Keely and His Discoveries: Aerial Navigation

More than four centuries B.C., Leucippus and his disciple Democritus—who expounded the atomic theory of his master—introduced the doctrine of indivisible atoms, possessing within themselves a principle of energy. Democritus, it is said, travelling in search of wisdom, visited the Gymnosophists of India (who, by leading ascetic lives, thought they could effect a reunion of the spiritual nature of man, with the divine essence of Deity), and in so doing incurred the risk of being deprived of the rites of sepulture by his “waste of patrimony,” there being a law in Abdera to that effect.

Anaxagoras, Heraclitus, Empedocles and other philosophers, had taught that matter was indefinitely divisible, but Leucippus and Democritus were the first to assert that these particles or atoms were originally destitute of all qualities except form and energy; and they are, therefore, called the originators of the atomic philosophy; which is the basis of Keely’s system of sympathetic physics.

Sympathetic physics teaches that light is an etheric evolution, propagated by sympathetic conflict between celestial and terrestrial outflows: solar tensions as against terrestrial condensation. True luminosity cannot be induced in any other way. The high order of triple vibration, that induces (progressively) molecular and intermolecular separation, shows luminous results which, when thus mechanically produced, are virtually on a small scale, a facsimile of nature’s operations. “All such experiments that I have made,” writes Keely, “resulted in vortex motion invariably, both sympathetically and otherwise. Vortex motion follows nature in all corpuscular action.

“The undulatory theory, regarding light, I have not been able to reconcile myself to, as anything but hypothetical. The conditions which govern electro-magnetic radiation, disprove the theory in many particulars. The vortex action induced in space, by the differential conflict between the low and high tenuous, shows up results that harmonize with the conditions accompanying the dissociation of hydrogen and oxygen, in disintegrating water: viz., vortex action of the highest order, but peripheral only. If it were not so, the ether could not be held in suspension, neither in the molecular nor atomic envelopes. Undulatory effects are produced by certain conditions of sound; and by other conditions quite opposite effects. In organ pipes, of a certain calibre, very sensitive waves occur at intervals; as according to the character of the sound evolved; but on a combination of resonators composed of brass tubes of more than nine in number, a wave of sound, induced by certain chords passing over them, produces high vortex action of the air enclosed in them. The vibration of tuning forks induces alternate conditions of the air that surrounds them, if in open atmosphere; but quite a different action presents itself when the forks are exercised in resonating tubes, set to thirds of the mass chord they represent. Then high vortex action is the instant result. Vibrators cannot be set promiscuously in tubes, and get such results, any more than a musician can render a musical composition on the violin before tuning it. The conditions under which light is evolved negatize whatever is associated with undulation, as this word is understood by physicists. Aqueous undulations there are, but not etheric undulations.

“The mighty forces latent in corpuscular matter, by which we are surrounded, are all held in oscillating vortex action by the Infinite Designer of workings hidden from us, until the time is ripe for their disclosure. This latent, registered power interchanges sympathetically with the celestial radiating streams, whereby light, heat, electricity, magnetism and galvanic action are propagated in their different orders, vitalizing all nature with their life-giving principles. When this great scientific and religious truth has been made known, and established by demonstration, all controversy as to the source of energy will be for ever silenced. If I am the chosen instrument to develop this knowledge, and to make known the conditions which surround this pure truth, it is only that I may hand the key to those who will use it to enter the doorway that opens into the inaudible, and thus gain an insight into the now invisible region of the operation of Nature’s most powerful governing forces, in the control, over terrestrial mind by celestial matter.”

The flow of electricity, as set down in Keely’s system, is governed by triple conditions: 1st. the dominant or high vibratory; 2nd. the sub-dominant or low vibratory; 3rd. the harmonic or undulatory; in combination one flow. Keely writes:—“When electrical experts can construct a mechanical device whereby the low vibratory conditions of the sub-dominant can be assimilated to the harmonic undulatory, by thirds, they will be able to run their dynamos without any extraneous appliances. An introductory impulse, on a certain order of vibration, being all that would be required to give the sub-dominant a concordant relation to the dominant; which would more effectually operate the dynamo than any number of steam-engines; allowing the harmonic stream to be the governor. This concordance, as towards the dominant, would only excite its sympathetic action in a way that would divert the ruling conditions of the two, without being submitted to the destructive effects of the dominant current. I think many lives will be lost before such a position is attained. Tesla has reached out almost to the crest of the harmonic wave, leaving all electrical explorers far behind him. It is only when such a condition is reached that the true value of electrical lighting will be understood, and extraneous power dispensed with; but, in my opinion, the present conditions for transferring power will remain unaltered, in the use of electricity, for generations.

“There is but one position to arrive at, that will redeem the many failures of the past decade, in attempts to find an economizing medium for commercial benefit in regard to power; and that position will be attained when the polar sympathetic harness is completed, which will give to the world the control of the polar forces.”

In reply to the question, “What do you include in the polar forces?” Keely answers, “Magnetism, electricity, and gravital sympathy; each stream composed of three currents, or triune streams, which make up the governing conditions of the controlling medium of the universe: the infinite ninths that I am now endeavouring to graduate to a sympathetic mechanical combination, will, if I succeed, close my researches in sympathetic physics, and complete my system. These sympathetic streams from celestial space, percussing on the dense atmospheric environment of our earth, by their infinite velocities, wrest from their atomic confinement the latent energies which we call heat and light.”

Question.—And where do these sympathetic conditions or streams of force have their origin?

Answer.—‘So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him: male and female created He them,’ Genesis i. 27. All sympathetic conditions, or streams of force, are derived (if we dare to make use of such a term in speaking of Deity) from the cerebral convolutions of the Infinite: from the centre of the vast realm of the compound luminous. From the celestial intermediate, the brain of Deity, proceed the sympathetic flows that vitalize the polar terrestrial forces.”—Keely.

Some faint idea of the infinite patience which the nature of Keely’s work requires may be gained by a knowledge of his process of converting straight tubes into resonating rings. The tubes, in sections long enough to form a semicircle, are passed between triple rollers, which are set to give them a slight bend. They are then fastened to a bed-plate, and a steel ball, the exact diameter of the interior of the tube, is passed into it and forced through it. It is then passed between the rollers again; which are set so as to slightly increase the curvature, and again the interior of the tube is corrected by the steel ball. This process is intermittently continued until the semicircle is reached. Each process of bending and correcting requires over two hours. Eighty bends are sometimes necessary for the completion of the full circle. When the two semicircles, which form the circle, are finished, they are placed in a steel mould and kept under hydraulic pressure for two or three days, to correct any lateral deflection which has taken place in bending them. They are then taken out of the moulds and screwed rigidly to a face-plate, and joined together by a solder of refined brass and silver. Next they are placed in a hot sand bath of sufficient volume to require seventy-two hours to cool down. This corrects the differentiation in their molecular groupings. They are then submitted to a vibratory flow from the sympathetic negative transmitter, until their intonation, by percussion, represents a pure unmixed chord. The indicator, attached to the rings, denotes when this condition is attained. They are then centred on a steel shaft and rotated at the rate of 2000 revolutions per minute, surrounded by the triple circuit ring. If the indicator, on the circuit ring, should vary five degrees on a subdivision of 8000, the process for correcting has to be repeated until the variations are reduced to three; which is near enough to be considered perfect, inasmuch as the circular resonator will then hold the neutral focalization intact during the graduation of the full ninths, or triple triplets, for sympathetic association to polar negative attraction.

Professor Dewar’s recent brilliant achievements, in his line of experimental research, not only have an important bearing upon one of the greatest problems of modern science, but upon the science of the future, as forecast by Keely.

Thermal radiation (and its negative, cold), the field of Professor Dewar’s researches, in Keely’s system comes below the first atomic; while celestial sympathetic radiation comes as the fountain head; the compound inter-etheric, from which all aggregated matter springs, the governing force of all aggregations. If there were no sympathetic radiation from the great celestial centre, space would be void of suspended, or floating, earthy and gaseous matter; consequently, planetary worlds would never have had their birth and growth.

The suggestion of Professor Dewar, that an increase in low temperatures might lead to the liquefying of hydrogen, is an admission that hydrogen may be a compound; for no simple can ever be condensed into a visible form. Keely’s experimental researches have proved, to his own satisfaction, that all known gases are compounds, inasmuch as, when the intensity which accompanies sympathetic vibration, in his process, is brought to bear upon any gas, it submits to dissociation.

The low temperatures with which Professor Dewar is dealing cause molecular motion to cease; but the matter thus experimented upon is not “dead matter” after this cessation of motion. Nothing can rob matter of the latent energy which it contains; water is not robbed of it by being frozen. The oxygen and hydrogen still occupy their relative positions and conditions, without depreciation of their vitality. Were water dead matter when frozen, its molecular activity could not be restored by elevating its temperature. Matter can never be robbed of its soul by any conditions of intensity of heat nor of cold that could be brought to bear upon it.

When Professor Dewar uses the term “dead,” in regard to matter, it is purely in reference to the present orthodox theory of heat energy. Take the analogy of a tuning fork or a bell; both are dead, so far as sound is concerned, if they are not in vibration;—they can be examined at rest or in motion, but science has not yet been able to do the same thing with those general motions of a molecular nature called heat. This is what Professor Dewar means by the term “dead,” knowing well that the molecular activity can return alike to the fork or the molecule; only the energy must be supplied from some other source. Such are the conditions with which orthodox science is dealing, without acknowledging Deity as the fountain head of all force.

Not until Professor Dewar has witnessed the dissociation of hydrogen will he be able to judge of the truth of the claim, that for nearly twenty years Keely has been researching the nature of the product of this dissociation: leading him to define and classify force and energy very much as Grant Allen has done in his heretical work, on this subject, published by Longmans & Co., in 1887.

James B. Alexander, in his book on “The Dynamic Theory,”1 makes this distinction between Force and Energy:

“Energy is simply the motion of material bodies, large or small. Force is the measure of energy, its degree or quantity …. The ether is the universal agent of Energy, and the medium in all motion and phenomena. It may with propriety be called the Soul of Things.”

“Palmam qui meruit ferat.”

Anonymous, in Cincinnati Illustrated News.