KEELY AND HIS MOTOR.

NYT - PHILADELPHIA, Nov. 3, 1888.- The Keely Motor case again came up in Common Pleas Court No. 3 today on a motion brought by Rufus E. Shipley and William C. Strawbridge, counsel for Bennet C. Wilson, to show cause why Inventor Keely should not be committed for contempt of court in refusing to divulge information to the expert appointed by the court as whether Keely's apparatus is identical with a motor design which he transferred to Mr. Wilson in 1869. Charles B. Collier, J. J. Murphy, and Wayne MacVeagh looked after Mr. Keely's interests. "There is not the slightest doubt that Mr. Keely is in flagrant contempt of court," said Mr. Shipley. "He was ub contempt before and his counsel nearly admitted it. They talked then about his poverty and the large amounts of money he had expended. These large amounts have dwindled down to $87. His explanations furnished to the experts were typewritten copies and entirely unintelligible. If the court can understand his explanations then he is absolved from the charge, but if the papers cannot be understood, and I claim that they cannot, he is still in contempt." When Mr. Shipley had ceased speaking Mr. Collier read the majority report, in which the experts had arrived at the conclusion that they could not understand the mechanical apparatus known as the "Keely Motor ." Mr. Collier produced a number of drawings, from which he said ordinary workman had constructed the machine, and dwelt upon the fact that these men could understand them and still learned experts could not make head or tail of them. He read Mr. Keely's description of it, and said that he would give his word as a member of the bar that Keely's description was true. "I have seen it work a thousand times," said Mr. Collier, "and understand it, and yet Prof. Marks says he cannot understand the construction unless he is given a description of the motive power that is to run it." A long wrangle followed, in which ex-Attorney-General Wayne MacVeagh took a prominent part. Judge Finletter reserved his decision. Wilson's lawyers expect to get Keely into jail for contempt before the matter is settled.

NYT - PHILADELPHIA, Nov. 10, 1888. - Judge Finletter, sitting in Common Pleas Court No. 3, today made the rule to issue an attachment against inventor Keely for contempt of court absolute, and Keely will be arrested during the week and arraigned before Judge Finletter on the charge of refusing to divulge the information requested by the court on April 7. The decision also discharges the rule to dissolve the injunction, as will as the rule to open the sealed package which is in the custody of the court, and which to said to contain a description of the Keely motor. The injunction against Keely was also continued until further notice. When Judge Finletter rendered his decision Lawyers Charles B. Collier, Wayne MacVeagh, and J. J. Murphy, representing Keely, and Lawyers Rufus E. Shapely and A. S. L. Shields, representing Bennett C. Wilson, were all in court, Keely's lawyers were thunderstruck, and Mr. Collier hurried out of court and went to Keely's house at 1,632 Oxford-street, and told his client what had happened. Mr. Keely, Mr. Collier said afterward, was very much worried, and said Mr. Collier: "What have I done that the court should put me into contempt?" Keely and Lawyer Collier had a long talk, and it was decided that the inventor should not appear before the court until an officer went after him. The writ of attachment was not issued today, but it was said that Keely would be arrested on Monday and taken into court. What punishment Judge Finletter will inflict upon the inventor none of the lawyers would attempt to anticipate. Lawyer Collier, the ex-President of the Keely Motor Company, who has stuck by Keely through thick and thin for 15 years, was seen tonight. With the full knowledge that what he said was to be published, his language was taken down by the reporter in Mr. Collier's presence. Lawyer Collier said: "Mr. Keely can't be imprisoned. All that can be done with him is to impose a fine. I don't know, however, what Judge Finletter will do. He may condemn Keely to be hanged. If Finletter sends Keely to prison we'll sue him. If Keely is sent to prison I'll go to the Supreme Court and bring habeas corpus proceedings at once. Legally, a man cannot be imprisoned for contempt of court committed out of court. He can only be fined. The conduct of this case by Judge Finletter was a series of stupendous blunders, and for me to say that justice has been done would be to prostitute my own manhood. Judge Finletter prejudged the case. He has perverted and polluted the very fountain of justice. He has been the mouthpiece of the mob and has crucified Keely as a fraud. Judge Finletter wrote as opinion in delivering his decision, simply because he could not write an opinion to go with such a decision. Judge Finletter admitted that he had mutilated the court records as to what he had said relative to the case in open court on Sept. 18. Mr. MacVeagh fully agrees with me Mr. Keely has compiled with the orders of the court, when all his lawyers were of the opinion, as they are now, that such orders were wholly beyond the power of the court to make. This persecution of Keely is simply a criminal conspiracy and we will get down to the very bottom of it. The public have been educated to look upon Keely as a fraud, but I know different. He has a secret. It is his own. It is an invention, and no power on earth has the right to wring that secret from him. "Two of the experts appointed by Judge Finletter, Dr. Creason and Prof. Marks of the university, are declared enemies of Keely. It is a packed jury of experts. The experts went to Keely's shop and pawed over a lot of old machinery that had been discarded 10 years ago, and the court upon their report orders Keely at his own expense to go to work and put together the old machine. The sealed package contains a description of the machine invented in 1869. It isn't Keely's machine of today. Prof. Marks is to be sued civilly and criminally. He has defamed Keely. He attacked him in a newspaper 10 days ago. Judge Finletter was apprised right after he appointed Marks as one of the experts that he was an enemy of Keely's. I say dispassionately that the decision made in this case is without a parallel in a court of justice. We mean to light back, and you'll find that the old saying 'Truth is mighty and will prevail,' will apply to Keely, and that the time will come when the public will not couple his name with fraud or humbug."

NYT - November, 12, 1888 - JOHN W. KEELY, who claims to have invented something or other which is to revolutionize existing conditions surrounding the development of motor power, has at last been declared in contempt of court, and unless he purges himself of the contempt by promptly exhibiting his so-called "motor" to the experts appointed to examine it he stands a fair chance of being committed to the county prison of Philadelphia. The attachment of his person was not placed in the Sheriff's hands Saturday when the order was made, the court desiring to give Mr. Keely reasonable time to purge himself and avoid the degradation which will follow his commitment to prison. The inventor now finds himself in a position where his long career of living at the expense of credulous capitalists is threatened with a sudden ending. If he obeys the court and exhibits his motor, explaining its "workings" to the experts, the mystery will be exploded, and the fraudulent nature of his claims will be exposed. If he does not obey, operations on the wonderful motor will have to cease, as he could scarcely enjoy the secrecy which his projects require, under the watchful eyes of his jailers. Whatever decision he may make the people will be the gainer, and the contributions to his yawning pocketbook will stop.

Cycle upon cycle of recurring ages must have passed, after the creation of man upon the earth, before he could have had any real consciousness of the magnitude or governing laws of the Universe. The sun by day, and moon and stars by night, with all their varying phases of beauty and sublimity, must have filled his mind with wonder, as well as awe, and turned it with reverence to a higher power as the Creator and Author of his existence. The unwritten and prehistoric record of the conflict, of the human mind, in searching for the truth of what was daily seen and felt, must have been severe beyond description, and made, in some measure, apologize for the great mistakes made by Scientists, in their expressed opinions of creation, since history commenced the record which reaches down to our day. From the simple astronomers of Chaldea, down to the present time, these differences of opinion have puzzled, and sometimes confounded, the common mind to a degree almost producing infidelity; and one of the most sublime and convincing principles of science, proving an all-wise, creative hand in the construction of the universe, was long buried in the dust of fanatic dogmatism. Pythagoras and Aristarchus, 280 years before Christ, taught as we teach, that the earth and other planets revolve round the sun. They were probably prevented by the priesthood through the superstitions of the day, from so far verifying their opinions as to secure belief in their system. Ptolemy in the second century flatly contradicted them, and the truth was hidden for 1,500 years. Copernicus came to the rescue with the correct theory 350 years ago; but was bitterly denounced as visionary, impious, and ungodly. The Copernican system became established, however, though some of its votaries did not escape burning at the stake. It having been settled that our sun is the center of the solar system, and that it controls all its planets within their orbits with an iron grasp, it becomes us to study well, as best we may, the laws which have created and now govern them, with such hypothetic explanations as shall not contradict each other, as old theories often do.

"Actien"* is supposed to be a surplus energy or fluid thrown off from the central suns, towards their planets, having a direct and positive agency in the original creation of the universe. The new law presupposes two primary and creative principles in nature, "Actien" and "Ether," and assumes that our sun through its axial revolution, is constantly throwing off from its surface, through dark and cold etheric space, toward the earth, a surplus, imponderable, subtle energy or fluid, which, neither heated nor luminous on leaving the sun, passes through intervening space, and enters the atmosphere of the earth; in which, through combustion, light, heat, electricity, magnetism, and the gases are produced, and that the earth does not receive its light as light, or heat as heat, from the sun. All obtainable evidence proves that the higher the ascent from the earth towards the sun, the darker and colder it is found to be. If cold increases at the ratio of one degree per every 300 feet of ascension, animal life would become extinct at less than eight miles from the surface of the earth. At seven miles, the highest known point reached by man, the sky is found to be so dark and somber, and the rays of the sun so dim, that it resembles a copper-colored moon, when rising on an unclouded evening, through a deep blue sky. Astronomers, by simple calculations, have attempted to show us how inconceivably cold it must be, only 1,000 miles from the earth. The same form of reasoning would produce like changes in the color and darkness of the sky.

The starry heavens present a field to our vision of such beauty, grandeur, and immensity, that the human mind is lost in wonder at beholding them, and asks in vain, under old theories, for a consistent explanation of their physical structure. It is constantly reiterated by astronomers that stars are composed of heated, luminous matter; consequently, uninhabitable. That the fixed stars, with our sun the nearest, are fire balls, or melting furnaces, ever ready to devour nebula, and everything else around them that is tangible, in order to supply light and heat for the cold and dark universe of space. This old theory cannot longer be rationally sustained, and must give place to the newly discovered law of Actien, i.e., combustion. More than six thousand stars meet the gaze of the naked eye in its survey of one night. Astronomers say that the fabulous number of 20,000,000 all aglow, can be seen with a powerful telescope. When we consider that the nearest of these is 200,000 times as far from us as the sun, and that it would take from three and a half to twenty-one years for the light which reaches us to cease, if they were extinguished, we cannot grasp and hold the vast conception in our minds. Yet it is supposed that each of these is a central sun with its own colony of planets circling round it, which in size are vastly superior to those of our own solar system, and are traveling through space with such speed that it is impossible for us to comprehend it. The star Sirius is said to be moving fifty-four miles a second, or 194,400 miles per hour; a flaming mass, leading its brood of planets through illimitable space. The measure of Actienic force of light and heat from fixed stars, beyond our own sun, cannot be estimated. It is said their distance only prevents these superior orbs from falling down upon us with accelerated force. Herchel's observations prove that their brightness, or apparent magnitude, bears no definite relation to their distance. The rays from stars so cross each other, as to impeded their course towards us. The possible Actienic ray from them, reaching our atmosphere, may, through combustion alone, give us what we see and feel of their light and heat. That any considerable amount of developed light or heat could be precipitated from them direct upon their planets through such a medium as must exist in space, is very improbable, if not absolutely impossible. Sechi estimates that the cold of space reaches 18,000,000 degrees. It is absurd to suppose heat could pass through such a medium.

Philosophy and mathematics have not always been happily blended in the teaching of astronomy. The popular mind, often less skilled in figures than in mechanical principles and their relations to practical life, cannot always see in extended problems a full illustration of the subject it tries to compass. Of the real body of the sun, its chemistry and mechanical construction, but little can be exactly known, for the highest telescope can bring it no nearer than 180,000 miles from the standpoint of our vision. At such distance the objects are so vaguely defined that much of conclusion has to be arrived at through philosophical analogy. There is often mixed with the truth so much of speculation and marvelous exaggeration that the sublime is rendered ridiculous. Astronomers now fix the distance of the earth from the sun about 91,000,000 of miles, its diameter being 852,581 miles, its volume 1,200,000 times greater than that of the earth. The matter of which the sun is composed is said to weigh only one-quarter as much, bulk for bulk, as that of the earth; therefore only 300,000 earths would be required in one scale of the balance to weigh down the sun in the other. In other words, the mass or weight of the sun is 300,000 times greater than that of the earth. Its attractive force, however, is 770 times greater than all the combined planets. "The brilliancy of the sun, compared with that of the other stars, is so great that it is difficult at first to look upon it as in any way related to those feeble twinklers." Its distance from us is less than 1/200,000 of that of the nearest star, Alpha Centauri. Removed as far as the latter is from us, our sun would be a star of the second magnitude; while removed to the mean distance of the first magnitude stars, it would be just visible to an unaided eye as a star of the sixth magnitude. Sirius is supposed to be equal in bulk to more than 3,000 suns. The photosphere or disk of the sun seems to be a perfect luminous circle. It is supposed to have a defined atmosphere of 80,000 miles above the visible surface, with a possible one of much greater extent beyond. One of the greatest mysteries about the sun is its specific gravity, or density, compared to that of the earth. Its first inner planet, Mercury, is still more dense than the earth; yet it describes a very eccentric circle in its orbit round the sun, and is very sensitive to attractive influences. Of what the sun is composed, the wisest philosophers have had conflicting opinions. Both the old and new theories agree that our sun is but a planet of another sun, around which it revolves through an immense orbit, which it is travelling at an inconceivable speed, set by astronomers at 240 miles per minute. The Actienic law also admits of an axial revolution of the sun, though possibly not in the same period of time. It would be very difficult to determine the time which would not essentially prove or disprove either the old or new theories. The old theories, however, make no adequate provision for light and heat as such, from the parent sun for our solar orb, neither for the necessary changes that would occur on its surface between the long nights and days inevitable from its slow axial revolution. The new law, beside providing for the Actienic force, from the principal, to our sun, which gives its own light and heat, also shows why we should not observe any difference on the face of its photosphere between the changes of its night and day. This could be accounted for by the fact that the principal light of the sun as we view it, is an imaginary one. The appearance of the face of the sun if seen outside of our atmosphere would appear so dull that even the change between its days and nights, though perceptible, would not be enough to be discerned through the glare created by the combustion of its rays in our atmosphere. The new law provides that the surplus Actienic force coming from the sun to us, may flow as freely from that part of the sun shaded by its night, as from its day phase. Possibly their difference may yet be discovered. The new law calls for but one atmosphere for the sun, but varying in density and tenuity from the inner to its outer limit, through which, however, the Actienic force from the sun's principal is admitted. This Actienic force is changed by combustion (the same as that of our atmosphere) into the necessary amount of light and heat rays, to supply the body of the sun with all its needs of each to make it habitable, and in addition create a surplus of Actienic energy that, when thrown off, is precipitated in straight lines to our own planets, with no loss of force or heat thrown into the immeasurable space beyond. The assumption that the sun has little light as light, and heat as heat, to spare, and throws off its surplus energies in Actienic rays which carry neither light nor heat with them, establishes a reasonable hypothesis to illustrate the truth of the theory. The sun spots are uncontradicted facts, as they are said by numerous scientists to exist. The cause and use of them has raised all kinds of speculations as to what they are. The old theories of all time have satisfied no one. Even those who have with so much labor worked up the belief of a molten heated surface for the uninhabitable sun, are not convinced that their Plutonic conditions are true, and strive to find place for inhabitants, that their efforts and conclusions do not guarantee a possible claim for. The Actienic law provides an atmosphere from the surface of the real globe of the sun, to a great and necessary distance beyond, but does not fix the depth of it. It is no more necessary to do so than to fix that around the earth. But it does acknowledge that the outer edge of the photosphere, upon which the sun spots appear and revolve, may be that equilibrium, or established point in the sun's atmosphere, where the physical results of the Actienic force from the parent sun may begin visibly to work out their necessary conditions to supply our sun with what it needs. The apparent gauze network that forms the outer cover, is undoubtedly of clouds poised in the sun's heavens, providentially, to intercept a possibly too great influx of Actien, and modify it for inner circulation and use upon the body of the sun. The sun spots seem like immense irregular openings in the clouds, which are constantly changing in form, size, and place, showing large dark caverns below. In their inner space may be the volume of yet unconsummed Actienic force, forming the next stratum from which rays are precipitated upon the real face of the sun; thus giving it light and heat, without itself being so luminous externally as to show any light to us. The magnetic conditions of the sun spots are said to be stronger in their effect upon the earth than the apparent luminous netted surface of the rest of the photosphere. The old theory admits two atmospheres for the sun, neither of which is like our own. The inner one combined with metalic infusoria or heated metallic gases, which is seen as the photosphere or visible face of the sun, so hot on the surface as to be compared to the heat generated by the combustion of six tons of coal per hour, on each square yard of the sun's whole surface, and from and through which, emanates radiated heat so vast that only a two hundred and twenty-seven millionth part reaches the planets; all the rest being wasted in space. The spots near the equator travel faster than those away from it; and the rapidity of all varies regularly, with their distance from the equator, which for some distance is free from spots. The Actienic theory contradicts that the sun is an intensely heated body, and makes it a habitable globe.

The Actienic process of forming a world may be illustrated with sufficient clearness to show the investigator the principle of the whole Actienic theory. This surplus force thrown off from the sun at once aggressively enters etheric space with a positiveness that overcomes all resistance. A conflict ensues between Actien, the positive, and Ether, the negative principle, resulting in the birth and construction of atomic and molecular substances, both ponderable and imponderable, which fly off into space, but which are used in the construction of a globe. Electricity, magnetism, and the gases are thus produced, followed by the more ponderable substance of cinderous, nebulous matter, which, under restrictive influence, is sent floating into space, like the misty globules that form a cloud in our sky. This substance, driven into space by repulsion, is aggregated and held by attraction, and consolidated into a ball of matter which finds its natural orbit within which to move around the sun, and is given a revolving motion upon its own axis towards the sun. The growth or consolidation of this nucleus cinder may be very gradual from fine accretions of other nebulous matter, or it may receive great additions of the same substance which may be floating in space. This nucleus, still under the influence of original Actienic and Etheric decompositions, in time forms a globe which becomes endowed with gravity through known and generally received principles of attraction and repulsion, as well as other forces coincident with the notions and actions of the more physical and volatile bodies of cosmical matter moving in space. The principle of combustion, to a certain extent, seems to be natural to all bodies, both solid and fluid, though the process of change in solid matter, owing to the small amount of combustible molecular substance within the same, is much slower than that of fluid substances. Through Actienic rays and their decomposition, electricity, magnetism, atmosphere, aqueous vapor, and their workings, solid matter is produced, manipulated, transformed, and condensed, and our earth, a proof of its power, is one of the smaller evidences of the same processes which are going on throughout the universe. The formation of the crystal on the top of high mountains, where there can be no influences other than magnetism below and electricity in the atmosphere above, with its constituencies, proves to us that a solid may be formed from fluids. Metals are also dissolved and again precipitated with ease under favoring circumstances. The larger portion of our earth may have thus been formed, and under great pressure concentrated, before an atmosphere was given it. Concussion, which precipitates the molecules or particles of matter towards each other, creates a forced combustion of Actienic and magnetic properties lying between or pervading the same, and thus combustion creates heat which radiates or forces itself through the body which encloses it, or, at least so far as its own power will carry it inward and outward from the point of the greatest focal pressure. All atmospheric conditions, as well as all bodies of matter, contain Actienic properties, or their secondary creations, which, under extraordinary pressure or force will always generate heat. Without heat, the whole process of animal life and physical; matter could not exist in any stage of development. Where it begins or where it shall end, none can tell us. The Actienic theory presupposes heat to be a result, instead of a self-existent principle; a consequence of combustion, instead of a real, perpetual, prevailing element in physics -- never remaining for a moment the same in temperature, force, or occupancy of space, it being generated and dispelled at uncertain points with the fleeting cause of its creation or dissolution. In time it will be fully demonstrated that the natural sphere of active electricity is in the air and upon the surface of physical matter, while that of magnetism is more within the confines of dense material substance. The principle is not contradicted by absolute experiment upon solid, fluid, or gaseous molecular properties of whatever nature or condition. With heat follows an atmosphere, vapor, and water producing all the changes which we find in the secondary formation of the crust of the earth. At present, the moon is a child in the nursery of the earth, and is under its care and influence. The new law supposes it aggregated matter, collected the same as was the nucleus of the earth, and now undergoing the process of development even up to the point that the earth has reached. It was given place under the control of our earth's attraction and gravitation, and as yet probably has little of atmosphere or vapor; and, consequently but little generated light from combustion of the earth's Actienic rays. The old theories suppose it a worn-out body, while the new makes it a baby earth now growing up to maturity. The process of atmospheric creation and the consequent vaporous condition once begun, the obvious consequences - geological strata and subsequent contractions and upheavals -- result as we see them still upon the earth's surface. We suppose that Actienic combustion in the atmosphere will, to a great extent, be governed by the variety and density of the same, and the greater power of consumption is very near the surface of the earth; and that electricity which is supposed to be the first product and the most volatile principle, remains and works in the atmosphere, while magnetism, the second product, is attracted at once to material matter, and falls to and penetrates the earth, working therein and producing commotions below the surface, as electricity does in the clouds above and around us. The creation of an atmosphere must be an important work of Actienic and Etheric forces, and aqueous vapor a necessary result. When this part of integration is visibly accomplished, we have the key of creation in our hands. The illustration of the formation of one globe, earth, or sun; will serve for all such of every sphere, from our own solar system back through the celestial and astral systems. There might be modifications in the secondary constituencies and Actienic emissions of each, producing effects slightly differing, but all within the general law of molecular construction. Hence system upon system may be assumed to exist in the realms of space, created and guided by the same hand; governed and controlled by the same laws; expanding and generating through the same influences, primal, specific, harmonious, carrying the mind of man from the confines of his own small globe to an infinity of worlds, which could only exist through infinity of mind.

*Pronounced Acteene, the parent or root of the Greek word Actin which means rays only.