—Years and years ago mechanical experts and others whom one motive or another had impelled to make such little investigation of JOHN W. KEELY’s "motor" as that very shrewd, if not very ingenious, person would permit, declared that all his results might have been, and, so far as anything they saw indicated, were, produced by compressed air conducted to his machines by hidden tubes from a hidden reservoir. This explanation always met indignant denial by KEELY and his more intimate—and interested—associates, but they never consented to allow outsiders to make, as might easily have been done, such an examination of the machines as would have proved at
once and conclusively, either that their owner was a great genius or an arrant humbug. KEELY is dead now, and his contrivances have been removed to Boston for—well, call it “further development.” The dismantled workshop in Philadelphia, the abode for a quarter of a century of mysteries deep, if not important, then for the first time became accessible in all its corners and walls, and scientists employed by "The Philadelphia Press" have been exploring it with care. The result of their labors was the discovery of adroitly hidden pipes leading downward through the floor, and in the room below was, also hidden, a hollow steel sphere weighing three tons! The tubes were of a kind that could have been used for no other purposes than the conveyance of air or gases under great pressure, and the sphere had never played any part in Keely’s exhibitions. These things do not, of course, demonstrate that KEELY did not turn his wheels with a new force, but they do show, what was long ago merely asserted, that his motive power might have been one with which better, though less pretentious, mechanics are much more familiar than he ever was.

Published: January 20, 1899
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