Dated record
Timeline
Dates are only useful when their uncertainty is visible. The birth year is recorded as contested; the company, demonstrations, death, and expose are stronger anchors.
Birth year is contested
The concept brief requests 1827, and some memorial and older sympathetic sources use 1827. Gale, Wikimedia/Wikidata-derived summaries, and the New York Times obituary tradition support 1837 or imply it by age. This site flags the conflict instead of silently choosing a false certainty.
Early hydro-vacuo / hydro-pneumatic claim
MacDougall connects Keely's early motor language to an unsuccessful patent application and to the family of names later attached to the machines: Hydro-Vacuo Engine, Hydro-Pneumatic Pulsating Vacuo-Engine, and related labels.
Keely Motor Company incorporated
Gale gives April 29, 1874 as the incorporation date. The company existed to promote and commercialize Keely's claimed force, but the practical motor remained always near completion and never became a marketable engine.
Early demonstrations become newspaper news
Reports of water, air, pressure, and a new vaporic or etheric power brought the motor into public view. Keely's explanations remained incomplete, and patent protection was repeatedly invoked as a reason not to disclose the mechanism.
Stock speculation and rising expectations
MacDougall reports that shares rose from $50 to $150 by 1879, with some later sales reported at higher prices. The stock story shows how the machine generated financial work even without producing industrial work.
Stockholders seek the secret
Managers and stockholders pushed Keely to disclose enough of the principle that the company could protect its investment. Secrecy, once useful in promotion, became a corporate risk.
Court pressure and imprisonment episode
Legal disputes over inspection and disclosure placed Keely under direct pressure. Supporter accounts describe him destroying or rebuilding delicate instruments in this period, including the claimed vibratory microscope.
Supporter visits and sympathetic framing
Moore and allied witnesses continued to interpret Keely's work as a sensitive research program rather than a failed machine. Their accounts are primary sources for the belief system, not independent proof of a working motor.
Keely and His Discoveries published
Clara Bloomfield Moore published the most important supporter-side book. It framed Keely's researches as part of a larger sympathetic-vibratory physics and remains essential for understanding the believer case.
Keely dies in Philadelphia
Keely died before producing a disclosed, commercial motor. His death moved the evidence question from future promise to posthumous inspection: was there a secret that could be operated without him?
Laboratory expose
The Philadelphia Press investigation, summarized by the New York Times and amplified by illustrated newspaper coverage, reported hidden tubes, concealed spaces, water-motor connections, and a large sphere associated with ordinary power.
Afterlife of the Keely Motor
The motor survived as a cautionary tale, a believer tradition, and a history of technology case study. The best current archive posture is to preserve both sides of the record while treating the hidden-apparatus explanation as the strongest evidence-based conclusion.
Sources used on this page
Gale Encyclopedia entry on John Ernst Worrell Keely
Concise reference for incorporation, devices, supporters, death, and posthumous fraud findings.
Robert MacDougall, Sympathetic Physics (Technology and Culture, 2019)
Modern history-of-technology analysis of the motor, stock promotion, thermodynamics debate, and Clara Moore.
Clara Bloomfield Moore, Keely and His Discoveries (1893)
Public-domain supporter account and primary witness to the late sympathetic-vibratory framing around Keely.
New York Times, Keely's Secret Disclosed (January 20, 1899)
Contemporary report summarizing the Philadelphia Press investigation and hidden-tube claims.
National Endowment for the Humanities, The Etheric Force Machine
Short institutional overview of the American Precision Museum object and the hidden compressed-air explanation.
Wikimedia Commons / New York Journal, sphere under Keely laboratory
Public-domain 1899 image of the large sphere found below Keely-related laboratory space after his death.