Speaker 1: Ridiculous crime. It is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Zaren Elizabeth Zarn. How are you?
Speaker 3: I'm really good good. I'm happy to say that.
Speaker 2: You really are really good.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh, thank goodness.
Speaker 3: How about you? How you feeling?
Speaker 2: How you doing all right? I'm alright?
Speaker 3: How you be? Girl?
Speaker 2: You know what? Above ground and getting paid? I like
Speaker 2: to say, that's me h. Do you know what's ridiculous?
Speaker 3: Yes? I do. Oh have you ever heard of the
Speaker 3: Kentucky meat shower?
Speaker 2: Is that like a euphemism?
Speaker 3: No, it's a thing.
Speaker 2: It's an actual, literal thing.
Speaker 3: Between eleven am and noon on March third, eighteen seventy six,
Speaker 3: uh huh, chunks of meat fell from the sky over
Speaker 3: Olympia Springs in Bath County, Kentucky. And it was like
Speaker 3: big chunks of meat, like we're talking.
Speaker 2: Like stew beef.
Speaker 3: Yeah. This this apparently this farmhouse farm wife she went
Speaker 3: outside and her husband thought it was like an a
Speaker 3: sign of God, right, and he said that it was
Speaker 3: snowing meat. That's how he described it was. The pieces
Speaker 3: of meat were two by two inches or five centimeters
Speaker 3: by five centimeters, and one of them was at least
Speaker 3: four inches by four inches or ten centimeters by ten sameters.
Speaker 3: These are big chunks of meat. Yeah. Some people thought
Speaker 3: it was beef. Some people thought it was lamb, some
Speaker 3: people thought it was dear. Two men who tasted it,
Speaker 3: they judged it to be lamb or deer. They tasted
Speaker 3: the meat. They no, they just picked it up and
Speaker 3: let me taste that little. It tastes like deer to me.
Speaker 3: So accordingly this guy, doctor Allan McLain Hamilton from the
Speaker 3: medical record, he stated that the meat had been identified
Speaker 3: as lung tissue from either a human being or a
Speaker 3: human in or from a human so either a whole
Speaker 3: course or human.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so he said about the structure of the organ
Speaker 3: in these two cases being almost identical. Right. So the
Speaker 3: New York Times described it as cosmic meat because that's
Speaker 3: what some of the locals were kind of joking about.
Speaker 3: So some humorous. This guy, the Kurt Goda, apparently he
Speaker 3: had this theory that it was cosmic meat. Others locals
Speaker 3: they thought the meat would have been vomited by either
Speaker 3: black or turkey vultures. So black vultures or turkey vultures,
Speaker 3: and because apparently they do that when they're stressed, they
Speaker 3: vomit up but what they just raised so they could
Speaker 3: fly right, just so we could all know that's science.
Speaker 2: And they didn't even say it was what it was.
Speaker 2: They got it wrong. It was like human lung, totally
Speaker 2: like medicine.
Speaker 3: You know. Some people also pointed out that it could
Speaker 3: have been like had like send you also that, so
Speaker 3: it could have been like, uh, you know, basically human
Speaker 3: gristle and and what have you. So I have a theory,
Speaker 3: thank you for asking.
Speaker 2: It was desperate to.
Speaker 3: It was a time traveler who got their coordinate's wrong,
Speaker 3: and you just got just destroyed across the atmosphere and
Speaker 3: they fell down in bits and pieces. Cause if you
Speaker 3: think about it, the planet's moving, and say you do
Speaker 3: some time travel, if you don't get your cord, it's
Speaker 3: exactly right. You could en end up in the atmosphere.
Speaker 3: You could end up in the defense center of the Earth.
Speaker 3: You're not going to necessarily land on the surface. Got
Speaker 3: to be the whole planet's moving, So I mean, you
Speaker 3: got to really get your cord. And it's right. So
Speaker 3: you're off by just a little bit, maybe early experimentation.
Speaker 3: All of a sudden you just slid a person across
Speaker 3: the atmosphere and you got a meat shower.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's the only explanation. I mean, my
Speaker 2: time travel, my theory. I mean it's not as as like, oh,
Speaker 2: you know, it's right in front of us. Why didn't
Speaker 2: we think it? Is that there was an inventor in
Speaker 2: the area who invented the first wood chipper, oh like.
Speaker 3: A meat cannon, and fell into it and then broke.
Speaker 2: It while it was spraying him all over making and
Speaker 2: then no one could find it. So you know, you
Speaker 2: had to go all that time so you could get
Speaker 2: the wood schipper reinvented.
Speaker 3: Now, I love that theory, and I cannot promise you
Speaker 3: that I will not in the future comically refer to
Speaker 3: as a euphemism a Kentucky meat shower sounds like the
Speaker 3: old Kentucky meat shower.
Speaker 2: Yes, so what that would be a euphemism.
Speaker 3: For probably something I order at a restaurant that I
Speaker 3: go to. What is this Kentucky No, that's like.
Speaker 2: When you're eating a burrito, but it's like one of
Speaker 2: those disgusting like something no offense to those who like it.
Speaker 2: But the ground beef burrito and you trip spills down
Speaker 2: the sidewalk out that's Kentucky meat because like you know,
Speaker 2: it's it's like sort of gringo to do ground beef
Speaker 2: and a burrito.
Speaker 3: I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 2: That's just what I'm hearing in my earpiece right now.
Speaker 2: That's ridiculous. I love that. Thank you. Do you want
Speaker 2: to know what else is ridiculous? Being powered by vibes?
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is This is Ridiculous Crime, a podcast about
Speaker 4: absurd and outrageous capers, heists, and cons.
Speaker 2: It's always ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred
Speaker 2: percent ridiculous.
Speaker 3: This I know you done herd have yes? Uh?
Speaker 2: Con men right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, those are especially when they aim up.
Speaker 2: They traffic in vibes.
Speaker 3: This is true. It's a good way of putting in Yeah.
Speaker 2: Let's just put that out there. They create vibes that
Speaker 2: get people engaged. People want in on vibes.
Speaker 3: They're vibe criming.
Speaker 2: They're total vibe criming. I you know, it's interesting because
Speaker 2: on Tuesday you were talking about scientists death.
Speaker 3: This is true, and our.
Speaker 2: Cycles have synked once again. Yes, yeah, I have a
Speaker 2: scientist for you.
Speaker 3: Really look at us, girls.
Speaker 2: We're an old timey con man and he used both
Speaker 2: vibes in his behaviors. And in his con itself. Oh zaren,
Speaker 2: meet John whirl Keihley.
Speaker 3: Oh what a mouthful name.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so Keeley, that's his stepsister.
Speaker 3: Okay, So.
Speaker 2: I'm going to call him Keeley like when you yell
Speaker 2: at yourself and say Brenette. Okay. So he was someone
Speaker 2: referred to me in an email today as just Dunton.
Speaker 2: Really yeah, and I was like, Dunton did you read that?
Speaker 2: I did?
Speaker 3: Actually? Uh?
Speaker 2: So okay. Keilley born eighteen thirty seven in Pennsylvania. He
Speaker 2: was raised by his grandparents, because you know, he was
Speaker 2: orphaned young. Not a lot of information out there otherwise,
Speaker 2: but what we do know is that he was raised
Speaker 2: in really modest circumstances, and he had only a very
Speaker 2: limited formal education. So he wasn't like one of your
Speaker 2: high falutin scientists who goes off to MI I T
Speaker 2: and Dartmouth and what have you? This guy and the
Speaker 2: whatnots and the who's it's. So he had a bunch
Speaker 2: of different jobs in his early adult years. He was
Speaker 2: a carpenter kind of like Jesus. He was a painter
Speaker 2: kind of like you. He was a carnival barker kind
Speaker 2: of like Day and then he was a musician who
Speaker 2: played in various orchestras in and around Philadelphia, which is
Speaker 2: a turn who saw that kind of like precisely. So
Speaker 2: these gigs established him in two skills that would absolutely
Speaker 2: become indispensable in his later let's call them fraudulent enterprises.
Speaker 2: He had this dexterity with mechanical apparatus and say that
Speaker 2: was you know, musical instruments and tools. And then he
Speaker 2: had this crazy charisma and he could beguile even the
Speaker 2: most skeptical observer. Oh my god. Like Riz City. That's
Speaker 2: is that the new grand theft auto?
Speaker 3: Rizz City?
Speaker 2: What's your Raccoon Escape from Raccoon City or whatever?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 3: Yes, what was that? Welcome to Raccoon City.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it was like a video game movie. I
Speaker 2: don't know whatever it was. Riz City. So to understand Kihley,
Speaker 2: we have to understand Philadelphia in the mid nineteenth century.
Speaker 2: You have to know Philly as was the city that
Speaker 2: was absolutely electrified by technological progress. This is the age
Speaker 2: of steams. Oh yes, it had transformed industry. And then
Speaker 2: all these inventors are popping up. They want attention and
Speaker 2: they want money, they want that capital. Enter John Ernst WHORL. Kiley.
Speaker 2: So he had this boldness and it kind of like
Speaker 2: bordered on the theatrical in the way that he presented.
Speaker 3: Me, thinking like P. T. Barnum, like where he's like
Speaker 3: got the you know, Carnival Barker.
Speaker 2: It's more like flourishes in my mind.
Speaker 3: Okay, like this.
Speaker 2: So he was this large like mountain of a man,
Speaker 2: powerfully built. He had this really commanding physical presence and
Speaker 2: a booming, deep sonorous voice. Yes, and that magnetic self assurance,
Speaker 2: the confidence that everyone trusted him.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: So around eighteen seventy two he starts attracting attention because
Speaker 2: he claimed that he had discovered an entirely new, an
Speaker 2: inexhaustible source of energy.
Speaker 3: Oh yes, energy story.
Speaker 2: And he called this etheric force.
Speaker 3: Oh yes, I'm familiar. I've seen this reference. Well.
Speaker 2: So the term, like he it evoked what was really
Speaker 2: current at that time, this scientific concept of luminiferous ether yes,
Speaker 2: hypothetical medium through which light waves were believed to propagate.
Speaker 2: So Keeley was like, I can manipulate the vibrational properties
Speaker 2: of water and air, look at me, look at me now,
Speaker 2: wash me cook, and I can release a force of
Speaker 2: like unimaginable power from virtually any substance.
Speaker 3: You think lightning's cool, and you know all.
Speaker 2: Powered by vibes, that all vibes is there in the
Speaker 2: clay was staggering, staggered. So he said that, Okay, He's like,
Speaker 2: with this single quart of water and he would hold
Speaker 2: something up, he'd do his process on it, he'd do
Speaker 2: his whole thing.
Speaker 3: Alecazoo.
Speaker 2: Yeah, vibes, vibes, and then he could generate enough pressure
Speaker 2: to drive a locomotive. Wow, and not just like a
Speaker 2: few feet down the track. I'm talking like a long trip.
Speaker 3: Yeah. He's like, I'm creating nuclear energy out of this water.
Speaker 2: Yes. Yes, So his spiel was like this infection of
Speaker 2: invented terminology. Love that and like half baked scientific concepts.
Speaker 3: I am so jealous. I've always wanted to invent terminology
Speaker 3: and half so good, come on, so good, let me cook.
Speaker 3: In the eighteen eighties, so he talked.
Speaker 2: About vibratory sympathetic transmission, quadruple negative harmonics. This is like
Speaker 2: when people talk like this, my eyes glaze over. So
Speaker 2: I'm just like, yeah, I totally understand what you're saying.
Speaker 2: Polar and depolar differentiation, Okay, etheric disintegration, like dozens of
Speaker 2: these totally.
Speaker 3: This guy's are like a glossy So.
Speaker 2: To the uninitiated people like me, they're impressed, like that's technical.
Speaker 3: A lot of.
Speaker 2: Actual physicists and engineers they're like, this is nonsense, babble.
Speaker 2: Absolutely so ps, you're violating the laws of thermodynamics.
Speaker 3: Newton would be tear his hair cuts.
Speaker 2: Up on that. Yeah, so Keeley, he wasn't talking to physicists.
Speaker 2: He was talking to fat cat because.
Speaker 3: They're critical, Elizabeth, they are faking, they've read books.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so he No. Keeley is like, hey, wealthy industrialists.
Speaker 3: You guys are investor.
Speaker 2: And you know, people who just have money burning a
Speaker 2: hole in their pocket and they want to get in
Speaker 2: on this like miraculous solution to the world's energy problems. Yes,
Speaker 2: sounds familiar. They're like, we're in, you know, count us in.
Speaker 2: Have my money, please me.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 2: The cornerstone of his public demonstrations was this machine that
Speaker 2: he called the hydro pneumatic pulsating vacuo engine, and this
Speaker 2: evolved into different iterations. Sometimes he called it the vibratory generator, combulator, combobulator,
Speaker 2: vibratory generator, Okay, the liberator, that was when he was
Speaker 2: like trying something like more marketing forward.
Speaker 3: These are the people who made it hard to be
Speaker 3: Nikola Tesla. He's like, look, I got this, and vibrates
Speaker 3: that are.
Speaker 2: Like no, and then he finally settled on sympathetic transmitter.
Speaker 2: That's like, that's my favorite radiohead. So these devices, they're
Speaker 2: just absolute marvels of mechanical complexity. There's just tubes and
Speaker 2: valves and gauges and like resonating chambers. I don't know what
Speaker 2: that is. So Keiley would run the machines and they
Speaker 2: would produce impressive phenomena, like the gauges would show crazy pressure,
Speaker 2: and metal bars looked like they were just bending by
Speaker 2: invisible forces. Weights were like lifted and thrusted. They vibrated,
Speaker 2: They're like pulsing. It was so loud. Witnesses were always
Speaker 2: just like I'm amazed and I'm convinced, Like that's what
Speaker 2: they would say, So pretty soon and I'm going to
Speaker 2: stand back, I've got steambirds. Pretty soon Kihi incorporated the
Speaker 2: Kili Motor Company and offered shares to the public, and
Speaker 2: the response was over the top. Rich folks, regular citizens.
Speaker 2: Everyone's throwing money at him. Everyone wants in. Uh, they
Speaker 2: dumped five million dollars into it. UPU opening real.
Speaker 3: Scientist must have been losing. Oh god, which is like getting.
Speaker 2: One hundred and thirty three million today? Are you getting
Speaker 2: to day's dollars? If I'm like, I've got a combobulator
Speaker 2: and they're like, have one hundred and thirty three million?
Speaker 2: Thinks guy?
Speaker 3: Unbelievable.
Speaker 2: So the most significant of his investors over the years
Speaker 2: was this woman. This is Clara Jessup Bloomfield more.
Speaker 3: Does everybody have crazy names? This is amazing.
Speaker 2: It's how you get that's your price of admission at
Speaker 2: this rich Philadelphia widow. She's a woman of letters. She's smart,
Speaker 2: She's really smart. She was a wonderful philanthropist. I had
Speaker 2: all these asiums.
Speaker 3: She's curious about the cutting edge.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So she became his greatest champion and patron from
Speaker 2: the early eighteen eighties onward. She to start one hundred
Speaker 2: thousand dollars plus a monthly salary for him of two
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty dollars.
Speaker 3: So let's convert that, please, I need a converted.
Speaker 2: That's a three million dollar investment. And she was given
Speaker 2: him like eight grand a month. I know I know.
Speaker 3: I'm telling you, it's so much more fun of your comment.
Speaker 2: So you hear it, right, Yeah, it's fun and easy.
Speaker 2: So she wrote articles defending him in scientific journals. Oh lord,
Speaker 2: she wrote with all these like scientists like on his
Speaker 2: behalf approached them. She published a full length book in
Speaker 2: eighteen ninety three called Keighley and his Discovery's Aerial Navigation,
Speaker 2: and she was like, this is a this is a breakthrough.
Speaker 2: Please everybody understand this, Franklin. Yeah, her advocacy gave him
Speaker 2: this like social and intellectual respectability that he couldn't get
Speaker 2: all by himself. So now, like we do need to
Speaker 2: know that her support was not unconditional. It's like, over
Speaker 2: the years she got really frustrated because he couldn't produce
Speaker 2: use like a commercially viable engine, and she would she'd
Speaker 2: be like, what's going on here, pal, it's shaken and
Speaker 2: making hold on, hold on, And he'd reassure her because
Speaker 2: he's this crazy manipulator, and so he'd give her just
Speaker 2: enough evidence of progress to calm her down. And it
Speaker 2: was like, I'm he's always on the.
Speaker 3: Verge of a I just need to attach a belt
Speaker 3: to this.
Speaker 2: And two weeks away. He's always two weeks away, and
Speaker 2: then two weeks comes and goes.
Speaker 3: Lather idea for a carburetor exactly.
Speaker 2: So Keighley would demonstrate his fantastic machines to visitors, but
Speaker 2: under these really controlled circumstances, and he never allowed independent
Speaker 2: examination of the machinery while it was in operation. So
Speaker 2: like visitors could watch, they could ask questions, they could
Speaker 2: record what they were seeing. They you write it down,
Speaker 2: but they couldn't open the devices. They couldn't like trace
Speaker 2: the flow of all the pressures. Certainly couldn't conduct like
Speaker 2: physical measurements of anything.
Speaker 3: Proprietary of form.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in essence, these people are going to the theater. Yeah,
Speaker 2: like they can't.
Speaker 3: Do so it's like watching it a tom and On
Speaker 3: played chess.
Speaker 2: Yes, but it wasn't a bunch of rubes that he
Speaker 2: led into the workshop.
Speaker 3: I bet not.
Speaker 2: They're like smart professional.
Speaker 3: Engineers, engineers, I was guessing.
Speaker 2: Physicians, journalists. So a lot of them came away totally convinced.
Speaker 2: Some were like just really puzzled, confused. I mean it
Speaker 2: looked like his stuff was functioning. Gauges showed pressures in
Speaker 2: like thousands of pounds per square inch. There was this
Speaker 2: large iron sphere that was like could reportedly restrain a
Speaker 2: team of horses.
Speaker 3: Okay, so he's generating enough.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the device called a globe motor that spun in
Speaker 2: perpetual motion. Everything was really physically impressive.
Speaker 3: So Jewels Verne level technology. It's a lot of yeah, exactly,
Speaker 3: vacuum tubes, vacuum.
Speaker 2: So the question that investigators like couldn't ever resolve was
Speaker 2: the source of the energy driving this.
Speaker 3: That's my question.
Speaker 2: That's a good question. Thank you for asking. So Keiley
Speaker 2: had all these techniques to manage the skeptics. He would
Speaker 2: refuse to operate the machines if the vibrations in the
Speaker 2: room were quote inharmonious.
Speaker 3: Vibes, A bobs ain't right in his vibes are off.
Speaker 2: Shut down, vibes are off, same right, vibes are off.
Speaker 2: He calls it off. Yes, So he limited his physical
Speaker 2: proximity of the visitors to the machinery, and he would
Speaker 2: do these like acts of telekinesis or like force transmission
Speaker 2: using tuning forks and like strings.
Speaker 3: Tuning forks are a while because you can pass a
Speaker 3: vibration in the air. If you don't know, you're like,
Speaker 3: how did he get so.
Speaker 2: Obviously there's a lot of trickery going on, but people
Speaker 2: wanted it to be true. They wanted miracle and wonder. Okay,
Speaker 2: So by the late eighteen seventies, the shareholders in the
Speaker 2: motor company, they're getting impatient. He'd been promising commercial production
Speaker 2: of the engine for years, years at this point, yeah,
Speaker 2: but then nothing. Eighteen eighty one, a group of shareholders
Speaker 2: brought legal action against him. They wanted to force either
Speaker 2: production of a working engine or accounting of the invested funds.
Speaker 2: And he was like, look, my discoveries are so delicate
Speaker 2: and so sensitive to external vibrations that I can't demonstrate
Speaker 2: them under adversarial conditions.
Speaker 3: You guy, Yeah, there's my machines on there.
Speaker 2: You're harshing my mellow. How do you argue against that?
Speaker 3: So they're like, we want blueprints or receipts, and he's like, no, bro,
Speaker 3: the auras are not right.
Speaker 2: Let's take a break, go to commercial. When we come back,
Speaker 2: we're going to see how he plays this all out.
Speaker 2: All right, Cesarin, he vibes.
Speaker 3: Loving vibes.
Speaker 2: The vibes are not off.
Speaker 3: Right now, I feel really good. We can keep going
Speaker 3: back and forth and take.
Speaker 2: So Kiley right by the end of eighteen eighty one,
Speaker 2: his stockholders were over it. I bet they were done.
Speaker 2: On December fourteenth, eighteen eighty one, they convened their annual
Speaker 2: meeting and they formally read into the record this report
Speaker 2: that outlined just how over it they were.
Speaker 3: Because they formed the basically corporation, I got stockholders stockholder.
Speaker 2: So they're like, we still have faith in the inventions,
Speaker 2: and that's okay. I don't know why exactly, but guys,
Speaker 2: we're irritated at how secretive this whole thing is and
Speaker 2: there's nothing to show for all of our patients.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this steampunk has given me nothing.
Speaker 2: So steampunk. And another thing in the report was how
Speaker 2: worried everyone was about what would happen if Keighley got
Speaker 2: incapacitated or died.
Speaker 3: Oh, because nobody knows.
Speaker 2: He has no assistance, no backup, no one can.
Speaker 3: Look at anything legitimate concern.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So the report made public what had previously just
Speaker 2: been like whispers and private grumbles.
Speaker 3: Basically a wizard pretty much you don't nobody spell.
Speaker 2: You know, you don't step to the wizard. So that
Speaker 2: Keighley's secrecy was not the reasonable precaution of a careful inventor,
Speaker 2: but like this deliberate strategy of a man who had
Speaker 2: something to hide. So early January eighteen eighty two, the stockholders,
Speaker 2: they filed a bill of equity in Philadelphia's Cortacom and please,
Speaker 2: they wanted a court order that would force Keighley to
Speaker 2: disclose the principles and operating methods of his motors.
Speaker 3: Show you son, yes, okay.
Speaker 2: His response was immediate and totally on brand. It was
Speaker 2: crazy technical in nature. Did not address the substantive merits
Speaker 2: of their complaints. Instead, he just raised all these procedural
Speaker 2: objections to the form and standing of the legal action itself.
Speaker 2: And he had all these reasons why the court should
Speaker 2: decline to grant the plaintiffs the relief they saw it.
Speaker 3: The exciting patent laws.
Speaker 2: Yeah, none of which engaged with the underlying question like
Speaker 2: can you disclose your process?
Speaker 3: And does this stuff work?
Speaker 2: So it goes to court on April first, eighteen eighty two,
Speaker 2: fitting a judge overruled his response issued an order directing
Speaker 2: him to make known his process in the way that
Speaker 2: was indicated in the bill filed by the Kieley Motor Company. Now,
Speaker 2: the order did not specify in detail how the disclosure
Speaker 2: was to be made. But it basically said, you have
Speaker 2: to show how this motor works.
Speaker 3: Let them fly, wheels fly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, obviously a Kigley's in a bit of a jam. Now,
Speaker 2: clearly he couldn't ignore the court order without risking contempt
Speaker 2: of court, but he also couldn't expose his own fraud.
Speaker 2: So in June of eighteen eighty two, a committee appointed
Speaker 2: by the company's board reached an agreement that this guy
Speaker 2: named William Bokel was going to be instructed by Keighley
Speaker 2: in the construction and operation of the inventions.
Speaker 3: Okay, that's very fitting. About time.
Speaker 2: Killey's got to teach Bocal how to do it.
Speaker 3: We need somebody to know.
Speaker 2: And that's the absolute most that Keihey would agree to.
Speaker 2: Just telling one guy.
Speaker 3: Sure, but if you're still a business partner, that seems reasonable.
Speaker 2: It seems reasonable. So at the annual stockholders meeting December thirteenth,
Speaker 2: eighteen eighty two, Bocal delivers his report on what he's
Speaker 2: learned after months of instruction. And so the report is
Speaker 2: like vague is all get out, And he described Keighley's
Speaker 2: discovery as the fact that water in its natural state
Speaker 2: was capable of being by vibratory motion disintegrated so that
Speaker 2: its molecular structure was broken up, and that there was
Speaker 2: evolved from this process a permanent expansive gas or ether
Speaker 2: produced by mechanical actions.
Speaker 3: Like excitory alchemy.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, he said it would be proper to describe
Speaker 2: the specific mechanism used, and he declared that Keighley had
Speaker 2: discovered all that he claimed.
Speaker 3: Oh, he took his back.
Speaker 2: He took his back.
Speaker 3: He's like he's shaking these water molecules. So they don't care.
Speaker 2: If you did a close read as a report energy,
Speaker 2: it says nothing like the report is just it paraphrases
Speaker 2: what Keighley already says in his own language. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: there's no technical information that would let any other person
Speaker 2: replicate this or even go in and evaluate the process.
Speaker 3: He doesn't outline like this. He goes to beg to see.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So the next year, this newspaper correspondent drops a
Speaker 2: bombshell Bocal had not in fact been entrusted with the
Speaker 2: secrets of the motor at all. Despite the report. Keighley
Speaker 2: told Bochel he could explain everything in less than two
Speaker 2: hours after the engine was completed, and that he had
Speaker 2: not done so yet, just because the engine was not
Speaker 2: yet complete. I'll explain it to you when the engine's done.
Speaker 3: Engines. Sorry, it's not done.
Speaker 2: It's only gonna take me two hours to explain this focus. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and so he hadn't instructed vocal on all the inner
Speaker 2: workings or let him even see it in action.
Speaker 3: They picked a bad age.
Speaker 2: Yes, So by the summer of eighteen eighty four, Kelley's
Speaker 2: situation was like precarious.
Speaker 3: Do you think he kind of like slipped him a
Speaker 3: five and like, hey, go tell them, okay.
Speaker 2: And I think he also was like.
Speaker 3: Just dumb enough to believe him, yes, but smart enough
Speaker 3: to kind of understand.
Speaker 2: And I think that Keiley had just a way to
Speaker 2: dance around people with scientific sounding language.
Speaker 3: People love promise. Look at Sam Altman.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so Keihey's reputation was like starting to be
Speaker 2: in shambles. Okay, you know he had put off the
Speaker 2: machine too often the stockholders or like starting to turn
Speaker 2: off the money tap totally no more funding. At a
Speaker 2: board meeting March eighteen eighty four, He's like, guess what, guys,
Speaker 2: the vibratory engines finished. Good news. Yeah, I got it.
Speaker 2: And he's like, so this is in March. She's like,
Speaker 2: I will demonstrate it on or before April tenth. April
Speaker 2: tenth came went okay, no, no vibratory engine display. And
Speaker 2: so when in doubt, shift gears get a new gadget
Speaker 2: to sell to a new audience.
Speaker 3: Ah, so the Zuckerberg model.
Speaker 2: He stepped away. He stepped away from the engine and
Speaker 2: the motor company. He had a new invention. What is it,
Speaker 2: the the poric gun vaporic gun.
Speaker 3: Oh, he's going to do like a gas gun.
Speaker 2: Yeah. This was a weapon that he claimed was powered
Speaker 2: by the same etheric or vaporic force that drove his
Speaker 2: motor And this time he wasn't looking to the public
Speaker 2: for money. Of course, he went to the government instead.
Speaker 3: Oh what year are we ineen four? Okay?
Speaker 2: So the army in this time period, early eighteen eighties,
Speaker 2: they wanted new weapons technology.
Speaker 3: So I was just wondering, are we getting ready for
Speaker 3: a war? But not quite? But they're like, let's just
Speaker 3: on the horizon.
Speaker 2: Why not.
Speaker 3: We're gonna be a strong power. We need.
Speaker 2: Me these. So he figured like if he could show
Speaker 2: government officials this crazy new gun, get them on board,
Speaker 2: it'd be great publicity. For him totally, and maybe he
Speaker 2: gets some of these sweet government contracts.
Speaker 3: Being a defense contractor looks like a real good gig.
Speaker 2: It's they make, They make a whole lot.
Speaker 3: Of and it's a low bar to like convince these
Speaker 3: people you know what we need.
Speaker 2: You know we need, and they're always just like, yeah,
Speaker 2: throw money, Zaron. Yes, I want you to picture it.
Speaker 2: It's September twentieth, eighteen eighty four. You are sitting on
Speaker 2: bleachers under a warm autumn, cloudless sky at the US
Speaker 2: Army proving Ground at Sandy Hook, New Jersey. Your wool
Speaker 2: uniform soaks up the sun, but you remain cool and calm.
Speaker 2: That's just who you are. You are Lieutenant Edmund L. Zelensky.
Speaker 2: All around you on the bleachers are other military higher
Speaker 2: ups and weapons experts. You are a United States Army
Speaker 2: military engineer of considerable distinction. Your current project is developing
Speaker 2: a pneumatic dynamite gun for the Army's use. And today
Speaker 2: you're waiting to observe a demonstration by some character named
Speaker 2: John Ernst Worrell Keeley. He stands on the bare ground
Speaker 2: before you, prepping his presentation. He has with him five
Speaker 2: gallons of what he described as veporic force contained in
Speaker 2: a receiver. His claim is that this quantity of stored
Speaker 2: force would be sufficient to fire a high caliber weapon.
Speaker 2: He moves a large metal container and sets up what
Speaker 2: looks like a tiny cannon. The gun itself is a
Speaker 2: small weapon. The bore is just one and a quarter inches.
Speaker 2: Connected to it is an iron wire tube three sixteenths
Speaker 2: of an inch in diameter, leading to an iron receiver
Speaker 2: four and a half feet long, containing the alleged viporic force.
Speaker 2: Look the setup and think to yourself that it looks
Speaker 2: an awful lot like an ordinary compressed air gun, not
Speaker 2: some revolutionary physics defying super weapon. Kihi loads the gun
Speaker 2: by ramming a small lead ball into the muzzle. He
Speaker 2: then taps the iron receiver with a hammer. He turns
Speaker 2: to the crowd and explains that this action was necessary
Speaker 2: to stimulate the vibratory force within it. Vibratory force such nonsense,
Speaker 2: You think, why that hammer tap is nothing more than
Speaker 2: a piece of theater, you grumble. Kihi then turns a handle.
Speaker 2: The ball is fired from the gun with a short,
Speaker 2: sharp report and minimal recoil, and notably, you see no
Speaker 2: powder smoke. He goes through the process and fires again.
Speaker 2: A man at a table with a clipboard full of
Speaker 2: papers scribbles notes and then announces a velocity of four
Speaker 2: hundred and eighty two feet per second. Kiley fires the
Speaker 2: weapon again, this time a target consisting of three spruce planks,
Speaker 2: each three inches thick. The ball penetrates the purse plank
Speaker 2: and goes halfway through the second. Keighley announces to the
Speaker 2: gathered group that he has used a pressure of seven
Speaker 2: thousand pounds per square inch for these demonstrations, and that
Speaker 2: he could employ thirty thousand pounds per square inch if
Speaker 2: he wanted to. You are thoroughly familiar with the properties
Speaker 2: and behavior of compressed air as a propulsive force. You
Speaker 2: think the aport gun bears a suspicious and unmistakable resemblance
Speaker 2: to compressed air weapons with which you are already familiar.
Speaker 2: The speed, the lack of smoke and recoil, the use
Speaker 2: of a pressure vessel connected to a firing chamber by
Speaker 2: a tube. That's simple compressed air. There's nothing mysterious, and
Speaker 2: certainly nothing new. You turn to the man sitting beside you,
Speaker 2: aar Edy, the president of the Kihlei Motor Company. You
Speaker 2: could replicate everything Keighley had shown and go further. You
Speaker 2: tell him, he tells you, he'll speak about it to
Speaker 2: mister Keeley. No need for you to demonstrate, you huff,
Speaker 2: no wonder all you suckers are all going broke. So
Speaker 2: the day after the Sandy Hook demonstration, Keihley met with
Speaker 2: a reporter from the New York Times and declared that
Speaker 2: his experimenting days were over and that complete success was
Speaker 2: now close at hand. Like, I don't need to keep
Speaker 2: tinkering on this, I'm done. He was, like that motor,
Speaker 2: Remember the motor. It's going to be done in less
Speaker 2: than two months. So he bumped it out.
Speaker 3: Not the two weeks too much, It's going to be
Speaker 3: a two.
Speaker 2: Then I'm gonna give a whole exhibition of its massive.
Speaker 3: How like Tony Stark over here, the same old.
Speaker 2: Song and dance. So Lieutenant Zelenski's interest in Keeley didn't
Speaker 2: end at Sandy Hook. So November eighteen eighty four he
Speaker 2: attended just like the next month, he attends a demonstration
Speaker 2: at Keihey's workshop in Philadelphia. And during the show, Zelensky
Speaker 2: saw this large reservoir that kee should to his guests,
Speaker 2: and so he made a suggestion he thought that if
Speaker 2: Keighley's generator truly produced force from water, as he claimed
Speaker 2: that the complete and convincing test would be to discharge
Speaker 2: the reservoir entirely and then recharge it using the generator.
Speaker 2: With Zelensky watching. This was a closed cycle demonstration of
Speaker 2: if this is supposed to be an over unity device,
Speaker 2: this is exactly what would be able to prove it up.
Speaker 2: Yea exhibition of it was like big no, and he
Speaker 2: was like, you know, if we recharging the reservoir is
Speaker 2: going to take two hours, who has two hours in
Speaker 2: their life? And like, even though he had been saying
Speaker 2: over and over that he could produce large quantities of
Speaker 2: force in a matter of seconds, so he also offered
Speaker 2: the explanation that the reservoir had been carefully negatized. Oh,
Speaker 2: a term that means nothing.
Speaker 3: So he's like, instead of saying calibrated, he's like, it's been.
Speaker 2: I can't discharge it all right if you're.
Speaker 3: A pneumatic whatever dynamite gun.
Speaker 2: So Kiley, he's also in this demonstration, he says that
Speaker 2: he's achieved pressures of fifty thousand pounds per square inch
Speaker 2: and that it was so much that it broke all
Speaker 2: his pressure gage. He's like, oh yeah, but he brought
Speaker 2: with him a calibrated pressure gauge that could register up
Speaker 2: to ten thousand pounds per square inch. He's like, here,
Speaker 2: you use this, try and break it. And he knew, like, okay,
Speaker 2: we can. We can disprove all this pressure stuff right here.
Speaker 2: If he declines, like, we're going to expose him. So
Speaker 2: Keiley pauses and he's like for a second, He's like,
Speaker 2: you can tell his say. Then he comes up with
Speaker 2: this response that became one of the most quoted lines
Speaker 2: of his career. He told Zelinsky that he did not
Speaker 2: believe in pressure gauges anyway.
Speaker 3: I don't trust a rule.
Speaker 2: Takes science, you know. So it's on June sixth, eighteen
Speaker 2: eighty five. Kiley Stage is another exhibition at the workshop.
Speaker 2: This time he's got twenty people, including newspaper reporters, a
Speaker 2: mechanical engineer, officers, stockholders from Kiley Motors. For this one,
Speaker 2: he puts together this like crazy apparatus that was mostly
Speaker 2: just visually complex.
Speaker 3: So really a steampunk stuff. It's like a lot of
Speaker 3: copper coil, a lot of wires.
Speaker 2: So at the centerpiece is a globe fitted with all
Speaker 2: these apertures from which tubes ran to cylinders. Yeah, a
Speaker 2: lot of globe was on top of a structure that
Speaker 2: also incorporated two large tuning forks and a latticed framework
Speaker 2: of rods and rings, described by observers as looking like
Speaker 2: a big old bird cage. There were more tuning forks,
Speaker 2: more rings that contain steel wires projecting out of their centers,
Speaker 2: all these other weirds.
Speaker 3: Is like vibratory collection.
Speaker 2: Yes, all these attachments. The structural function of the bird
Speaker 2: cage was, as a New York Times reporter would later note,
Speaker 2: to attract the eye and the attention of observers toward
Speaker 2: the musical apparatus and away from the globe and cylinders,
Speaker 2: which were the components actually connected to the concealed power source.
Speaker 2: So he's like, don't look at this ugly old engine,
Speaker 2: Look at this crazy steampunk.
Speaker 3: Look at this sculpture burning man. Ready.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So when a reporter asked whether he could examine
Speaker 2: the contents of the globe, Key was like, no, no,
Speaker 2: your vibes are bad. He's like, it'll take too long.
Speaker 2: I want to show this, Like you're what are you
Speaker 2: trying to stall me here?
Speaker 3: Like sabotage, sabotage. What are you doing here?
Speaker 2: Elon musk of it all is so out of control.
Speaker 2: So Keighley started the demonstration by rubbing a greased violin
Speaker 2: bow across one of the tuning forks.
Speaker 3: Okay, and the vibration like, listen to that tune. You
Speaker 3: can hear the distribution of the vibe.
Speaker 2: It looks impressive. Then he made like little adjustments. He
Speaker 2: opened up a stopcock that was leading to one of
Speaker 2: the cylinders. And when he did that, the witness has
Speaker 2: heard what was described as a hiss of escaping air,
Speaker 2: and then they're kind of like huh, And he immediately
Speaker 2: talks and he's like, oh, what you heard wasn't compressed air.
Speaker 2: That was etheric vapor, and it's a force without material nature.
Speaker 3: Guys, don't get hung up.
Speaker 2: It's whatever you do. Don't believe that it's compressed air.
Speaker 2: And so the distinction he was drawing was between a
Speaker 2: real gas, which would have weight, chemical properties, behavior describable
Speaker 2: by physical laws. And then his alleged etheric vapor is
Speaker 2: free energy had none of that. Yeah, because he's saying
Speaker 2: it's pure force rather than matter.
Speaker 3: It's pure energy. He's dissolved the chemical bonds structure. It's
Speaker 3: now just oscillating in and out of the ether.
Speaker 2: Yes, And he's like, you know, once I released this
Speaker 2: through the stopcock, it's going to go to these weights,
Speaker 2: which it did, and he's like, now they are at
Speaker 2: approximately twenty two thousand pounds per square inch of pressure,
Speaker 2: all at my disposal, and like there are no pressure measurements,
Speaker 2: because he was like, gages are for suckers, and so
Speaker 2: everyone's just like.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's craztastic.
Speaker 2: And so the second part of the demonstration involved a
Speaker 2: rotating iron globe that was like suspended on this axle
Speaker 2: and connected by pulley and belting to a small bandsaw,
Speaker 2: and the globe is set in motion, the saw starts up,
Speaker 2: it cuts through several inches of planking and so like
Speaker 2: non scientists were like, that's crazy, that's pretty impressive.
Speaker 3: It's an engine and.
Speaker 2: But it but then the Times reporter noted, there's like
Speaker 2: a big limitation here. So the period during which any
Speaker 2: actual work was performed and he sawing, including both the
Speaker 2: weightlifting and a sawing, was like twenty minutes in total,
Speaker 2: and that was within a session that took up three
Speaker 2: and a half hours of set up, adjustment, explanation, fussing.
Speaker 2: But an ordinary small gas engine would have cut through
Speaker 2: that wood like butter in those twenty minutes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Diesel has already shown them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, look so, And twenty two thousand pounds per square
Speaker 2: inch should have been capable of way more mechanical output
Speaker 2: than cutting through a couple pieces of wood. So all
Speaker 2: the audience got was basically a spinning globe cutting a
Speaker 2: little piece of wood over less than half an hour,
Speaker 2: scattered across a three and a half hour performance.
Speaker 3: I hope they got like refreshments.
Speaker 2: I know, I hope so too. Okay, so I'm going
Speaker 2: to take a pause here when we come back refreshments,
Speaker 2: We're gonna stick with this demonstration.
Speaker 3: I got to see where this goes.
Speaker 2: So we're back in the in the lab. We're in
Speaker 2: the workshop.
Speaker 3: This is so smacking of our modern AI and whatever
Speaker 3: we are Internet three point zero four point h I
Speaker 3: don't know if I've lost track, but the whole musk like, oh,
Speaker 3: welcome to the also Zuckerberg's welcome to the metaverse. No,
Speaker 3: you ignore the metaverse now, it's about AI, you know,
Speaker 3: like it's all these guys. Just keep it moving here's
Speaker 3: the new thing. Does it do anything anybody wants? Nobody
Speaker 3: was about to next week, could.
Speaker 2: If it wanted to. So we just saw the band
Speaker 2: saw that took for a weightlifting Okay, so we had
Speaker 2: that rotating globe. That's what Kelly was calling the engine.
Speaker 2: It was like stopped and started a bunch of times
Speaker 2: during the demonstration. The Times reporter was like, you know,
Speaker 2: it looks like the globe seems to operate on like
Speaker 2: a compressed material that's depleting. This isn't one of those,
Speaker 2: you know, perpetual motion machines. He's like, how about you
Speaker 2: run this thing continuously for half an hour without interruption.
Speaker 2: Don't touch it and don't attach the bandsaw or anything
Speaker 2: else to it. Just let it rotate. That'd be cool.
Speaker 2: And so the reporters being clever, there's minimal friction. It
Speaker 2: requires little power to rotate. If the force was available
Speaker 2: was as abundant as Keiley said it was, then it
Speaker 2: should you know, there should be no problems. It's in
Speaker 2: that thing for thirty minutes, thirty hours. So the stockholders
Speaker 2: in the audience they got a little worried about it.
Speaker 2: But Keiley's like, okay, yeah, we'll do it well. I
Speaker 2: think they thought, well, if he doesn't agree, and then
Speaker 2: they put it in the paper. So the globe rotated
Speaker 2: for twelve minutes a little over that and then and
Speaker 2: kept consistently slowing, and then Kelley reached out and stopped
Speaker 2: it before it petered out in front of everybody. Because
Speaker 2: like the power source was finite, it was probably conpressed
Speaker 2: gas like a genuine etheric vapor generator. It used force
Speaker 2: from water and airs claimed would have only grown in
Speaker 2: capacity the way he had been trying to describe it.
Speaker 3: He has like a balloon pushing like a you know,
Speaker 3: like a radial mill, you know, yes, and it's running out.
Speaker 2: It's running out exactly. So the mechanical engineer who attended
Speaker 2: that demonstration made his opinion available to the reporter for
Speaker 2: the Times. He was straight up, He's like, this is
Speaker 2: a fraud. So his professional judgment, based on familiarity with
Speaker 2: machinery and pressure systems, matched what Lieutenant Zelensky had reached.
Speaker 2: He was like, this is compressed air. It's so inconsistent
Speaker 2: with this force that he claims to have discovered.
Speaker 3: This is literally hot air.
Speaker 2: Stockholders and company officers, though they loved the demonstration, they
Speaker 2: applauded at the end. I mean they weren't stupid people.
Speaker 2: These are like businessmen, investors. They had put so much
Speaker 2: money into.
Speaker 3: It, and that's what it costs fallacy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what colored their need for it to succeed.
Speaker 2: So the applause was the applause of people for whom
Speaker 2: the alternative to being impressed was just like, you can't.
Speaker 2: I don't want to even think about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is too much. And also it's like the
Speaker 3: parents when like their child doesn't mess up the lines
Speaker 3: in the school play.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's crillian. I love the end of the New
Speaker 2: York Times article about this whole debacle. I'm going to
Speaker 2: read it to you. Quote. Before the party dispersed, there
Speaker 2: came in a reporter who, having fallen sick while the
Speaker 2: trials were in progress, had not been able to follow
Speaker 2: the drift of them. He applied to Keighley to have
Speaker 2: the thing explained to him, and Keighley answered, quote, it
Speaker 2: is an elaboration of interatomic ether by vibration. The atomic
Speaker 2: ether vibrates all around the molecules of matter. There is
Speaker 2: a magnetic force attached to it at the same time,
Speaker 2: and it assimilates with the molecular atomic aggregations that is,
Speaker 2: assimilates with a certain attractive force that is hard to
Speaker 2: tell what it is. I call it vibratory negative. It
Speaker 2: does not act like a magnet draws metal toward it.
Speaker 2: There's a certain magnetic effect about it that causes it
Speaker 2: to adhere by vibratory rotation to different forms of matter,
Speaker 2: that is, the molecular atomic etheric and ether etheric. The
Speaker 2: impulse is given by metallic impulses, the rotary power that
Speaker 2: is formed by ethereal vibration, that is, that is the
Speaker 2: force that holds it in position. And the reporter went
Speaker 2: his way wondering, quote.
Speaker 3: There was so many words. He's basically saying, it's zero
Speaker 3: point energy. But ether magnets.
Speaker 2: Sounds so much like when Elon Musk bss his way
Speaker 2: through an interview about space or Grock or.
Speaker 3: Why we should be on Mars and going to get
Speaker 3: us there, or like how in the future economy it's
Speaker 3: going to be so abundant, nobody's gonna have to do anything.
Speaker 3: We're gonna have.
Speaker 2: There's there's elements that he like, you know, with power
Speaker 2: and energy and like you know, all these things in
Speaker 2: space that he doesn't take into account.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, Well, like when you want to have the
Speaker 3: data centers like in space, You're like, well, what about
Speaker 3: the heat? Yes, you can't dissipate the heat. He's like,
Speaker 3: oh you can't. They can come up with a heat sinc.
Speaker 3: That will work on it, Like am I, and he does.
Speaker 3: This's going to be in the ether.
Speaker 2: It's in the ether. So he's a con man of science. Keeley,
Speaker 2: Oh him, but he and he's about to get his
Speaker 2: at least a little bit. In eighteen eighty eight, a
Speaker 2: former business partner named Bennett Wilson sued him. He said
Speaker 2: that back in eighteen sixty three he fronted Keeley's original
Speaker 2: efforts at making the signature Vibe motor okay, and Keighley
Speaker 2: was like, yeah, you know what, I'll cut you in.
Speaker 2: Keeley had not, and so Wilson wanted the court to
Speaker 2: make Keeley show all the parts and processes in the motor.
Speaker 2: So we're doing this again, like going to court, like
Speaker 2: show us how this works.
Speaker 3: Does he have patents at this point?
Speaker 2: No, he wants research, schematics, prove it all up that
Speaker 2: this is what Wilson was in on back of the day.
Speaker 2: He wants full disclosure Keighley stalled the inspection over and
Speaker 2: over and avoided it completely and then gets found in
Speaker 2: contempt of court. So he refused to disclose the principles
Speaker 2: underlying the machine. So they sent him to uh moyementcing
Speaker 2: prison in Philadelphia.
Speaker 3: Got himself lockdown.
Speaker 2: He was only there for a couple of days because
Speaker 2: then missus Bloomfield More remember her, and then other supporters
Speaker 2: they rallied to his defense. They sprung him out. There
Speaker 2: was also the problem that the court didn't have a
Speaker 2: clear mechanism to compel a man to explain a physical
Speaker 2: principle he claimed to understand only intuitively.
Speaker 3: Oh sure, but that was Can you try writing it down?
Speaker 2: Yeah? But no, but has you got a field?
Speaker 3: How do I write down? In Oora and.
Speaker 2: Keiley, he saw his imprisonment as like this martyrdom o god,
Speaker 2: and it was evidence that he is a visionary and
Speaker 2: he's being persecuted by those who have too small of
Speaker 2: a brain. You don't understand my genius.
Speaker 3: I'm the future and people are troggling.
Speaker 2: So bloomfield More, She's like, yes, he's a martyr. She
Speaker 2: looked for support, so she reached out to Thomas Edison
Speaker 2: and Nicola Tesla's.
Speaker 3: Oh god, both of them would hate this.
Speaker 2: Well, They're like, please come and examine his inventions, and
Speaker 2: both of them were like, uh, we're going to pass.
Speaker 3: Yeah hard no interesting, I want no association in a
Speaker 3: news story with him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's like, you know, I'm busy, I'm I'm would
Speaker 2: have been something else on my schedule. So if they
Speaker 2: couldn't get scientific support, at least they could try and
Speaker 2: get money. So Bloomfield Moore took Keighley and went to
Speaker 2: New York and they met No, they met with none
Speaker 2: other than John Jacob Astor the four.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, there you go.
Speaker 2: Get to a Robert Barres, ultimate wealthy saw one of
Speaker 2: a major moneyed family. He was at one time the
Speaker 2: richest man in the world, and then he died in
Speaker 2: the sinking of the Titanic. Oops oopsie. But before that happened,
Speaker 2: he bought into the Kili Motor Company.
Speaker 3: If I'm not mistaken, he actually did do a decent
Speaker 3: thing when he died on the Titanic, where he like
Speaker 3: let other people go if I remember correctly, and he
Speaker 3: wanted to stay behind. You know, he was saying, I'm
Speaker 3: not going to let it be said that an Astor
Speaker 3: shot the spot of a woman or a child.
Speaker 2: Yeah, remember, don't let me, you know, slam to him.
Speaker 2: So like he gets this new infusion of cash. They
Speaker 2: are all these phony demonstrations and pitches to follow. His
Speaker 2: supporters went to bat for him over and over and over,
Speaker 2: but they were growing weary. Even Bloomfield more she got
Speaker 2: tired of the stalling and the refusals for inspection. She
Speaker 2: didn't cut him off, though, she just like reduced his
Speaker 2: monthly stipend.
Speaker 3: He was too tall to cut off. I think I
Speaker 3: wanted to work.
Speaker 2: So by the eighteen nineties he had pretty much abandoned
Speaker 2: the language of hydraulic and moved into a more explicitly
Speaker 2: mystical realm. He talked about quote sympathetic vibratory physics, and
Speaker 2: he described a theoretical universe of interconnected resonances that drew
Speaker 2: on Pythagorean, harmonic, Hindu mystical thought and the writings of theosophist.
Speaker 3: And also because spiritualism that's also be a backdrop right
Speaker 3: this time.
Speaker 2: So this was but this was on purpose because he
Speaker 2: found that the theosophical movement of the eighteen eighties eighteen nineties,
Speaker 2: they were ready to accept the existence of hidden forces
Speaker 2: unknown conventional science.
Speaker 3: So they were big into that they were early WU.
Speaker 2: Right, So what is this theosophical movement? It was the
Speaker 2: Theosophical Society was founded in New York in eighteen seventy
Speaker 2: five by Helena Petrovna Blovotsky, Russian born occultist mystic, and
Speaker 2: then as well Henry Steel all caught. He was an
Speaker 2: American lawyer and journalist. So their central claim was that
Speaker 2: beneath the surface of all the world's religious traditions was
Speaker 2: just a single, universal, ancient wisdom. Theosophists called it the
Speaker 2: quote perennial philosophy or the ancient wisdom tradition. So Blavotsky
Speaker 2: argued that this hidden knowledge had been preserved across millennia
Speaker 2: by a brotherhood of advanced spiritual masters who she called
Speaker 2: Mahatmas or masters, and they all live pretty much in Tibet,
Speaker 2: and she said that she's like, I write directly to
Speaker 2: the Guide my writings. So theosophy drew eclectically on Hinduism, Buddhism,
Speaker 2: uh Neo Platonism, her Meticism, basically Western esoteric. So they
Speaker 2: blended all these together into a system that put forward
Speaker 2: the existence of hidden laws of nature inaccessible to materialist science,
Speaker 2: and the spiritual evolution of the soul, all these reincarnations
Speaker 2: a cosmic hierarchy.
Speaker 3: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think maybe we should like get in on
Speaker 2: it and sell her on it, because that's like a
Speaker 2: less poisonous doctor philosophy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's do it. Bring it.
Speaker 2: So this spread like huge in the eighteen eighties eighteen nineties,
Speaker 2: and there was incredible membership. Intellectuals are seekers, people who
Speaker 2: were dissatisfied with like orthodox Christianity and then also the
Speaker 2: hard materialism of contemporary science.
Speaker 3: You can still find it today. I have friends who
Speaker 3: have like you know, used it or adjacent or inspired
Speaker 3: by Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well it was you know where it had it
Speaker 2: took a foothold, was in Ireland, and it shaped the
Speaker 2: mystical interests of W. B. Yates Whiting that. Yeah, So
Speaker 2: Blavatsky herself, she expressed an interest in Keeley's work, and
Speaker 2: her publications talked about his claims like pretty sympathetically. Keighley
Speaker 2: was seen as a man who had accessed hidden natural
Speaker 2: forces through this like intuitive spiritual attainment instead of boring
Speaker 2: scientific man.
Speaker 3: Loved because he couldn't express it.
Speaker 2: Yes, this totally worked for Keeley because like it made
Speaker 2: it out that he refused to submit to scientific investigation
Speaker 2: as a spiritual necessity. That's not fraud. I need this.
Speaker 2: I am protecting the vibe. So it all had to
Speaker 2: come to an end at some point, and that end
Speaker 2: was actually the end of John Ernst World Keiey. He
Speaker 2: died on November eighteenth, eighteen ninety eight, in Philadelphia. He
Speaker 2: was sixty one years old. He the full run, Yeah,
Speaker 2: pneumonia and then out. So he died without having produced
Speaker 2: a commercially operational machine. He died with having demonstrated his
Speaker 2: principles under conditions acceptable to independent scientific investigation. And he
Speaker 2: died having consumed tens of millions of dollars in investor funds. Yes,
Speaker 2: over a quarter century, he promises, the huckster dream.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he never had to really, other than those few
Speaker 3: days where he was incarcerated, He never really had to
Speaker 3: pay up, you know, face justice.
Speaker 2: The reaction among his supporters was just grief. They were bereft,
Speaker 2: but in some cases great men, and they're like, you
Speaker 2: know what, the secrets died with him, of course, and
Speaker 2: that's such a shame. But then among the skeptics, they're
Speaker 2: like full of anticipation.
Speaker 3: Let me get the notebooks.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Within weeks of his death, the scientific and journalistic
Speaker 2: communities like descended to see what he left behind.
Speaker 3: The ancient James Randys.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 2: So the results were reported in detail in the Philadelphia
Speaker 2: Press newspaper. They sent investigators to examine the workshop at
Speaker 2: fourteen twenty two North twentieth Street. What they found totally
Speaker 2: dismantled the entire edifice of all his claim discoveries. The
Speaker 2: building had this really super complex concealed hydraulic pressure system
Speaker 2: built into it. Under the floorboards, they found a system
Speaker 2: of tubes. Not the Internet, just another system of tubes
Speaker 2: connected to a large sphere of compressed water or air
Speaker 2: buried in the basement, and those tubes ran through the
Speaker 2: walls and the floors to connect to all these various
Speaker 2: machines they supplied the power that had driven all the demonstrations,
Speaker 2: just a huge air compressor under the house. The gauges
Speaker 2: that had registered all the huge pressures. They were connected
Speaker 2: to the concealed reservoir rather than any energy released by
Speaker 2: the machines themselves.
Speaker 3: Oh that's smart.
Speaker 2: The globe motor that looked like it was spinning by
Speaker 2: the power of vibe sure that contained a secret compartment
Speaker 2: that had a small motor in it that was also
Speaker 2: powered by compressed air. The iron sphere that he once
Speaker 2: said had restrained teams of horses that was connected to
Speaker 2: the same network. Even the like he had this apparently
Speaker 2: spontaneous levitation of weights that he would do and bending
Speaker 2: of metal bars. They could trace that all to mechanical
Speaker 2: connections and you know, hidden stuff.
Speaker 3: So he was still using the traditional heat beaten treat.
Speaker 2: Yes, the investigators found false floors, hidden panels, pipes, involves
Speaker 2: all over the place. Is pretty a genius, it really is.
Speaker 2: And he but and he hadn't just pulled off like simple.
Speaker 3: Frauds like Wizard of Oz level of.
Speaker 2: He spent decades engineering one of the most elaborate deceptions
Speaker 2: in the history of American science. Like the work that
Speaker 2: he had to put into that.
Speaker 3: I mean, he was actually scientifically gifted, just with.
Speaker 2: Precision, the sophistication, Like he had genuine mechanical ability. And
Speaker 2: he wasn't ignorant. No, he just directed that mechanical ability
Speaker 2: towards rather than the solution of any like real physical totally.
Speaker 3: He kept old things and made them new by putting
Speaker 3: them together.
Speaker 2: The scale of the hidden infrastructure also made it clear
Speaker 2: that the fraud was one hundred percent deliberate, rather than
Speaker 2: being like, oh, he has this delusion and resort to trickery,
Speaker 2: like no, this is this is from the ground, or
Speaker 2: he didn't.
Speaker 3: He was It was intuition. He was working with a
Speaker 3: belief and it turned out to be wrong and he
Speaker 3: wanted to make it right. No, this is very much.
Speaker 2: None of the investors ever received any return on their investment, obviously,
Speaker 2: and there were no assets to the Kili Motor Company
Speaker 2: beyond the financial losses. The whole thing really damaged the
Speaker 2: culture of Americans speculative investment in scientific credibility at the time.
Speaker 2: That's going to say, we do it now.
Speaker 3: That's like how Tesla got screwed his guys like him.
Speaker 2: So, you know, the willingness of really smart and well
Speaker 2: educated people to get duped by his charad became this
Speaker 2: cautionary tale for everyone, and it was cited in all
Speaker 2: these discussions about scientific fraud and the psychology of con artists.
Speaker 3: Mark Twain used to be suckered by people like this.
Speaker 3: You know, he was.
Speaker 2: Friends with It's miracle and wonder.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you want something oscillating and shaking and doing
Speaker 3: all this stuff well.
Speaker 2: And it illustrated for people of the era, and it
Speaker 2: should do the same for people now. Like the trappings
Speaker 2: of technical complexity, Like when it's deployed by a really
Speaker 2: skilled performer, you can disable critical thinking in folks who
Speaker 2: should know.
Speaker 3: Better, totally promise is blinding in that way.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, so Zaren, what's your ridiculous takeaway?
Speaker 3: Like I would have loved if actually I'm just mentioned
Speaker 3: Mark Twain, if he would have gotten a chance to
Speaker 3: see when he's exhibitions and then gotten like all excited
Speaker 3: about it, invested some of his money like he often did,
Speaker 3: lost it like he often did, and then wrote after
Speaker 3: the guy passed some scathing like his like letters of
Speaker 3: like you know, like his books about God and they
Speaker 3: were published posthumously where he just brought the heat something
Speaker 3: like that, just for this guy, you know, the innocence
Speaker 3: of broad level of like mockery of Hubris, but for
Speaker 3: this guy. Yes, I would have loved that, just for
Speaker 3: the for the sake of Tesla, who I absolutely love
Speaker 3: as like one of these figures at this time, who
Speaker 3: I get so mad, how screwed. He was either by
Speaker 3: short sighted, greedy or Charlatan's like what's yours? Elizabeth?
Speaker 2: My takeaway is that we see this over and over
Speaker 2: of con artists who or crimers who have a skill
Speaker 2: and have a talent and use it in the wrong way,
Speaker 2: like we see it with like forgers, where they're like,
Speaker 2: you're a wonderful artist, why why do you come up
Speaker 2: with something else? And so here he spent all this
Speaker 2: time like fitting an entire building and rather than you know,
Speaker 2: because I think that when you have the confidence there,
Speaker 2: their confidence is false confidence and they're gaining the confidence
Speaker 2: of others. They're building on something that exists. But it
Speaker 2: is such a terrible, terrifying saying risk to go out
Speaker 2: on your own and try something that may that may fail.
Speaker 2: So as a painter, you know you could paint it
Speaker 2: and no one sees what you see. You know, you
Speaker 2: and I know it. As writers, and you write something
Speaker 2: that you really resonates with with you and you put
Speaker 2: it out there and if it's it hurts when people
Speaker 2: don't get it, or if it just falls, you know,
Speaker 2: it fails, And so I can see, like I just
Speaker 2: think it's really interesting the amount of time that these
Speaker 2: people put into their cons.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, the amount of time he spent just like
Speaker 3: shining the copper.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the copper shining alone. With that said, I Dave,
Speaker 2: if it's okay with you, I'd like a talkback.
Speaker 3: I would be delighted. Oh my god, I went cheat.
Speaker 1: Hey, Saron, this is actually just for the lady host
Speaker 1: this time.
Speaker 2: This is Laura and I need some TV recommendations from
Speaker 2: somebody who.
Speaker 3: Doesn't watch TV as much as I don't watch TV.
Speaker 4: I just got brit Box and I really liked Ludwig
Speaker 4: and the Cleaner.
Speaker 1: So if you have any recommendations, Lady Host.
Speaker 2: I would love to hear them. Love you guys. Bye,
Speaker 2: totally fair enough, I gotcha, I gotcha. Okay, So brit
Speaker 2: Box Shetland. If you haven't watched Shetland, I think it's
Speaker 2: like season ten now. It's great. It's very contemplative and
Speaker 2: a little slow, as Zarin would say, but I love
Speaker 2: I love Shetland. And then moving out of you know
Speaker 2: what I'm really into right now is Paradise on Hulu.
Speaker 2: Great show. Season two is going on. And then the
Speaker 2: other thing that I watch on the regular right now,
Speaker 2: aside from the hit ABC show, nine one one, but
Speaker 2: not nine to one in Nashville because it's I couldn't
Speaker 2: make through the first episode is ru Paul's Drag Race.
Speaker 2: It's really good this season and I'm all about Jane
Speaker 2: don't so anyway, those are my recommendations. There was all
Speaker 2: so another one on britt Box recently with the guy
Speaker 2: who was in Wire in the Blood and you probably
Speaker 2: know what I'm talking about anyway. I think it was
Speaker 2: like a one off. Check that one out too. It's
Speaker 2: super good bye. People know what I'm talking about. That's
Speaker 2: it for today. You can find us online at ridiculous
Speaker 2: Crime dot com. We're also at Ridiculous Crime on both
Speaker 2: Blue Sky and Instagram, and we're on YouTube at ridiculous
Speaker 2: Crime Pod. You can email us at ridiculous Crime at
Speaker 2: gmail dot com. You may or may not get an answer,
Speaker 2: likely won't, but we still love you. Leave us a
Speaker 2: talkback on the iHeart app. I can also make other
Speaker 2: music recommendations, cookbook recommendations, or just maybe don't ever ask
Speaker 2: me these things because it's driving Zara nuts. But iHeart
Speaker 2: app is free. Download it. Leave us at talkback reach out.
Speaker 2: Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dunton and Zarah Burnette,
Speaker 2: produced and edited by Perpetual Motion Machine Dave Cousten starring
Speaker 2: Annals Rutger as Judas. Research is by vibologist Marissa Brown
Speaker 2: and Magic bandsaw peddler Jabbari Davis. The theme song is
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Speaker 3: Ridicus Crime Say It One More Timequous Crime.
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