is in daily operation. He has made many failures in constructing his commercial engine, but each failure has brought him nearer to perfection.
When he has succeeded in building an engine in which he can regulate the speed, control reversions and govern its operations, as completely as the steam engine is now governed, then he will be ready to test its action publicly, take out patents for the same, and make known to the world the nature of his discovery. Up to the present time Mr. Keely’s inventions have been principally devices, enabling him to experiment with the force which he has discovered and to obtain control over it. For years he was impeded by the frequency of the explosions which took place, breaking his ribs, paralyzing his left side for six weeks at one time, and frequently bursting iron tubes as if they were pipe stems.
Little by little he learned the laws which governed the unknown force, and now he never has an explosion. Mr. Keely has not preserved any secrecy with regard to his experiments, but on the contrary he has lost much time in exhibiting the production of this force to those who desire to see it. For instance, some years ago he stopped his work on the graduating of his engine to take his liberator to pieces, in order to show its interior construction to Sir William Thompson and Lord Raleigh: these gentlemen, misled by Professor Barker’s assertion, that Keely was deceiving his dupes with compressed air, refused to witness his experiments. This was in 1884.
There is no “secrecy to be abandoned,” therefore. The question to be settled was not one of secrecy, but whether Mr. Keely should continue his experimental research, unimpeded by exhibitions, until he should succeed in perfecting a commercial engine; or whether he should first convince scientists that he is not a modern Cagliostro as he has been called, and that he is a discoverer of an unknown force.
The ground taken by those who urged the latter course was that the interests of the Keely Motor Company would thus be better served; reasoning that, when scientists have been convinced that Mr. Keely’s researches are in a field comparatively unknown to them, the cries of execration would be drowned in the applause which would resound throughout the world as the result of his stupendous labours became better known.
For this end several scientists were invited to witness the present stage of experiment, which Mr. Keely had reached in his efforts to provide his provisional engine with a governor, and Dr. Leidy was one of the number who, after witnessing the experiments on May 28th, 1889, confessed himself convinced that Keely was dealing with some unknown force.
When we call to mind Watt’s persevering efforts during thirty years, before he succeeded in his attempt to invent a governor for the steam engine, we can afford to be more patient with Mr. Keely than we have been. Taking into consideration the marvellous advance which Mr. Keely has made in the past five years in perfecting his liberator, we should not be surprised to hear at any moment that he has also perfected his commercial engine, the so-called “Keely Motor,” thus overcoming his sole remaining obstacle to financial success. Those who talk of “testing” the motor, or of patenting it in its present condition, are not aware of the exertions which have been made by Mr. Keely to bring the motor to its present stage of development; nor that, although the motor now seems to be approaching perfection, the work of evolution will not be completed until it is in a patentable form.
In 1759 James Watt made his first model of a steam carriage. In 1784 he took out a patent. In 1803 the first engine was built, but it was not until 1824 that the experiment of running a locomotive from Liverpool to Stockport was made. Until Mr. Keely’s commercial engine is perfected and patented, now that scientists are beginning to support him as the discoverer of an unknown force, ridicule should give way to sympathy; for we know that nature never reveals one of her tyrant forces without at the same time showing how this force is to be transformed into the slave of man, and that complete success is only a question of time.—Anglo-Austria, March, 1890.