Description

AERIAL NAVIGATION.
The instrument devised by Mr. Keely for bringing the air-ship under control in its ascent 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 if, as Mr. Keely thinks, that, when the conditions are once set up, they remain
for ever, with 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 for 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 particular 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 air-ship 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 the cyclone. To differentiate the chord of its third would destroy it; but to those who know nothing
of the underlying principle, on which Keely has based his system, all such assertions are the merest "rubbish."
For a few months following the announcement of Professor Leidy's and Dr. Willcox's opinions, Mr. Keely continued
his researches under favourable circumstances; but, in the autumn of 1890, he was again threatened with
suits-at-law and harassed by demands to give exhibitions in order to raise the price of stock. A subscription was
started to raise funds for the prosecution. These threats made it necessary to make public the history of Keely's connection
with an organization which was supposed by many to have been formed for speculative purposes, before the
stock of the company possessed any value other than prospective; but to which company, notwithstanding, the
world is indebted for supplying Mr. Keely with the means to continue his work, at a time when it was impossible for
him to gain the recognition of science or the aid of capitalists. The discovery would in all probability have been lost,
but for the help which this organization gave, at a time when Keely needed help; he had made a discovery, and these
shrewd business men, totally ignorant of physics, knew enough to comprehend its financial importance. Never
doubting that Keely would be able to master the difficulties at once, in the way of its subjugations, and not realizing
the width of the gulf that lies between discovery and invention, they expected him to leap it with one bound; and
when he failed to do so they threw upon him all the odium which befell the enterprise. Keely, who had twice destroyed
his researching instruments, when harassed and threatened by the managers of the company, first in 1882,
and again in 1887, was now placed by their threatened proceedings in a position where he had to choose between
continuing his researches with the end in view of completing his system; or diverting his course and resuming his
efforts to perfect an engine, to continue exhibitions for the purpose of raising the stock of the company.
At this juncture an attempt was made to have circulated among the stock-holders a narrative setting forth facts to
show that their interest would be better served by a continuance of the researches that had led to the re