The Plenum - LCR002
Alternative Science Outlook
By Jerry W. Decker

This month: Who was John Keely and what did he do?
Lake Chapala Review Article - June 2002 Issue

I thought it might be of interest to folks who might like to know something about John Ernst Worrell Keely and why I chose him as the ‘patron’ of my website. When I was 15, I found some information about an intriguing researcher working with complex frequencies from about 1872 until his death in 1898. The claims were nothing short of miraculous;

1) a motor claimed to run on ‘etheric’ energy, once initiated (kick started), it would run until the parts wore out

2) a method of ‘dissociating’ 3 or more drops of water to generate an explosive force of 25,000 to 30,000 pounds per square inch (consider air pressure at sea level is only 14.7 pounds per square inch, we use about 30psi in our car tires and general use compressors only produce up to about 160psi), reports were 2” thick steel pipes with needle thin holes would burst like balloons at such pressures. (Note: this was NOT simply the production and combustion of hydrogen/oxygen from water.)

3) an acoustic means to disintegrate quartz mineral into powder

4) a cannon that used acoustically generated explosive force was demonstrated to the press

5) an ‘airship’ claimed to have levitated from the ground and flown at approximately 500mph as demonstrated to the US Army in 1893 and declined for investment due to its ‘complexity’

6) reports of a ‘luminiferous’ aether glow in experiments using focused acoustic sound in water

Keely had a checkered history and is written historically as a fraud of the time, mostly based on articles published by Scientific American after his death, showing thin hollow tubes, rubber bulbs and high pressure storage containers. I won’t go into all that but will comment that, at the time of his demonstrations, and after his death, NO ONE had been able to produce or duplicate any of Keelys’demonstrations using compressed air or hydraulically compressed fluids.

I do in fact think Keely might have resorted to trickery in some of his demonstrations to potential investors where his experiments weren’t repeatable enough to insure a foolproof demonstration. This happens even today as with the embarrassing Windows releases that have failed to boot up at massive publicity releases. Some of my fellow Keely researchers have expressed concern at my public position about the probability of ‘some fakery’ with Keelys’ demonstrations, but in all fairness, I think both sides should be presented and let people judge for themselves.

There have been recent advances which verify some of Keelys’ claims but not all of them.

1) Panasonic has a patent for an ultrasonic motor (Keely called his a ‘compound’ or ‘etheric’ motor because it spun from many frequencies phased together to produce a rotary force of high torque). Years ago in Lubbock Texas an inventor connected a large tuning fork to an 18” model car. He claimed when the tuning fork was electrically excited, the vibrating tines were connected to linkages which would run the model car with very little use of power, his discovery was subsequently bought out by big oil companies. I have yet to find my clipping (with photo) of that news report, but I never forgot it.

2) a company called Macrosonics out of New Mexico has discovered how to produce and practically apply high pressure focused sound waves to create tremendous mechanical forces as well as refrigeration

3) we routinely use lithotropsy to shatter gallstones and kidney stones in the body, the device uses high intensity ultrasonic sound waves to break up the stones which are then excreted from the body (Keely used similar methods to shatter quartz)

4) NASA and others have demonstrated ‘acoustic levitation’ by production of standing waves which capture and hold matter, a similar method is ‘magnetic levitation’ using opposing fields and is the principle of hot fusion magnetic containment schemes for superhot plasmas intended to ‘self-ignite’ and produce vast amounts of power, a complete failure to date by the way, despite all the billions of dollars expended on the idea. (Keely used complex frequencies to provide not only lift but thrust for propelling his aerial craft.) The ‘Mystery Airship’ sightings occurred from about 1897 to 1900 and to date, no one has a clue what these were or who built and flew them. I find it fascinating that Keely was turned down for support of his demonstrated aerial craft, yet some 4 years later, the media was deluged with reports of these unknown flying machines.

5) The discovery of sonoluminescence where a high intensity standing wave is produced in water, resulting in a tiny bright blue pulsing bubble (Keely’s ‘luminiferous aether’.) See the video ‘Chain Reaction’ for a good overview.

It is not wise to throw the baby out with the bathwater, so I choose to correlate from many sources that which fits and which might lead us to new or ‘lost’ understandings. The next step is to develop a hypothesis and carry out an experiment to verify or refute it, that is the way science works.

I would appreciate any questions or feedback to Jerry Decker which might be used in the column or posted online.

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