Being in the best of moods, Keely also explained the principle of his vaporic gun to the reporter. He took what looked like "a policeman's billy" out of a sachel, that, he claimed, was a vibrator. "It is a hollow coil of steel of the finest quality. In one end is an orifice, by which it is attached to the gun. It is the most peculiar piece of steel in the world." Tapping one end of the coil twice on the floor and holding it to the ear of the reporter, the reporter noticed that "the steel cone was humming in a very high key. The noise was like that of a tuning fork." When the reporter took the cone in his hand, he felt that the cone was quivering from one end to the other. "It hums, don't it? No other piece of metal in the world of similar shape will hum at all. ...That steel bar... was the beginning of my motor. By means of it I stumbled on my discoveries. For seven years I have kept flowing through that core a stream of etheric vapor. The action of the vapor has been to affect the relations of the molecules and to alter to a certain extent their conditions. For this reason it has become subject to these vibrations.... There has been no apparent outward change in the steel. Its weight is the same as before, but it is in the process of silent dissolution. Were I to pass through it for 20 years longer this etheric vapor, it would crumble into nothingness. ...The steel cone is necessary for the promulgation of the projecting force of the etheric vapor when applied to gunnery."
The vaporic gun Keely described as "a breechloading rifle weighing 500 pounds. It was specially constructed for me. On Wednesday last I charged my tube, a five-gallon reservoir of wrought iron, one and a half inches thick — with etheric vapor. Then I boxed it up and did not ever test it, so I was certain of its powers. There, hours before the experiments, it remained untouched in my shop. The process of charging it consumed less than four seconds of time. You could not guess how much material was used in making the vapor. ...To project 20 leaden bullets, each weighing nearly five ounces, at a velocity of over 450 feet a second, there was required six drops of water and about a pint of air. From this combination I derived sufficient force to fire 20 bullets of like weight as those used." But during the demonstration of his vaporic gun, Keely noticed an odd effect: "The most curious thing about all is that I found at the end of my experiments, was that I had increased the power in my tube instead of diminishing it... The initial velocity of the last bullet was more than that of the first one. "88
The day after his demonstration several daily papers contained favorable articles of what was termed as his "great success." As a consequence, the stock of the Keely Motor Company was sent up from 9 cents on a dollar to 15 cents, "the money of the deluded purchasers was thus successfully netted," as it was wryly commented.89
Three weeks after the experiment at Sandy Hook, Scientific American, which never saw much in Keely's inventions, published its opinion; to the editors compressed air was the real power behind the vaporic gun, which was referred to as "nothing more than a clumsy air gun."90
Scientific American found a staunch ally in Captain Zalinski of the U.S. Army, who was one of those present at the demonstration at Sandy Hook. He thought along similar lines. He would later declare to the press that he saw Keely "fire his gun by placing some mysterious appliance in the breech, sounding a tuning fork and then opening a brass cock on the reservoir." Zalinski stated that "it was evident to me that Keely had accumulated gas or air under very high pressure. Upon opening the cock spoken of, the air would rush through the copper tube into the air chamber of the gun. The several seconds that elapsed between the opening of the brass cock on the reservoir and the firing was requisite for the bursting of the diaphragms." Zalinski had his own reasons for denouncing Keely's demonstration, for at around the same time he promoted another invention, the "dynamite gun." This was the joint invention of a number of men and was undergoing tests ordered by the government, under the special direction of Zalinski.91 So naturally Zalinski kept ridiculing Keely's vaporic gun in the press,92 or downplayed the stranger effects that others had noted. He would even visit him in his workshop, but that did not change his opinion of the inventor and his works. He had, he said, taken a pressure gauge with him that would register 10,000 pounds, but Keely refused to use the tool. And although he witnessed him making "a globe revolve by a tuning fork," the demonstration didn't convince him. Returning to the topic of Keely's vaporic gun, Zalinski stated: "I question Mr. Keely's ability...to fire the gun continuously for 100 rounds, maintaining the same high velocity without discarding his flask."93
But elsewhere it was remarked, just as Keely had noted and told the reporter who had visited him at his home the day after the demonstration, that "Whatever the substance was that Keely carried in a steel tube, it was apparently inexhaustible, the projective force of the nineteenth and last shot being greater than any of the preceding ones, a circumstance that strangely combated the theory of compressed air."94
Zalinski offered no explanation of this strange detail. Instead he confidently assured that his "rather exceptional experience with air at high pressure enabled me to see possibilities that might not have occurred to others. The air chamber of the gun was so small and the reservoir so large, with a pressure of say, 3,000 Pounds to the square inch, that he could continue firing for a number of shots."
Zalinski also claimed to have offered to produce a similar result "if the company would furnish an outfit which would look like Keely's. This offer was declined. "95
It would be two years before the statement by Scientific American that Keely had used compressed air in the Sandy Hook experiment was vehemently countered: "That he uses compressed air or any known gas, as charged and insisted upon in the Scientific American, is absurd and totally impossible to conceive of, when we consider the available space for such compressed gas or air in all the cylinders put together which Mr. Keely employs. Besides, the phenomena accompanying the discharges of this gas or vapor after each experiment are entirely different from those of compressed air or ordinary gas. Mr. Keely justly complains that the Scientific American editors keep up the hue and cry of humbug and fraud against him, and at the same time have refused the most urgent invitations extended to them to come to Philadelphia and witness the operations of his discoveries before ridiculing them."96
Keely had always been pestered by persons who claimed that he was a fraud, and although enough was alleged usually nothing was proven beyond any doubt, and nothing substantial had been brought to light. In these uncertain times, another person joined the ranks of those who thought that Keely was a mere swindler, and he, too, claimed that he had a very good reason for stating so: "A story is current here," wrote a newspaper, "that a veteran machinist named Baker, an old resident of Bridgeport, has just returned from Philadelphia with a sensational story to tell. He is represented as having been for the past two years an employee at the workshops of the Keely Motor Company in Philadelphia, and as the representative of a New York capitalist, by whom he was to be paid for the discovery and exposure of Keely's much advertised secret. Now Baker returns to denounce Keely as a fraud, and outlines a book which he promises to write for the education of Wall Street and other parts of this too-confiding world."
Baker claims to have been drawing $300 a month from the New Yorker while pursuing his investigations and to have had the full confidence of Keely. Keely, he says, was very careful in engaging him, keeping him at the most unimportant employment until he felt that the man was trustworthy. Baker said it required a year and a half to discover the secret.
Baker also gave an elaborate description of the motor: "The motor proper consisted of a heavy outside covering of metal shaped to deceive the spectator in every way he may look at it. The outside looks as if the machine consisted of a large massive iron cylinder with valves, wheels, and outside pipes. These are supposed to assist in the act of generating the famous new force when in fact the outside shape has little to do with the working parts. Those parts are on the inside. The force is, pure and simple, air, the least bit tainted with a chemical to deceive, as everything else is made to do
. The air is pumped from 7 to 21 steel tubes on the inside of the shell. The tubes are of sufficient strength to withstand a pressure of from 10 to 30,000 pounds. There is a mechanism inside the shell that permits the compressed air to pass from one chamber or cylinder at a time into a distinct and separate cylinder which contains the piston that operates the flywheel of the machine. By this method the machine can be kept running five minutes or perhaps longer, and yet show very little change on the pressure gauge. The plan is to allow only one third of the air to escape from one cylinder, and then that one is disconnected, and so on until but one cylinder has been used to that extent, when the machine is stopped and a great show is made, as, of course, the indicated pressure is exactly the same as it was before the wheel went around. Not a drop of water is used at any time. The water story is all bosh."
" Such in substance is a long story as it is told by Baker, who alleges that Keely is far from being a practical mechanic and never talks to one, though when a stockholder comes around Keely deluges him with a mixed fantastic jargon, using a hundred terms or more that no mechanic or scientist ever heard before. Baker avers that the idea of a motor was given to him in Newark, N.J., as long ago as 1867, when Dr. George A. Prindham, then of Newark, now of Philadelphia, constructed a machine in many respects like the Keely motor at the fire engine works of Gould Brothers, on Railroad Avenue in Newark. Keely, he says, captured the idea by haunting the shops. Baker omits to make public the name of the New York capitalist in whose interest he has been playing the detective on Mr. Keely."97 The book that Baker promised to write was never published, and we may only guess at the identity of the New York capitalist.
Was there any truth in Baker's unsettling claims? To find that out, a reporter was sent to follow the trail, and dutifully went to the firm of George & Eberhardt, under which authority the firm of the Gould Brothers now was working. Eberhardt was interviewed, who admitted that "he certainly remembered a machine like the one which Baker claims was made in the shop of the Gould Brothers. We made the machine for Dr. Prindham, and he spent considerable money and time on it. I also recall that one part of the machinery called for a powerful screw of chilled steel and that we found considerable trouble in bringing it to perfection." A brother of Prindham, who was employed in the shop, had more to say: "Yes, I remember it all very well... The Baker you speak of is, I think, very likely A. Beckert, a German we had here. He was employed on work of the kind you mention. It was my brother who tried to get the machine first brought out. A man named Scarttergood one day introduced a tall, lean down Easterner to him and said that the Yankee had a wonderful patent, but he hadn't enough money to bring it out. He wanted to form a stock company, but my brother said he had money enough to bring the thing out, and together they started on it. My brother often went into ecstasies over the invention. ...He often told me that all he need do was to put a quart of cold water and the thing would go and be as powerful as a Cortiss engine, while only occupying one hundredth part of the space and costing only a few hundred dollars."
The device itself was described as "an elaborate affair, with a big cylinder, like the description of Keely's machine. It had a small engine attached to it. He used to put some cyanide of potassium into the pipes and make the thing go, which it would for a short time." The device, however, was not successful; after he paid $300 for the making of the machine lever, and at least $700 or $800 more for the other parts and the patent, Prindham finally gave up in despair and "would have no more to do with it." Unfortunately, Prindham's brother could not recall the name of the patentee, but thought it likely that "the inventor who caused the doctor to invest in it is now with Keely working the same racket in Philadelphia." When the reporter asked if Keely had visited the workshop at one time or another, Prindham's brother ambiguously muttered that yes, "I have seen him around the shop, I think. He was in Newark certainly, but where there are 175 men on one floor of a shop it is almost impossible to remember the names of those who have worked here and left. But I am of the opinion that Keely has been around the shop at one time or another."98
As Baker's claims foremost demonstrate, by now everybody was looking into the Keely affair and each uncovered something to their liking. Skeptics and cynics simply saw compressed air as the motive power; but Keely's supporters were sure they beheld the grandiose forces of the cosmos at work in his workshop. There were those who thought of Keely as a mere swindler and as a consequence saw swindlers everywhere connected in a sinister conspiracy of swindlership. There were others who saw a herald of a new and grandiose age for all mankind in the plagued inventor.
An interesting and amusing side-effect of this controversy was that the publicity surrounding Keely dragged many a curious episode of early American history in print that would otherwise have been totally forgotten today. Five years after Baker made his startling claims, but still not had written his promised book, it would be alleged far away in Chicago that, in fact, John Keely at one time had been a person named John Adam Huss. Of this the claimant was absolutely certain: "I knew John W. Keely, the motor man, twenty-two years ago, as John Adam Huss," as a certain Eustace Wyszynski confessed in a letter to a Chicago newspaper.
In 1856, Wyszinski had met a man with that name in Louisville. There, Huss unfolded his plans for what he called a "hydraulic air engine which would relegate steam as a motive power to the past." A number of prominent citizens became interested; a company called The Hydraulic Air Company was formed in three states. Huss was paid "several thousand cash down for the exclusive rights in those states and put on a large salary to superintend the erection of a factory."
After much delay Huss was finally forced to bring out his engine, but "It was a bald failure." A second demonstration was announced, but postponed from time to time. A year later, the date was fixed. The day arrived and the stockholders met. Who then could paint their disappointment when "the ugly rumor reached them that Mr. Huss had not been seen for a day or so?" Huss fled, and 22 years after the unfortunate incident, Wyszynski showed a reporter stock certificates, cuts of the engine, and records of the money expended.
"But how does that identify Huss with Keely?" the reporter understandably asked. Wyszynski explained how the Huss affair "broke up" the business of his son-in-law. Wyszynski went to work as a map engraver with a lithographic company. "I had been working for them about two years when an incident occurred which subsequent developments have kept as vivid in my memory as if it had occurred yesterday. All efforts to trace Huss had been fruitless, and he had almost passed out of mind. But one day, as I was bending over a lithographic stone, I was aroused by a voice in conversation with Charles W. German, the head of the firm. I looked up. Two men were consulting him as to whether he could make a print of a machine of which they had a small model. One of the men was Huss. As I recognized him he saw me. He and his companion made a bolt for the door and left Mr. German standing dumfounded. 'What in thunder's the matter?' exclaimed Mr. German, when he got his breath. "That's Huss, the air machine man,' I said. 'It's John W. Keely, the machinist,' replied Mr. German, 'and his friend is CM. Babcock, so they introduced themselves.'" That, according to Wyszynski, was the last time that he saw John Adam Huss, "alias John W. Keely, but it isn't the last I've heard of him by a great deal." When Keely began to attract attention in Philadelphia, Wyszynski obtained a description of his device "so far as it had been made public." Wyszynski claimed that he found out that "it was the same thing we had put our money in at Louisville."99
But while no comments of Keely or his supporters have survived on Baker's allegations, Keely did have something to say about Wyszynski's strange tale. In a letter to a Philadelphia newspaper, Keely explained that, "The whole of this story, so far as it relates to myself, is an utter fabrication. I do not know one of the parties named... and was never in the city of Louisville in my life. In 1866 I was residing and in business in this city (Philadelphia) at 817 Market Street, and was associated with Bennett C. Wilson. ...I repeat that the whole story, so far as it
concerns myself, is a base falsehood."100
Considering all the publicity, a great deal would be written, alleged, claimed, speculated and pondered about Keely, both pro and con. Naturally, over the years, various details about him would appear. Several people came forward and told their remembrances of him, and how he appeared to them amidst the furor over his incredible engines.
One of these, when he met Keely, was "impressed by three things: the swarthiness of his complexion, the fact that he wore very large and brilliant diamonds in a very, very dirty shirt front, and the enormous size and malformations of his knuckles. He was playing checkers in his workshop, where his mysterious machine lay silent and grim. The checker-board was grimy, the draughts were grimy and his fingers were grimy."
The person admitted that these were "Trivialities to notice in the presence of a great discovery and a great discoverer," but still, "for some unaccountable reason those were the things which impressed the narrator most, and to this day he never thinks of Keely but what there comes before the mind's vision the spectacle of a man handling dirty checkers with still dirtier fingers. His knuckles as has been said, were enormously large."101
Free Energy Pioneer- John Worrell Keely Page 7