But the next years would not see Keely's depolarizer perfected, as the only experiment in this line that he conducted over the years was not disintegration, nor his far more interesting experiment with a scale model of his airship, but his experiment with the weights and the glass jars. In 1893, Jacob Bunn, vice president of the Illinois Watch Company, stated: "There can be no doubt... that Keely believes in himself and the wonderful examples he gave us of making heavy steel balls moving in the air at his pleasure by simply playing on a peculiar mouth organ."29
A reporter witnessed such a demonstration in 1895, and remarked that, "The absence of acceleration in speed seemed to preclude the idea of magnetism, on the supposition that the disks at the top and the bottom attracted each other...Tesla's alternating current motor, run by one wire, did not seem to offer any explanation of the phenomenon."30
But Keely explained that the disks were "sensitized," rendered "alternately attractive and repulsive by energy drawn from the ether of surrounding space by means under his control." He also used the terms "polar" and "depolar," with the attractive disks being polar and the repulsive ones being depolar. The platinum wire was connected to the device that would produce the force. He claimed that on two occasions, when an observer removed the disk from the top of the jar, the suspended weights "instantly fell, crashing through the bottom of the glass cylinder."31
In 1896, Keely gave a demonstration of what he called his "polar-depolar force" or "the interchange of polar and depolar sympathy." The account relates how "copper globes were made to revolve in response to the notes of a tuning fork or a zither." The witnesses were given a look at his still-unfinished "new motor," only superficially described as "a great mass of steel." He claimed that the motor would "neutralize the force of gravity," so that "a child will be able to pick it up and hold it at arm's length." He also stated that with such a device, "no bigger than your hand," "a street car crowded to the roof" could be run.32
It is at this point, and with all these experiments, that fact and legend have blended into a fantastic whole. When unraveled, the components show that some of the legend was based on facts, while we may probably never know if these facts led to the fulfillment of the legend. The publication of the weights-in-jars experiments, coupled with those slight references in the newspapers and the statements by Keely, Harte and Bloomfield-Moore, led to big expectations: For if small weights could be lifted, Keely said, "the suspension and propelling of an atmospheric navigator of any number of tons weight, can be successfully accomplished by thus exciting the molecular mass of the metal it is constructed of; and the vibratory neutral negative attraction evolved, will bring it into perfect control, commercially, by keeping it in sympathy with the earth's triune polar stream."33 He added confidently that "Gravity is nothing more than a concordant attractive sympathetic stream flowing towards the neutral center of the earth."34 Bloomfield-Moore painted her vista in plainer language, but delivered an even more inspiring outlook: "After he has gained as perfect control of it as we now have of steam, airships weighing thousands of tons can be raised to any height in our atmosphere, and the seemingly untraversable highways of the air opened to commerce."35
While Bloomfield-Moore left something to the imagination, a year after the publication of her book Keely travelled even further with his visionary concepts. Thus he provided Colville with a fantastic outline of his ultimate plans. Colville's Dashed Against the Rock, published in 1894, a year after Bloomfield-Moore's book, provided the reader with every detail of what such an airship might look like, and where it ultimately might travel. Keely went far beyond Bloomfield-Moore's vista; in Dashed Against the Rock the skies were definitely not the limit. Colville's writings on this subject were a clear reproduction of Keely's visionary ideas and based on "authentic reports of interviews" with Keely.
"The vessel in contemplation, the aerial navigator," Keely confided to Colville, "will be over two hundred feet long, over sixty feet in diameter, tapering at both ends to a point, made of polished steel, and will be capable of being driven under the power of depolar repulsion at the rate of three hundred miles an hour. It can be far more easily controlled than any instrument now in use for any phase of transit. Another very remarkable feature connected with this system of aerial navigation is that the vessel is not buoyed up or floated in the air through the medium of the air, so that if there were no atmosphere it would float just as readily. Hence, under mechanical conditions most certainly capable of production involving massive strength of resistance to interstellar vacuity, this can be made capable of navigating even the remote depth of space, positioned between planets where polarity changes are being controlled by other adjuncts of concentration for that purpose. Safely enclosed within this structure, a man possessing the chemical knowledge that these new laws give, and with sufficient supply of material from which to make oxygen, could travel to other planets in this system of worlds as easily as the same ship could navigate the depths of the ocean."
According to Keely, all this would be accomplished by "A small instrument, having three gyroscopes as a principal part of its construction." This was used to "demonstrate the facts of aerial navigation."
These gyroscopes were "attached to a heavy, inert mass of metal, weighing about one ton. The other part of the apparatus consists of tubes, enclosed in as small a space as possible, being clustered in a circle." The tubes represented "certain chords, which were coincident to the streams of force acting upon the planet, focalizing and defocalizing upon its neutral center. The action upon the molecular structure of the mass lifted was based upon the fact that each molecule in the mass possessed a north and south pole, — more strictly speaking, a positive and negative pole, — situated through the center, formed by the three atoms which compose it. No matter which way the mass of metal is turned, the poles of the molecule point undeviatingly to the polar center of the earth, acting almost exactly as the dip needle when uninfluenced by extraneous conditions, electrical and otherwise. The rotation of the discs of the gyroscopes produces an action upon the molecules of the mass to be lifted, reversing their poles, causing repulsion from the earth in the same way as poles of a magnet repel each other. This repulsion can be diminished and increased accordingly as the mechanical conditions are operated. By operating the three discs, starting them at full speed, then touching two of them so as to bring them, according to the tone they represented by their rotation to a certain vibratory ratio, the weight then slowly sways from side to side, leaves the floor, rising several feet in the air, remaining in that position, and as the discs gradually decrease their speed of rotation the weight sinks to the floor, settling down as lightly as thistledown."36
Keely's assurances and prospects incited the imaginations of Bloomfield-Moore, Colville and undoubtedly everybody else who read their books. But while his assurances and prospects still had to be realized, other things were giving rise to the legend. There exists for instance a photograph, taken in December 1889, of what Keely called a Planetary System Engine. No information on this device is available, and considering his constant flow of avant-garde ideas as well as the name of the device, it is inviting to speculate that it was part of his airship, perhaps even constructed for travel through space. If so, this would be a unique feature in itself, for Keely would have been the only person who at that time had actually built an engine for space travel. There is a delightful but in every aspect equally unsubstantiated rumor that the planetary system was some sort of atrolabium; the device would demonstrate the laws and forces holding the solar system together.37
Apart from allegations that Keely constructed a secret device to lift heavy weights for a man in California, he did construct a large and magnificent apparatus that he called the "aerial propeller."
The aerial propeller was meant to be an engine for an airship. There are no indications of the time period in which he was involved in the construction of his wonderful aerial propeller, but possibly around 1887 he started the construction of this device, sin
ce at that time a newspaper remarked that he "has been making a flying machine," which may have meant his aerial propeller. In 1894 Keely wrote to Bloomfield-Moore that "My strength has not reached the point whereby I can intensify myself to that degree requisite for the final sympathetic graduation on our aerial propeller, but I am rapidly reaching that most necessary condition, and am quite positive that by the first of June, I will be in perfect state to engage in this most fascinating work which I intend to push forward with my utmost vigor to completion."38
But in 1895 Keely was still engaged in the construction of the aerial propeller and stated that he considered his device to be "not yet in working order."39 In 1897 Bloomfield-Moore wrote that "He still has to devise an instrument that will establish the connective link in the entire combination, whether in the terrestrial engine, or in the aerial propeller, before these machines can become obedient to the governing law of nature."40
More is known, although not much, about this aerial propeller that was as mysterious as its inventor: "The flying machine and the apparatus for lifting heavy weights were in the back of the second story room. ...The flying machine however, had no moving parts, but was used as an awe inspirer, Keely's bloodcurdling accounts of its capabilities being accompanied by an occasional unexpected stroke of an ear splitting gong, which formed a part of its equipment."41
The reporter who witnessed Keely's weights-in-jars demonstration, and who had looked with "considerable awe upon a machine filled with resonating tubes, which was said to be capable of lifting an immense weight by striking the proper chord," also studied Keely's aerial propeller. He looked with "some apprehension upon the engine built to navigate an airship, whose wheels were not made to revolve, but only to be set to certain combinations. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, when Mr. Keely struck the gong on one end of its shaft, which he said was the keynote of the machine, that the reporter shuddered at the thought that he might sail out into space on that machine without knowing its combination."42
Other accounts provide us with more details of this incredible device: "Keely is at present engaged on a large and complicated piece of machinery which he calls the propeller of an airship, and whose purpose is sufficiently indicated by its name. It is supplied with three 'resonators,' or broad sheets of thin metal, each set to a particular pitch, and each playing some part in the mysterious process of drawing power from space. In addition are sundry disk-shaped and other apparatus, the whole arrangement being highly complex."43
Perhaps the most elaborate description is the one that was given by Bloomfield-Moore: "Each disk of the polar and depolar groupings in the propeller of the airship contains seven pints of hydrogen. In preparing these disks, the hydrogen is submitted to a triple order of vibration. ...The space which the propeller of the airship occupies in Keely's laboratory comes within a radius of six feet square. A small space for so powerful a medium — distributing over one thousand horsepower, as tested by experiment."
According to her, "The aerial propeller consisted of more than two thousand parts, the most important of which were a positive graduating chladna that was guided by 'polar action toward the north and reversing by depolar action,' a sympathetic polar negative transmitter for operating and controlling 'the action of the machinery in producing polar and depolar power,' thus 'liberating the latent sympathetic power in twenty seven sensitized disks.'"
Other important parts were the polar and depolar intermittent accumulator that carried eight "focalizing disks" which received and distributed the sympathetic polar negative flow, a positive ring that was suspended on a small shaft with three points, meant to "preserve the integrity of the neutral center of the machine," and two resonating drums, one positive and one negative, multiplying the intensity of the sympathetic flow. Other parts of Keely's remarkable aerial propeller included 27 depolar triple groupings, nine in each grouping, consisting of three vitalized disks with resonators, replying "sympathetically to polar and depolar action," and a large polar ring that was "associated with the central resonators by nine resonating polar disks placed at equal distances." This, according to Bloomfield-Moore, was the medium for distributing the polar flow. The last part that she found important enough to describe, was a small negative ring, which was "the governor of the propeller, associated with a polar bar that oscillates from the polar field to the depolar field."44
While this may serve as an example of language struggling to capture concepts of a most avant-garde nature, Bloomfield-Moore also left us with a description of the steering-device of the proposed airship: "The instrument devised by Mr. Keely for bringing the airship under control in its ascend and descent, consists of a row of bars, like the keys of a piano, representing the enharmonic and the diatonic conditions. These bars range from 0 to 100. At 50 Mr. Keely thinks the progress of the vessel ought to be about 500 miles an hour. At 100 gravity resumes its control. If pushed to that speed it would descend like a rifle-ball to the earth. There is no force known so safe to use as the polar flow. Mr. Keely thinks that when the conditions are once set up, they remain for ever, with the perpetual molecular action as the result, until the machinery wears out. In the event of meeting a cyclone, the course of the vessel, he teaches, can be guided so as to ascend above the cyclone by simply dampening a certain proportion of these vibratory bars. The instrument of guiding the ship has nothing to do with the propelling of it, which is a distinct feature of itself, acting by molecular bombardment; moving the molecules in the same order as in the suspension process, but transversely. After the molecular mass of the vessel is sensitized, or made concordant with the celestial and terrestrial streams, the control of it in all particulars is easy and simple. In ascending the positive force is used, or the celestial, as Keely has named it, and in descending the negative or terrestrial. Passing through a cyclone the airship would not be affected by it. The breaking up of cyclones will open a field for future research, if any way can be discovered for obtaining the chord of mass of the cyclone. To differentiate the chord of its thirds would destroy it."45
Notwithstanding these descriptions, we will probably never know with any certainty what his whole system of aerial navigation consisted of, or what equipment it embraced. Keely also designed and built other devices to be used in his system of aerial navigation, such as his commercial engine of 1893-1896 that was never completed but was also intended for aerial navigation.46
In the visionary fever of all these remarkable descriptions and slight references, it is easy to forget that we cannot actually say whether Keely actually built or completed a full-sized airship that was capable of flight, and whether his entire system of vibratory flight and his aerial propeller were ever used beyond the experimental stage. Contemporary sources are vague and ambiguous on this point. Although Bloomfield-Moore's writing may sound like a suggestion that something of an actual, full-sized airship might exist, she also admitted that, "Not until the aerial ship is in operation will the world be able to comprehend the nature of Keely's discoveries."47 In 1895, Keely declared that his system of aerial navigation still had to be "perfected and simplified before any patents can be taken out on the propeller of the airship."48
A typed, unsigned contract in the possession of Bloomfield-Moore, dated September 24, 1895,49 but apparently signed by Keely "at the time John Jacob Astor and New York friends were talking of securing a large interest" in the Keely Motor Company,50 also demonstrates that Keely was still trying to perfect his antigravity device towards the end of that year: "It is my desire to give to the world the benefit of my discoveries at the earliest possible moment, without waiting to protect myself by patents beyond what is due to the Keely Motor Company shareholders and to my interests in aerial navigation, the system of which has to be perfected and simplified before any patents can be taken out on the propeller of the airship. In accordance with the wishes of my co-worker, H.O. Ward — without whose assistance this system would never have had birth, and who has lighted up as by a pillar of fire all my dark and intrica
te paths — I have proposed to instruct Mr. Zak Samuels51 in the taking up of dead lines and in the sensitizing of metal, so that it is acted upon by radiation on the same principle as in the human brain. As soon as I am ready to give this instruction I will notify Mr. Samuels (who is the only man I will have time to instruct) and this at the earliest possible moment."
Another confirmation comes from a theosophical source; in 1896, occultist W. Scott-Elliot while writing on Atlantis and its fabled vimanaas, digressed on Keely's proposed airship. The most important detail is that he too admitted that Keely still had not mastered his method of flight: "...the Atlantean methods of locomotion must be recognized as still more marvelous, for the airship or flying machine which Keely in America, and Maxim in this country are now attempting to produce, was then a realized fact."52
Based on such sources, and the only ones available today in which we can trace his antigravity ideas, we find that as of 1897, Keely was still trying to perfect his aerial propeller and did not have his system of aerial navigation in working order.
We are left to speculate as to whether he ever succeeded in getting his system of aerial navigation in working order, or if perhaps others completed his work. Whether Keely's ship was witnessed in his time, glittering in the sunlight as it traversed the very skies, is now open to conjecture. We find no trace of it in the surviving sources directly relating to him. It is possible that he carefully kept results of this line of research secret, as he had done with the alleged device for the man in California. Coincidentally, 1896 would be the beginning of unusual sightings of strange and never identified aeroforms in the skies over large parts of America that lasted well into 1897. Their origins have always been as enigmatic as the inventor from Philadelphia.
Free Energy Pioneer- John Worrell Keely Page 27