The instrument devised by Mr. Keely for bringing the air-ship under control in its ascent and descent, consists of a row of bars, like the keys of a piano, representing the enharmonic and the diatonic conditions. These bars range from 0 to 100. At 50 Mr. Keely thinks the progress of the vessel ought to be about 500 miles an hour. At 100 gravity resumes its control. If pushed to that speed it would descend like a rifle-ball to the earth. There is no force known so safe to use as the polar flow if, as Mr. Keely thinks, that, when the conditions are once set up, they remain for ever, with perpetual molecular action as the result, until the machinery wears out. In the event of meeting a cyclone, the course of the vessel, he teaches, can be guided so as to ascend above the cyclone by simply dampening a certain proportion of these vibratory bars.
The instrument for guiding the ship has nothing to do with the propelling of it, which is a distinct feature of itself, acting by molecular bombardment; moving the molecules in the same order as in the suspension process, but transversely. After the molecular mass of the vessel is sensitized, or made concordant with the celestial and terrestrial streams, the control of it in all particulars is easy and simple. In ascending the positive force is used, or the celestial, as Keely has named it, and in descending the negative or terrestrial. Passing through a cyclone the air-ship would not be affected by it.
The breaking up of cyclones will open a field for future research, if any way can be discovered for obtaining the chord of mass of the cyclone. To differentiate the chord of its thirds would destroy it; but to those who know nothing of the underlying principle, on which Keely has based his system, all such assertions are the merest “rubbish.”
For a few months following the announcement of Professor Leidy’s and Dr. Willcox’s opinions, Mr. Keely continued his researches under favourable circumstances; but, in the autumn of 1890, he was again threatened with suits-at-law and harassed by demands to give exhibitions in order to raise the price of stock. A subscription was started to raise funds for the prosecution. These threats made it necessary to make public the history of Keely’s connection with an organization which was supposed by many to have been formed for speculative purposes, before the stock of the company possessed any value other than prospective; but to which company, notwithstanding, the world is indebted for supplying Mr. Keely with the means to continue his work, at a time when it was impossible for him to gain the recognition of science or the aid of capitalists. The discovery would in all probability have been lost, but for the help which this organization gave, at a time when Keely needed help; he had made a discovery, and these shrewd business men, totally ignorant of physics, knew enough to comprehend its financial importance. Never doubting that Keely would be able to master the difficulties at once, in the way of its subjugation, and not realizing the width of the gulf that lies between discovery and invention, they expected him to leap it with one bound; and when he failed to do so they threw upon him all the odium which befell the enterprise. Keely, who had twice destroyed his researching instruments, when harassed and threatened by the managers of the company, first in 1882, and again in 1887, was now placed by their threatened proceedings in a position where he had to choose between continuing his researches with the end in view of completing his system; or diverting his course and resuming his efforts to perfect an engine, to continue exhibitions for the purpose of raising the stock of the company.
At this juncture an attempt was made to have circulated among the stock-holders a narrative setting forth facts to show that their interests would be better served by a continuance of the researches that had led to the results attained within the last two years; and which were of so important a character as to justify Keely in saying that he had learned more of the law, governing the operation of the force he was dealing with, in that time, than in the many preceding years during which he had been scarcely doing more than liberating the ether. The effort to have the narrative circulated failed; and, as a last resort, the history of the company was made public in a pamphlet, entitled The Keely Motor Bubble; which contained the Minority Report of Mr. John Lorimer, made, in 1881, when he was a member of the Board of Directors of “the now defunct Keely Motor Company;” giving a masterly analysis of the situation at that time. Mr. Lorimer’s faith in, and loyalty to, Mr. Keely, has never been questioned. He is probably the best and most disinterested adviser that Mr. Keely has ever had; among those who are interested solely in the commercial aspect of the discovery.
[1] The Philadelphia Inquirer of March 30, 1890, copied this article from Anglo-Austria, headed “The Keely Motor: some observations on the invention from a foreign publication.” [↑]
[2] From the Evening Telegraph, Philadelphia, April 13th, 1890: headed “Professor Leidy’s Adherence to the New Force.” [↑]