VIBRATORY PHYSICS.—TRUE SCIENCE.
We seem to be approaching a theory as to the construction of ether. Hertz has produced vibrations, vibrating more than one hundred million times per second. He made use of the principle of resonance. You all understand how, by a succession of well-timed small impulses, a large vibration may be set up.—Prof. Fitzgerald.
Dr. Schimmel, in his lecture on “The Unity of Nature’s Forces,” says:—“The Greek philosophers, Leucippus, Anaxagoras, Democritus, and Aristotle, base their philosophies on the existence of an ether and atoms.” According to Spiller’s system, “both ether and atoms are material. The atoms are indivisible. Chemistry, being based on the correctness of this statement, forces us to accept it.” But we are not forced to accept it if it is proved to be false.
Keely has now reached a stage in his researches at which he is able to demonstrate the truth of the hypotheses which he is formulating into a system; and consequently the stage where he can demonstrate whether theories, that have prevailed concerning the cause of physical phenomena, are sound or without basis in fact. Until this stage was reached it would have been as useless to make Mr. Keely’s theories known, as it would be to publish a treatise to prove that two and two make five. Scientific men reject all theories in physics in which there is not an equal proportion of science and mathematics, excluding all questions of pure metaphysics. They are right; for, until the world had undergone a state of preparation for another revelation of truth, the man who demonstrated all that Keely is now prepared to demonstrate would have been burned alive as a wizard. To use the words of Babcock, one of Keely’s staunchest adherents, in 1880:—“This discoverer has entered a new world, and although an unexplored region of untold wealth lies beyond, he is treading firmly its border, which daily widens as with ever-increasing interest he pursues his explorations. He has passed the dreary realm where scientists are groping. His researches are made in the open field of elemental force, where gravity, inertia, cohesion, momentum, are disturbed in their haunts and diverted to use; where, from unity of origin, emanates infinite energy in diversified forms,” and, to this statement I would add—where he is able to look from nature up to nature’s God, understanding and explaining, as no man before ever understood and explained, how simple is “the mysterious way in which God works His wonders to perform.”
Mr. Babcock continues:—“Human comprehension is inadequate to grasp the possibilities of this discovery for power, for increased prosperity, and for peace. It includes all that relates mechanically to travel, manufacture, mining, engineering, and warfare.” Up to within two years, Keely, this discoverer of unknown laws of nature, has been left partially to the mercy of men who were interested only in mechanical “possibilities.” In the autumn of 1888, he was led into a line of research which made the mechanical question one of secondary interest; and yet the present results are such as to prove that on this line alone can he ever hope to attain commercial success. The course then adopted has also been the means of placing his discoveries before the world, endorsed in such a manner as to command attention to his views and theories. It has been said that if extreme vicissitudes of belief on the part of men of science are evidences of uncertainty, it may be affirmed that of all kinds of knowledge none is more uncertain than science. The only hope for science is more science, says Drummond. Keely now bestows the only hope for science—“more science.” He accounts for the non-recognition by scientists of his claims, in these words: “The system of arranging introductory etheric impulses by compound chords set by differential harmonies, is one that the world of science has never recognized, simply because the struggles of physicists, combating with the solution of the conditions governing the fourth order of matter, have been in a direction thoroughly antagonistic, and opposite to a right one. It is true that luminosity has been induced by chemical antagonism, and, in my mind, this ought to have been a stepping-stone towards a more perfect condition than was accepted by them; but independent of what might be necessary to its analysis, the bare truth remains that the conditions were isolated—robbed of their most vital essentials—by not having the medium of etheric vibration associated with them.”
In order to subdivide the atoms in the atomic triplet, the molecular ether, liberated from the molecule, is absolutely necessary to effect the rupture of the atoms; and so on, progressively, in each order of ether, molecular, inter-molecular, atomic, inter-atomic, etheric, inter-etheric, the ether liberated in each successive division is essential to the next subdivision.
The keynote of Mr. Keely’s researches is that the movements of elastic elements are rhythmical, and before he had reached his present stage in producing vibrations, on the principle of resonance, he has had problems to solve which needed the full measure of inspiration or apperception that he has received.
Hertz has produced vibrations about one metre long, vibrating more than one hundred million times a second. Keely has produced, using an atmospheric medium alone, 519,655,633 vibrations per second; but, interposing pure hydrogen gas between soap films and using it as a medium of acceleration, he asserts that on the enharmonic third a rate of vibration may be induced which could not be set down in figures, and could only be represented in sound colours. He has invented instruments which demonstrate in many variations the colours of sound, registering the number of necessary vibrations to produce each variation. The transmissive sympathetic chord of B flat, third octave, when passing into inaudibility, would induce billions of billions of vibrations, represented by sound colour on a screen illuminated from a solar ray. But this experiment is one of infinite difficulty, from the almost utter impossibility of holding the hydrogen between the two films long enough to conduct the experiment. Keely made over 1200 trials before succeeding once in inducing the intense blue field necessary, covering a space of six weeks, four hours at a time daily; and should he ever succeed in his present efforts to produce a film that will stand, he anticipates being able to register the range of motion in all metallic mediums. On this subject Keely writes:—The highest range of vibration I ever induced was in the one experiment that I made in liberating ozone by molecular percussion, which induced luminosity, and registered a percussive molecular force of 110,000 lbs. per square inch, as registered on a lever constructed for the purpose. The vibrations induced by this experiment reached over 700,000,000 per second, unshipping the apparatus, thus making it insecure for a repetition of the experiments. The decarbonized steel compressors of said apparatus moved as if composed of putty. Volume of sphere, 15 cubic inches; weight of surrounding metal, 316 lbs.
Recently some questions, propounded to Mr. Keely by a scientist, elicited answers which the man of science admitted were clear and definite, but no physicist could accept Keely’s assertion that incalculable amounts of latent force exist in the molecular spaces, for the simple reason that science asserts that molecular aggregation is attended with dissipation of energy instead of its absorption. The questions asked were:—
I. “In disintegrating water, how many foot-pounds of energy have you to expend in order to produce or induce the vibratory energy in your acoustical apparatus?”