Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1890-07-17
KeeIy's Contribution to Science.

1t is far easier to accuse a man of fraud
than to explain the visible effect of I'M
known causes. AS Mr.. Depew said in his
great address in Chicago on June 5, in
speaking of the cranks of history: 1.-The
persistent enthusiast, whom one genera
ton despises as a luntic with one idea,
succeeding ones often worship as a ben
efactor.' History is full of examples Of
the truth of this assertion. In the past
two centuries no one has been more ma
ligned and held up to public scorn and rid
icule as a crank than John Worrell Keely,
of Keely motor fame. Yet Keely is work
ing as hard to-day, and is more enthu-
SlSaStlC than eyer-'mOre of a crank than
ever some would say He is a persistent
enthusiast, prophet almost without non
or among the millions of people familiar
with his name. History repeats itself.
1t is we'll that it does so, for man learns
little from the experience of the past. and
we never know until we investigate the
matter how often history repeats the same
lesson In the same words, with a change
of names. They that ridicule Keely
ask what he has done why he is
doing, and why he is so long about
it. Is eighteen years very long time
The electrical properties of rubber
amber were known to Thales 900
years before christ was born; 1900 years
after Thales Gilbert wrote a treatise on
electricity that none of the scientists of his
day could understand; forty-seven years
after Gilbert Otto Won Guricke made the
first electrical scheme. globe of sulpher:
144 years after this, with more than a
score of men working the field in the
meantime. Galvani and Volta made their
discoveries Electricity has been known
2,347 years before Watson showed that it
could be conveyed by an insulated wire,
but it was almost century before the
world had the primitive Morse telegraph
Thales had been in his grave two dozen
centuries when Davy produced the first
electric light--m 1S02-and it was more
than fifty years after this when the electric
light was first used for lighting an
open-air area. Hero of Alexandria
described, $50 years before Christ
various methods of employing steam
as power In 1888 the Marques
of Worcester described his steam en-
CINE in his Century of Inventions. Jona-
than Hull's proposed his idea of steam
navigation in 1885, Watts began his ex-
periments on the elastic force of steam in
1864; Claude Comte de Jouffroy construct
ed a boat propelled by steam in 1888;
Watts was thirty years in perfecting his
safety valve; fifty years after he began his
experiments the first steam locomotive was
made. and nine years after this locomotive
was first used for traffic. Kelly has been
at work for eighteen years; who can say
that half a century, quarter, or even
another eighteen years will elapse before
Keely's discover will supersede steam :?
In Lippincott's for July, $780, Mrs. Bloom
feld-Moore has most interesting article
on what Keely has done. One thing that
he has done was to convince DR.. Joseph
Leidy, the scientific equal of any man in
the world, that he is not fraud and that
whoever accuses him of fraud convicts
himself of the rankest folly.