Keely and His Discoveries: Aerial Navigation

by Mrs. Bloomfield H. Moore

On the 23rd of March, following the reading of this address, Professor Koenig, who had become deeply interested in Mr. Keely’s researches, wrote:—

“With regard to the experiments, which I saw at Mr. Keely’s, I venture upon the following suggestion, as a test of the nature of the force Mr. Keely is dealing with. The revolution of the compass as a result of negative polar attraction. It is stated in Mr. Keely’s paper that he finds gold, silver, platinum, to be excellent media for the transmission of these triple currents. Now it is well known that these same metals are most diamagnetic, that is, unaffected by magnetic influences. If, therefore, a needle be made of one of these metals and suspended in place of the steel needle, in the compass, and put under the influence of Mr. Keely’s force, it ought to revolve the same as the steel needle will under magnetic and polar and anti-polar influence. If Mr. Keely could make such a needle revolve, it would convince me that he is dealing with a force unknown to physicists.”

To this requirement Mr. Keely replied: “To run a needle, composed of non-magnetic material, by polar and depolar action is a matter of as infinite impossibility as would be the raising of a heavy weight from the bottom of a well by sucking a vacuum in it, or the inhalation of water into the lungs instead of air, to sustain life.”

However, at Dr. Brinton’s suggestion, Mr. Keely took up a line of research that was new to him, and succeeded in making a needle of the three metals, gold, silver and platinum, rotate by differential molecular action; induced by negative attractive outreach, which is as free of magnetic force as a cork.

Professor Brinton had so mastered Keely’s working hypotheses as to say, early in April, that he was sure he could make them understood by any intelligent person—writing of them: “All that is needed now is to show that Keely’s experiments sustain the principles that underlie these hypotheses. As soon as Professor Koenig is prepared to report on the purely technical and physical character of the experiments, I shall be ready to go into full details as to their significance in reference to both matter and mind. It will be enough for me if Dr. Koenig is enabled simply to say that the force handled by Keely is not any one of the already well-known forces. Let him say that, and I will undertake to say what it is.”

On the evening of the 13th of April, the Provost of the University of Pennsylvania, with others who were invited, met at Mrs. Moore’s house to hear the report of the “observation” of Mr. Keely’s researching experiments. The result was not made public; as it was desired, by all concerned, that nothing should be made known which could in any way influence the price of the stock of the company, to which Mr. Keely is under obligations; and which, as far as marketable value is concerned, is quite worthless until his system is completed to that point where some one device or machine can be patented. But, after Professor Koenig had made his report to those assembled, and Professor Brinton had read his abstract, all that had been asked for Mr. Keely, in behalf of the interests of science, was conceded to him. Mr. Keely has been able to continue his researches, up to the present time, without the delays which actions-at-law would have occasioned.

Professor Brinton, before making public his “Abstract of Keely’s Philosophy,” wishes to add two parts, one on the difficulties in the way of physicists in understanding Keely’s theories; the other on the relations of the conditions of the inter-etheric order to the laws of mind.

The address of Mrs. Moore, type-copied, was sent to various editors and men of science in Philadelphia, as well as to leading capitalists; and, in this crisis of Keely’s connection with the stockholders of The Keely Motor Company, some of these editors rendered substantial aid in making known his critical position; most notably the Inquirer, owned by Mr. Elverson, and the Evening Telegraph, owned by Mr. Warburton, with the result that a decided change in public opinion took place, after these journals announced, in April, that Professor Koenig had tested the energy, employed by Keely, with the most sensitive galvanometer of the university, in the presence of Professor Leidy, Professor Brinton, Doctor Tuttle (a Baltimore physicist) and others, finding no trace of electricity; and by other tests no magnetism. The two professors who thoroughly investigated Keely’s theories, and observed his demonstrations, were chosen because they possessed the qualities of mind which Herbert Spencer said constitute the first condition of success in scientific research, viz. “an honest receptivity and a willingness to abandon all preconceived notions, however cherished, if they be found to contradict the truth.”

Professor Leidy and Dr. Willcox, during their observations of Keely’s progressive experimental researches, had expressed no opinion of Keely’s theories, other than that they did not correspond with their own ideas; but Professor Koenig boldly said, “I not only think Mr. Keely’s theories possible, but I consider them quite probable.” Professor Brinton, who made a study of Keely’s theories, so mastered them as to be able to suggest to Keely a new line of research, required by Dr. Koenig in the tests proposed; and the synopsis of Keely’s philosophy, prepared by Doctor Brinton, has made Keely’s hitherto unintelligible language intelligible to men of science.

Notwithstanding this favourable result, a New York journalist, under a fictitious name, pretended to have discovered that Keely is a fraud, using well-known forces; which statements were published (with woodcuts of instruments discarded by Keely two years before) in the New York Herald and The Press, in Philadelphia. It is amusing to see how “history repeats itself;” for, in the year 1724, in a letter to the Royal Society, Hatzfeldt attacked Sir Isaac Newton in much the same spirit. One would suppose in reading what Hatzfeldt has written of an invention of his time, that it had been written, word for word, of this ignorant investigator of Keely’s experiments in researching. After commenting upon the corruption of human nature as shown, in his day, by want of veracity, and the tendency to vicious misrepresentation, he says: “If the said machine was contrived according to the weak sense and understanding of those who pretend it to be moved in other ways than that declared, it would have been discerned before this.