Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1898-11-23
Began as a Music Teacher.


keely began life as a music teacher,
and it was, so he asserted, the tuning
fork that gave him his first hint of the
new power that he claimed to have dis
covered. He pottered around a good
many years, experimenting with the eff
feet of sound vibrations on different met
ais, making machines, pulling them to
pieces, and all the while getting poorer
and poorer.
Finally, however, he MADE a machine
that seemed to get an enormous power
out of a little bit of energy 1t didn't
need any steam or compressed air or
electricity, but land this was the queer
part 1t started at the sound of fiddle
bow. The public laughed at this idea.
but few rich Philadelphians got inter
ested in it and formed the Keely COM
pany. This was in 1874.
Then heely went to work again and
spent deal of the company's money
making machines. When six years went
by and the motor failed to give results
they grew impatient, and. even though
keely took them TO his workshop and
showed them curious things they couldn't
explain, they began to hint that the thing
might be fraud.
Found Almost Dead.
But still Keely would not tell his great
secret.
One morning Keely was found on the
floor OF his la laboratory with torn muscles
diSlOcdted joints, and severe internal in
juries. Some machinery had gone wrong.
1t was weeks before he could get out of
bed. This taught the company a lesson
and they carried him to court to make him
tell the secret, so that it might not be lost
in the event of his death. He fought it
off, but the Supreme court decided he
would have to, or risk going to jail.
Finally the court appointed a scientist
as referee, one acceptable to the stock
holders and to Keely and to him, under
pledge Of secrecy, the inventor showed the
secrets of his machines. Then the referee
went before the stockholders and said he
was perfectly satisfied, and that Keely
was not an impOstor
But even then the company was not sat
istied. They wanted something done and
the interest on their money. So they
threatened Keely again with the jail and
in a night of despair he chopped up all his
machines.
Terms of His Invention.
Keely's alleged discoveries were so
wound up in a scientific phraseology of his
own making that it was hard for the gen
eral reader to make head or tail of his
claim
The great "force'' which he said he had
discovered and which, he thought, would
revolutionize the world to an extent far
greater than steam or electricity, he called
"etheric vapOr."
This vapor is present everywhere. pene-
trating the atmosphere and solid bodies
as well-just as electricity is everywhere
present. By causing the molecules of air
to vibrate rapidly by means of a ma
chine which he called his generator" he
freed this vapor and collected it into
reservoir. He claimed that it was capa
bic of far greater expansive power than
steam or compressed air.
Keely said that through the ether flows
a great polar current, just as electric
streams flow around the poles of mag
net, and his aim was to make machinery
so sensitive that it would link itself to this
resistless stream of energy and perform
work Hence his experiments with the
"etheric vapor," which he said was of
the same nature and had the same at
tributes as the polar current.