Is This Keely's Secret?
Philadelphia Press
The investigation which the Press has carried on in the laboratory or workshop but recently the abiding place of Keely and his famous motor has brought to light a condition of things which affords strongly presumptive evidence that the secret of the Keely motor has been discovered. The conclusion of Mr. Carl Hering, Professor Arthur W. Goodspeed, Mr. Coleman Sellers jr.. and Mr. Clarence B. Moore, that the evident liberal use of metallic tubing capable of withstanding great pressure, in connection with the presence of a receptacle capable of giving all the necessary pressure, suggests possible fraud, and the use of compressed air seems entirely warranted by the situation.
Keely had everything under his own control in his workshop. Investigation in the ordinary sense of the term was not allowed. He refused to let [E bison?] make a complete study of his laboratory under test conditions. No reliable physicist who ever entered the workshop and saw an exhibition ever expressed himself as satisfied with the conditions, or left in any other than a skeptical frame of mind.[1] Zalinski, at the gun tests in 1888, said "compressed air." Other experts at the laboratory on other occasions said: "It is compressed air or compressed gases of some sort." All this was bitterly denied. Though Keely confessed to deceiving his stockholders[2] for the good of the cause, he stoutly averred that he never deceived his visitors, did not use any of the known or normal forces of nature, and had no means of utilizing them in his machines.
"It would seem, however, that secret tubing would go a long ways toward performing most of his experiments so long as no one looked into what was in or going on in the room below while the experiments went on in the room above. It may be that all these tubes were innocent and conveyed nothing more serious than polar negative currents or the sympathetic ether; but certainly a little compressed air ought lo have proved a boon when the "polar negative" got its mass chord in a kink and refused to work. The question is therefore, is compressed air Keely's secret?
"I have known for four years the so-called secret, of inventor Keely," said Nicola Tesla, the famous electrician. "When the reservoir and pipes were found I knew that the surmise I had long entertained was correct. I would like to believe that Keely was not a dishonest fellow, and believe him simply to have been a man who erred so that he would have accomplished no great thing had he lived a dozen lives. Although he evidently used compressed air in his experiments it does not follow that he did this deliberately to deceive. Acting on my conjecture I have performed most of the experiments reported and still more wonderful ones to the lay mind."
[1] see Eye Witness Accounts
[2] got a reference for that?
See Also
Clarence Bloomfield-Moore
Was Keely a Fraud?
Was Keely Imprisoned for stock fraud?
Return to Keely Chronology