Today in Technology History
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November 18
From time to time, we like to share with you the stories of inventions and discoveries that were fraudulent -- as a way of reminding ourselves that not everyone involved in the history of science and technology was of virtuous character. Today, for instance, we tell you the story of a first-class charlatan.
John Ernst Worrell Keely was born in 1827. He grew up in Philadelphia where he enjoyed only a very basic education. He apparently worked as an entertainer and a carpenter before reporting the discovery, in 1873, of a new force of nature. For the rest of his life, Keely earned his living by convincing people to give him money -- purportedly to fund his research on this mystical new force that would, Keely said, revolutionize the world.
What Keely claimed to have discovered was the force resulting from the vibrations of "the ether." Not to be confused with the anesthetic also know as ether, Keely was talking about an invisible substance that supposedly pervaded all of the universe. The idea of this mysterious ether was really a holdover from the period before modern science, and its existence was finally, irrefutably disproved in 1887.
Yet for decades Keely managed to make a living by duping people into giving him money so that he could harness ethereal vibrations to power machines. He prepared elaborate demonstrations in his workshop, astounding witnesses. He started a company to build ether-powered motors -- and although the company never built one, plenty of money from the company's stocks went to Keely. He constructed other "inventions" with fantastic names (like the "compound disintegrator") and he wrote articles filled with impenetrable pseudo-scientific terminology ("Vibro-Molecular, Vibro-Atomic, and Sympathetic Vibro-Etheric Forces as applied to induce Mechanical Rotation by Negative Sympathetic Attraction").
After Keely died on November 18, 1898, his "laboratory" was thoroughly inspected and his skullduggery exposed. It was shown that Keely's contrivances were mostly powered by compressed air carried in a system of hidden tubes.
Although Keely was mortal, gullibility is not. To this day, there are still committed believers who think Keely was for real -- despite his exposure, and despite the passage of a century during which the honest achievements of science and technology far surpassed any of Keely's preposterous hocus-pocus.
Related links:
Click here to read a short biographical sketch of Keely.
The following Web sites are run by hard-core true-believers who think Keely was a scientific prophet, and not just a fringe figure and a fraud. The sites include many original documents related to Keely:
Use the following links to read what we have written in the past about other shams in the history of science and technology (cold fusion and polywater).
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