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Description:
Beautifully engraved certificate from the Keely Motor Company issued in 1883. This historic document was printed by the National Banknote Company and has an
ornate border around it with a vignette a woman next to the steam motor and a vignette of John Ernst Worrell Keely. This item has the hand signatures of the Company’s President ( Edward J. Randall ) and Secretary ( Charles Schullermann ).
Certificate Vignette
Certificate Vignette
John Ernst Worrell Keely was born 3 Sep 1827 and died Died 18 Nov 1898.
He was considered a fraudulent American inventor. In 1873 he announced that he had discovered a new physical force that, if harnessed, would produce unheard-of power. He claimed, for example, to be able to produce from a quart of water enough fuel to move a 30-car train from Philadelphia to New York City. He began construction of an engine to perform this feat and by 1874 was able to give preliminary demonstrations of his machine. He made a great show of guarding the secret of the motor he was developing to obtain power "from intermolecular vibrations of ether," and scientists and engineers scoffed at his unverified claims.
John Worrell Keely photographed
in his laboratory in 1889
Keely came up with what he claimed was a hydro-pneumatic pulsating vacuo engine, which the press labelled as a perpetual motion machine. According to Keely, harmonics were involved, which he read about in F.J. Hughes Harmonies of Tones and Colours. However, as he could never explain exactly how the machine worked, the Public eventually turn against him and he was denounced as a fake and a fraud.
Keely and the board of directors of the Keely Motor Company
After Keely died on Nov. 18, 1898, suspicious skeptics and newspaper reporters did a careful examination of his laboratory. Some of Keely's machinery had already been removed by "believers" who hoped they could make it work. The inexhaustible source of power he claimed to have discovered, "The Etheric Force" or "Molecular Motion of Energy", was, it turned out, nothing but compressed air. The "Hydro-Pneumo-Pulsating-Vacuo-Motor", and other mysterious engines such as the "Compound Disintegrator" and the "Sympathetic Negative Attractor", had all been powered by a large cast iron hollow sphere carefully hidden in the cellar floor beneath Keely's workrooms. False ceilings and floors were ripped up to reveal mechanical belts and linkages to a silent water motor in the basement (two floors below the laboratory). A system of pneumatic switches under the floor boards could be used to turn machinery on and off. A three-ton sphere was found in the basement, apparently a reservoir for compressed air. The walls, ceilings and even apparently solid beams were found to have hidden pipework.
The following article about John Keely appeared in a book
called `FOIBLES AND FALLACIES OF SCIENCE' written in 1924
| Status: For Sale |
Reference#: keely |
| Condition:
excellent |
Year:
1883
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| Country:
usa |
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| Title:
Keely Motor Company Stock Certificate 1883 - RARE |
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