Keely
"Comparing it (etheric vapor) with steam it is as different as it is opposite in origin. Steam is derived from heat or combustion, and so may be said to have a chemical origin; the vapor is a production of mechanical action, a spontaneous energy. Vibration, whether considered as an energy or a motion, is an inherent property or concomitant of matter, and therefore spontaneous. Keely’s inventions for producing this power are so entirely original, and so unlike any other devices that have been constructed, that there is nothing in the annals of research to afford a starting point for the understanding. The mechanical means by which this occult energy under consideration is educed and economized, are as unique as those which belong to electricity. Keely’s instruments are no more like electrical apparatus than they are like the machinery used with steam, the product of the crude molecular dissociation of water by heat." [Bloomfield-Moore in Keely and His Discoveries]
"In such fields of research, Mr. Keely finds little leisure. Those who accuse him of "dilly-dallying," of idleness, of "always going to do and never doing," of "visionary plans," etc., etc., know nothing of the infinite patience, the persistent energy which for a quarter of a century has upheld him in his struggle to attain this end. Still less, if possible, is he understood by those who think he is seeking self-aggrandizement, fame, fortune, or glory.
The time is approaching when all who have sought to defame this discoverer and inventor, all who have stabbed him with unmerited accusations, all who have denounced him as "a bogus inventor," "a fraud," "an impostor," "a charlatan," "a modern Cagliostro," will be forced to acknowledge that he has done a giant's work for true science, even though he should not live to attain commercial success. But history will not forget that, in the nineteenth century, the story of Prometheus has been repeated, and that the greatest mind of the age, seeking to scale the heavens to bring down the light of truth for mankind, met with Prometheus's reward." [(Keely - Cure of Disease))]
"For ten years Keely's demonstrations were confined to the liberation, at will, of the energy he had "stumbled over" while experimenting on vibrations in 1872; and his efforts were put forth for the construction of "the perfect engine," which he had promised to the Keely Motor Company. He made the mistake of pursuing his researches on the line of invention instead of discovery. All his thoughts were concentrated in this direction up to the year 1882. Engine after engine was abandoned and sold as old metal, in his repeated failures to construct one that would keep up the rotary motion of the ether that was necessary to hold it in any structure. Explosion after explosion occurred, sometimes harmless to him, at other times laying him up for weeks at a time.
Two more years were lost in efforts to devise an automatic arrangement, which should enable the machine, invented by Keely for liberating the energy, to be handled by any operator, and it was not until 1884 that steady progress was seen, from years to years, as the result of his enlarged researches. When Keely was asked, at this time, how long he thought it would be before he would have the engine he was then at work upon ready to patent, he illustrated his situation by an anecdote: "A man fell down, one dark night, into a mine; catching a rope in his descent, he clung to it until morning. With the first glimpse of daylight, he saw that had he let go his hold of the rope he would have had but a few inches to fall. I am precisely in the situation of that man. I do not know how near success may be nor yet how far off it is."
August 5th, 1885, the New York Home Journal announced that Keely had imprisoned the ether; and, as was then wrongly supposed, that the unknown force was the ether itself; not the medium of the force, as it is now known to be." [Bloomfield-Moore] [Ether the True Protoplasm]
’’"I shall not forestall an unproved conclusion, but fight step by step the dark paths I am exploring, knowing that, should I succeed in proving one single fact in science heretofore unknown, I shall in so doing be rewarded in the highest degree. In whatever direction the human mind travels it comes quickly to a boundary line which it cannot pass. There is a knowable field of research, bordered by an unknown tract. My experience teaches me how narrow in the strip of territory which belongs to the knowable, how very small the portion that has been traversed and taken possession of. The further we traverse this unknown territory, the stronger will become our faith in the immovable order of the world; for, at each advancing step, we find fresh fruits of the immutable laws that reign over all things,- from the falling apple, up to the thoughts, the words, the deeds, the will of man: and we find these laws irreversible and eternal, order and method reigning throughout the universe. Some details of this universal method have been worked up, and we know them by the names of 'gravitation,' 'chemical affinity,' 'nerve-power,' etc. These material certainties are as sacred as moral certainties. . . . The nearest approaches to a certainty is made through harmony with nature's laws. The surest media are those which nature has laid out in her wonderful workings. The man who deviates from these paths will suffer the penalty of a defeat, as is seen in the record of 'perpetual motion' seekers. I have been classed with such dreamers; but I find consolation in the thought that it is only by those men who are utterly ignorant of the great and marvellous truths which I have devoted my life to demonstrate and to bring within reach of all. I believe the time is near at hand when the principles of etheric evolution will be established, and when the world will be eager to recognize and accept a system that will certainly create a revolution for the highest benefits of mankind, inaugurating an era undreamed of by those who are now ignorant of the existence of this etheric force."'' [Keely, Progressive Science]