Vibe Criming: John Ernst Worrell Keely

John Ernst Worrell Keely was a blue collar scientist, a visionary, a meticulous con man. He spent time and talent rigging an elaborate fraud workshop where he promised unlimited vibe-based energy. In just two weeks. He promised. He just needed a little more funding. Cash for vibes.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous crime. It is a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Zaren Elizabeth Zarn. How are you?

Speaker 3 (00:07):
I'm really good good. I'm happy to say that.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
You really are really good.

Speaker 3 (00:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Oh, thank goodness.

Speaker 3 (00:12):
How about you? How you feeling?

Speaker 2 (00:13):
How you doing all right? I'm alright?

Speaker 3 (00:15):
How you be? Girl?

Speaker 2 (00:15):
You know what? Above ground and getting paid? I like
to say, that's me h. Do you know what's ridiculous?

Speaker 3 (00:23):
Yes? I do. Oh have you ever heard of the
Kentucky meat shower?

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Is that like a euphemism?

Speaker 3 (00:29):
No, it's a thing.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
It's an actual, literal thing.

Speaker 3 (00:33):
Between eleven am and noon on March third, eighteen seventy six,
uh huh, chunks of meat fell from the sky over
Olympia Springs in Bath County, Kentucky. And it was like
big chunks of meat, like we're talking.

Speaker 2 (00:48):
Like stew beef.

Speaker 3 (00:49):
Yeah. This this apparently this farmhouse farm wife she went
outside and her husband thought it was like an a
sign of God, right, and he said that it was
snowing meat. That's how he described it was. The pieces
of meat were two by two inches or five centimeters
by five centimeters, and one of them was at least
four inches by four inches or ten centimeters by ten sameters.

(01:09):
These are big chunks of meat. Yeah. Some people thought
it was beef. Some people thought it was lamb, some
people thought it was dear. Two men who tasted it,
they judged it to be lamb or deer. They tasted
the meat. They no, they just picked it up and
let me taste that little. It tastes like deer to me.
So accordingly this guy, doctor Allan McLain Hamilton from the

(01:33):
medical record, he stated that the meat had been identified
as lung tissue from either a human being or a
human in or from a human so either a whole
course or human.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:44):
Yeah, so he said about the structure of the organ
in these two cases being almost identical. Right. So the
New York Times described it as cosmic meat because that's
what some of the locals were kind of joking about.
So some humorous. This guy, the Kurt Goda, apparently he
had this theory that it was cosmic meat. Others locals
they thought the meat would have been vomited by either

(02:04):
black or turkey vultures. So black vultures or turkey vultures,
and because apparently they do that when they're stressed, they
vomit up but what they just raised so they could
fly right, just so we could all know that's science.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
And they didn't even say it was what it was.
They got it wrong. It was like human lung, totally
like medicine.

Speaker 3 (02:24):
You know. Some people also pointed out that it could
have been like had like send you also that, so
it could have been like, uh, you know, basically human
gristle and and what have you. So I have a theory,
thank you for asking.

Speaker 2 (02:35):
It was desperate to.

Speaker 3 (02:37):
It was a time traveler who got their coordinate's wrong,
and you just got just destroyed across the atmosphere and
they fell down in bits and pieces. Cause if you
think about it, the planet's moving, and say you do
some time travel, if you don't get your cord, it's
exactly right. You could en end up in the atmosphere.
You could end up in the defense center of the Earth.
You're not going to necessarily land on the surface. Got
to be the whole planet's moving, So I mean, you

(02:58):
got to really get your cord. And it's right. So
you're off by just a little bit, maybe early experimentation.
All of a sudden you just slid a person across
the atmosphere and you got a meat shower.

Speaker 2 (03:06):
Yeah, I think that's the only explanation. I mean, my
time travel, my theory. I mean it's not as as like, oh,
you know, it's right in front of us. Why didn't
we think it? Is that there was an inventor in
the area who invented the first wood chipper, oh like.

Speaker 3 (03:25):
A meat cannon, and fell into it and then broke.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
It while it was spraying him all over making and
then no one could find it. So you know, you
had to go all that time so you could get
the wood schipper reinvented.

Speaker 3 (03:40):
Now, I love that theory, and I cannot promise you
that I will not in the future comically refer to
as a euphemism a Kentucky meat shower sounds like the
old Kentucky meat shower.

Speaker 2 (03:52):
Yes, so what that would be a euphemism.

Speaker 3 (03:55):
For probably something I order at a restaurant that I
go to. What is this Kentucky No, that's like.

Speaker 2 (04:01):
When you're eating a burrito, but it's like one of
those disgusting like something no offense to those who like it.
But the ground beef burrito and you trip spills down
the sidewalk out that's Kentucky meat because like you know,
it's it's like sort of gringo to do ground beef

(04:22):
and a burrito.

Speaker 3 (04:23):
I don't know, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (04:25):
That's just what I'm hearing in my earpiece right now.
That's ridiculous. I love that. Thank you. Do you want
to know what else is ridiculous? Being powered by vibes?

Speaker 4 (04:38):
Yeah, this is This is Ridiculous Crime, a podcast about

(05:03):
absurd and outrageous capers, heists, and cons.

Speaker 2 (05:06):
It's always ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred
percent ridiculous.

Speaker 3 (05:12):
This I know you done herd have yes? Uh?

Speaker 2 (05:17):
Con men right.

Speaker 3 (05:18):
Yeah, those are especially when they aim up.

Speaker 2 (05:21):
They traffic in vibes.

Speaker 3 (05:23):
This is true. It's a good way of putting in Yeah.

Speaker 2 (05:25):
Let's just put that out there. They create vibes that
get people engaged. People want in on vibes.

Speaker 3 (05:31):
They're vibe criming.

Speaker 2 (05:33):
They're total vibe criming. I you know, it's interesting because
on Tuesday you were talking about scientists death.

Speaker 3 (05:38):
This is true, and our.

Speaker 2 (05:40):
Cycles have synked once again. Yes, yeah, I have a
scientist for you.

Speaker 3 (05:45):
Really look at us, girls.

Speaker 2 (05:47):
We're an old timey con man and he used both
vibes in his behaviors. And in his con itself. Oh zaren,
meet John whirl Keihley.

Speaker 3 (06:01):
Oh what a mouthful name.

Speaker 2 (06:04):
Yeah, so Keeley, that's his stepsister.

Speaker 3 (06:11):
Okay, So.

Speaker 2 (06:14):
I'm going to call him Keeley like when you yell
at yourself and say Brenette. Okay. So he was someone
referred to me in an email today as just Dunton.
Really yeah, and I was like, Dunton did you read that?
I did?

Speaker 3 (06:29):
Actually? Uh?

Speaker 2 (06:31):
So okay. Keilley born eighteen thirty seven in Pennsylvania. He
was raised by his grandparents, because you know, he was
orphaned young. Not a lot of information out there otherwise,
but what we do know is that he was raised
in really modest circumstances, and he had only a very
limited formal education. So he wasn't like one of your

(06:53):
high falutin scientists who goes off to MI I T
and Dartmouth and what have you? This guy and the
whatnots and the who's it's. So he had a bunch
of different jobs in his early adult years. He was
a carpenter kind of like Jesus. He was a painter
kind of like you. He was a carnival barker kind

(07:15):
of like Day and then he was a musician who
played in various orchestras in and around Philadelphia, which is
a turn who saw that kind of like precisely. So
these gigs established him in two skills that would absolutely
become indispensable in his later let's call them fraudulent enterprises.

(07:38):
He had this dexterity with mechanical apparatus and say that
was you know, musical instruments and tools. And then he
had this crazy charisma and he could beguile even the
most skeptical observer. Oh my god. Like Riz City. That's

(07:58):
is that the new grand theft auto?

Speaker 3 (08:02):
Rizz City?

Speaker 2 (08:04):
What's your Raccoon Escape from Raccoon City or whatever?

Speaker 4 (08:07):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (08:07):
Yes, what was that? Welcome to Raccoon City.

Speaker 2 (08:11):
Yeah, but it was like a video game movie. I
don't know whatever it was. Riz City. So to understand Kihley,
we have to understand Philadelphia in the mid nineteenth century.
You have to know Philly as was the city that

(08:31):
was absolutely electrified by technological progress. This is the age
of steams. Oh yes, it had transformed industry. And then
all these inventors are popping up. They want attention and
they want money, they want that capital. Enter John Ernst WHORL. Kiley.

(08:52):
So he had this boldness and it kind of like
bordered on the theatrical in the way that he presented.

Speaker 3 (08:58):
Me, thinking like P. T. Barnum, like where he's like
got the you know, Carnival Barker.

Speaker 2 (09:05):
It's more like flourishes in my mind.

Speaker 3 (09:07):
Okay, like this.

Speaker 2 (09:09):
So he was this large like mountain of a man,
powerfully built. He had this really commanding physical presence and
a booming, deep sonorous voice. Yes, and that magnetic self assurance,
the confidence that everyone trusted him.

Speaker 3 (09:28):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (09:29):
So around eighteen seventy two he starts attracting attention because
he claimed that he had discovered an entirely new, an
inexhaustible source of energy.

Speaker 3 (09:39):
Oh yes, energy story.

Speaker 2 (09:42):
And he called this etheric force.

Speaker 3 (09:46):
Oh yes, I'm familiar. I've seen this reference. Well.

Speaker 2 (09:48):
So the term, like he it evoked what was really
current at that time, this scientific concept of luminiferous ether yes,
hypothetical medium through which light waves were believed to propagate.
So Keeley was like, I can manipulate the vibrational properties
of water and air, look at me, look at me now,

(10:11):
wash me cook, and I can release a force of
like unimaginable power from virtually any substance.

Speaker 3 (10:19):
You think lightning's cool, and you know all.

Speaker 2 (10:22):
Powered by vibes, that all vibes is there in the
clay was staggering, staggered. So he said that, Okay, He's like,
with this single quart of water and he would hold
something up, he'd do his process on it, he'd do
his whole thing.

Speaker 3 (10:39):
Alecazoo.

Speaker 2 (10:41):
Yeah, vibes, vibes, and then he could generate enough pressure
to drive a locomotive. Wow, and not just like a
few feet down the track. I'm talking like a long trip.

Speaker 3 (10:52):
Yeah. He's like, I'm creating nuclear energy out of this water.

Speaker 2 (10:55):
Yes. Yes, So his spiel was like this infection of
invented terminology. Love that and like half baked scientific concepts.

Speaker 3 (11:06):
I am so jealous. I've always wanted to invent terminology
and half so good, come on, so good, let me cook.
In the eighteen eighties, so he talked.

Speaker 2 (11:15):
About vibratory sympathetic transmission, quadruple negative harmonics. This is like
when people talk like this, my eyes glaze over. So
I'm just like, yeah, I totally understand what you're saying.
Polar and depolar differentiation, Okay, etheric disintegration, like dozens of

(11:37):
these totally.

Speaker 3 (11:38):
This guy's are like a glossy So.

Speaker 2 (11:40):
To the uninitiated people like me, they're impressed, like that's technical.

Speaker 3 (11:45):
A lot of.

Speaker 2 (11:47):
Actual physicists and engineers they're like, this is nonsense, babble.
Absolutely so ps, you're violating the laws of thermodynamics.

Speaker 3 (11:59):
Newton would be tear his hair cuts.

Speaker 2 (12:01):
Up on that. Yeah, so Keeley, he wasn't talking to physicists.
He was talking to fat cat because.

Speaker 3 (12:07):
They're critical, Elizabeth, they are faking, they've read books.

Speaker 2 (12:11):
Yeah, so he No. Keeley is like, hey, wealthy industrialists.

Speaker 3 (12:16):
You guys are investor.

Speaker 2 (12:18):
And you know, people who just have money burning a
hole in their pocket and they want to get in
on this like miraculous solution to the world's energy problems. Yes,
sounds familiar. They're like, we're in, you know, count us in.
Have my money, please me.

Speaker 4 (12:32):
Well.

Speaker 2 (12:33):
The cornerstone of his public demonstrations was this machine that
he called the hydro pneumatic pulsating vacuo engine, and this
evolved into different iterations. Sometimes he called it the vibratory generator, combulator, combobulator,
vibratory generator, Okay, the liberator, that was when he was

(12:53):
like trying something like more marketing forward.

Speaker 3 (12:56):
These are the people who made it hard to be
Nikola Tesla. He's like, look, I got this, and vibrates
that are.

Speaker 2 (13:01):
Like no, and then he finally settled on sympathetic transmitter.
That's like, that's my favorite radiohead. So these devices, they're
just absolute marvels of mechanical complexity. There's just tubes and
valves and gauges and like resonating chambers. I don't know what

(13:21):
that is. So Keiley would run the machines and they
would produce impressive phenomena, like the gauges would show crazy pressure,
and metal bars looked like they were just bending by
invisible forces. Weights were like lifted and thrusted. They vibrated,

(13:41):
They're like pulsing. It was so loud. Witnesses were always
just like I'm amazed and I'm convinced, Like that's what
they would say, So pretty soon and I'm going to
stand back, I've got steambirds. Pretty soon Kihi incorporated the
Kili Motor Company and offered shares to the public, and

(14:02):
the response was over the top. Rich folks, regular citizens.
Everyone's throwing money at him. Everyone wants in. Uh, they
dumped five million dollars into it. UPU opening real.

Speaker 3 (14:13):
Scientist must have been losing. Oh god, which is like getting.

Speaker 2 (14:16):
One hundred and thirty three million today? Are you getting
to day's dollars? If I'm like, I've got a combobulator
and they're like, have one hundred and thirty three million?
Thinks guy?

Speaker 3 (14:27):
Unbelievable.

Speaker 2 (14:29):
So the most significant of his investors over the years
was this woman. This is Clara Jessup Bloomfield more.

Speaker 3 (14:36):
Does everybody have crazy names? This is amazing.

Speaker 2 (14:38):
It's how you get that's your price of admission at
this rich Philadelphia widow. She's a woman of letters. She's smart,
She's really smart. She was a wonderful philanthropist. I had
all these asiums.

Speaker 3 (14:51):
She's curious about the cutting edge.

Speaker 2 (14:52):
Yeah. So she became his greatest champion and patron from
the early eighteen eighties onward. She to start one hundred
thousand dollars plus a monthly salary for him of two
hundred and fifty dollars.

Speaker 3 (15:06):
So let's convert that, please, I need a converted.

Speaker 2 (15:09):
That's a three million dollar investment. And she was given
him like eight grand a month. I know I know.

Speaker 3 (15:15):
I'm telling you, it's so much more fun of your comment.

Speaker 2 (15:18):
So you hear it, right, Yeah, it's fun and easy.
So she wrote articles defending him in scientific journals. Oh lord,
she wrote with all these like scientists like on his
behalf approached them. She published a full length book in
eighteen ninety three called Keighley and his Discovery's Aerial Navigation,
and she was like, this is a this is a breakthrough.

(15:40):
Please everybody understand this, Franklin. Yeah, her advocacy gave him
this like social and intellectual respectability that he couldn't get
all by himself. So now, like we do need to
know that her support was not unconditional. It's like, over
the years she got really frustrated because he couldn't produce
use like a commercially viable engine, and she would she'd

(16:04):
be like, what's going on here, pal, it's shaken and
making hold on, hold on, And he'd reassure her because
he's this crazy manipulator, and so he'd give her just
enough evidence of progress to calm her down. And it
was like, I'm he's always on the.

Speaker 3 (16:18):
Verge of a I just need to attach a belt
to this.

Speaker 2 (16:21):
And two weeks away. He's always two weeks away, and
then two weeks comes and goes.

Speaker 3 (16:27):
Lather idea for a carburetor exactly.

Speaker 2 (16:30):
So Keighley would demonstrate his fantastic machines to visitors, but
under these really controlled circumstances, and he never allowed independent
examination of the machinery while it was in operation. So
like visitors could watch, they could ask questions, they could
record what they were seeing. They you write it down,

(16:51):
but they couldn't open the devices. They couldn't like trace
the flow of all the pressures. Certainly couldn't conduct like
physical measurements of anything.

Speaker 3 (16:59):
Proprietary of form.

Speaker 2 (17:00):
Yeah, in essence, these people are going to the theater. Yeah,
like they can't.

Speaker 3 (17:03):
Do so it's like watching it a tom and On
played chess.

Speaker 2 (17:06):
Yes, but it wasn't a bunch of rubes that he
led into the workshop.

Speaker 3 (17:09):
I bet not.

Speaker 2 (17:10):
They're like smart professional.

Speaker 3 (17:12):
Engineers, engineers, I was guessing.

Speaker 2 (17:14):
Physicians, journalists. So a lot of them came away totally convinced.
Some were like just really puzzled, confused. I mean it
looked like his stuff was functioning. Gauges showed pressures in
like thousands of pounds per square inch. There was this
large iron sphere that was like could reportedly restrain a

(17:34):
team of horses.

Speaker 3 (17:36):
Okay, so he's generating enough.

Speaker 2 (17:38):
Yeah, the device called a globe motor that spun in
perpetual motion. Everything was really physically impressive.

Speaker 3 (17:46):
So Jewels Verne level technology. It's a lot of yeah, exactly,
vacuum tubes, vacuum.

Speaker 2 (17:54):
So the question that investigators like couldn't ever resolve was
the source of the energy driving this.

Speaker 3 (18:01):
That's my question.

Speaker 2 (18:02):
That's a good question. Thank you for asking. So Keiley
had all these techniques to manage the skeptics. He would
refuse to operate the machines if the vibrations in the
room were quote inharmonious.

Speaker 3 (18:14):
Vibes, A bobs ain't right in his vibes are off.

Speaker 2 (18:17):
Shut down, vibes are off, same right, vibes are off.
He calls it off. Yes, So he limited his physical
proximity of the visitors to the machinery, and he would
do these like acts of telekinesis or like force transmission
using tuning forks and like strings.

Speaker 3 (18:37):
Tuning forks are a while because you can pass a
vibration in the air. If you don't know, you're like,
how did he get so.

Speaker 2 (18:43):
Obviously there's a lot of trickery going on, but people
wanted it to be true. They wanted miracle and wonder. Okay,
So by the late eighteen seventies, the shareholders in the
motor company, they're getting impatient. He'd been promising commercial production
of the engine for years, years at this point, yeah,
but then nothing. Eighteen eighty one, a group of shareholders
brought legal action against him. They wanted to force either

(19:06):
production of a working engine or accounting of the invested funds.
And he was like, look, my discoveries are so delicate
and so sensitive to external vibrations that I can't demonstrate
them under adversarial conditions.

Speaker 3 (19:22):
You guy, Yeah, there's my machines on there.

Speaker 2 (19:24):
You're harshing my mellow. How do you argue against that?

Speaker 3 (19:27):
So they're like, we want blueprints or receipts, and he's like, no, bro,
the auras are not right.

Speaker 2 (19:35):
Let's take a break, go to commercial. When we come back,
we're going to see how he plays this all out.

(20:00):
All right, Cesarin, he vibes.

Speaker 3 (20:03):
Loving vibes.

Speaker 2 (20:04):
The vibes are not off.

Speaker 3 (20:06):
Right now, I feel really good. We can keep going
back and forth and take.

Speaker 2 (20:10):
So Kiley right by the end of eighteen eighty one,
his stockholders were over it. I bet they were done.
On December fourteenth, eighteen eighty one, they convened their annual
meeting and they formally read into the record this report
that outlined just how over it they were.

Speaker 3 (20:27):
Because they formed the basically corporation, I got stockholders stockholder.

Speaker 2 (20:31):
So they're like, we still have faith in the inventions,
and that's okay. I don't know why exactly, but guys,
we're irritated at how secretive this whole thing is and
there's nothing to show for all of our patients.

Speaker 3 (20:44):
Yeah, this steampunk has given me nothing.

Speaker 2 (20:47):
So steampunk. And another thing in the report was how
worried everyone was about what would happen if Keighley got
incapacitated or died.

Speaker 3 (20:55):
Oh, because nobody knows.

Speaker 2 (20:56):
He has no assistance, no backup, no one can.

Speaker 3 (20:59):
Look at anything legitimate concern.

Speaker 2 (21:01):
Yeah. So the report made public what had previously just
been like whispers and private grumbles.

Speaker 3 (21:07):
Basically a wizard pretty much you don't nobody spell.

Speaker 2 (21:10):
You know, you don't step to the wizard. So that
Keighley's secrecy was not the reasonable precaution of a careful inventor,
but like this deliberate strategy of a man who had
something to hide. So early January eighteen eighty two, the stockholders,
they filed a bill of equity in Philadelphia's Cortacom and please,

(21:32):
they wanted a court order that would force Keighley to
disclose the principles and operating methods of his motors.

Speaker 3 (21:39):
Show you son, yes, okay.

Speaker 2 (21:41):
His response was immediate and totally on brand. It was
crazy technical in nature. Did not address the substantive merits
of their complaints. Instead, he just raised all these procedural
objections to the form and standing of the legal action itself.
And he had all these reasons why the court should

(22:02):
decline to grant the plaintiffs the relief they saw it.

Speaker 3 (22:05):
The exciting patent laws.

Speaker 2 (22:06):
Yeah, none of which engaged with the underlying question like
can you disclose your process?

Speaker 3 (22:13):
And does this stuff work?

Speaker 2 (22:14):
So it goes to court on April first, eighteen eighty two,
fitting a judge overruled his response issued an order directing
him to make known his process in the way that
was indicated in the bill filed by the Kieley Motor Company. Now,
the order did not specify in detail how the disclosure

(22:34):
was to be made. But it basically said, you have
to show how this motor works.

Speaker 3 (22:39):
Let them fly, wheels fly.

Speaker 2 (22:40):
Yeah, obviously a Kigley's in a bit of a jam. Now,
clearly he couldn't ignore the court order without risking contempt
of court, but he also couldn't expose his own fraud.
So in June of eighteen eighty two, a committee appointed
by the company's board reached an agreement that this guy
named William Bokel was going to be instructed by Keighley

(23:04):
in the construction and operation of the inventions.

Speaker 3 (23:06):
Okay, that's very fitting. About time.

Speaker 2 (23:07):
Killey's got to teach Bocal how to do it.

Speaker 3 (23:09):
We need somebody to know.

Speaker 2 (23:10):
And that's the absolute most that Keihey would agree to.
Just telling one guy.

Speaker 3 (23:14):
Sure, but if you're still a business partner, that seems reasonable.

Speaker 2 (23:16):
It seems reasonable. So at the annual stockholders meeting December thirteenth,
eighteen eighty two, Bocal delivers his report on what he's
learned after months of instruction. And so the report is
like vague is all get out, And he described Keighley's
discovery as the fact that water in its natural state

(23:38):
was capable of being by vibratory motion disintegrated so that
its molecular structure was broken up, and that there was
evolved from this process a permanent expansive gas or ether
produced by mechanical actions.

Speaker 3 (23:55):
Like excitory alchemy.

Speaker 2 (23:57):
Yes, yes, he said it would be proper to describe
the specific mechanism used, and he declared that Keighley had
discovered all that he claimed.

Speaker 3 (24:08):
Oh, he took his back.

Speaker 2 (24:09):
He took his back.

Speaker 3 (24:10):
He's like he's shaking these water molecules. So they don't care.

Speaker 2 (24:13):
If you did a close read as a report energy,
it says nothing like the report is just it paraphrases
what Keighley already says in his own language. Yeah, but
there's no technical information that would let any other person
replicate this or even go in and evaluate the process.

Speaker 3 (24:32):
He doesn't outline like this. He goes to beg to see.

Speaker 2 (24:35):
Yeah. So the next year, this newspaper correspondent drops a
bombshell Bocal had not in fact been entrusted with the
secrets of the motor at all. Despite the report. Keighley
told Bochel he could explain everything in less than two
hours after the engine was completed, and that he had
not done so yet, just because the engine was not

(24:56):
yet complete. I'll explain it to you when the engine's done.

Speaker 3 (25:00):
Engines. Sorry, it's not done.

Speaker 2 (25:01):
It's only gonna take me two hours to explain this focus. Yeah,
and so he hadn't instructed vocal on all the inner
workings or let him even see it in action.

Speaker 3 (25:12):
They picked a bad age.

Speaker 2 (25:13):
Yes, So by the summer of eighteen eighty four, Kelley's
situation was like precarious.

Speaker 3 (25:19):
Do you think he kind of like slipped him a
five and like, hey, go tell them, okay.

Speaker 2 (25:22):
And I think he also was like.

Speaker 3 (25:24):
Just dumb enough to believe him, yes, but smart enough
to kind of understand.

Speaker 2 (25:28):
And I think that Keiley had just a way to
dance around people with scientific sounding language.

Speaker 3 (25:34):
People love promise. Look at Sam Altman.

Speaker 2 (25:36):
Yeah, yeah, so Keihey's reputation was like starting to be
in shambles. Okay, you know he had put off the
machine too often the stockholders or like starting to turn
off the money tap totally no more funding. At a
board meeting March eighteen eighty four, He's like, guess what, guys,
the vibratory engines finished. Good news. Yeah, I got it.

(26:01):
And he's like, so this is in March. She's like,
I will demonstrate it on or before April tenth. April
tenth came went okay, no, no vibratory engine display. And
so when in doubt, shift gears get a new gadget
to sell to a new audience.

Speaker 3 (26:19):
Ah, so the Zuckerberg model.

Speaker 2 (26:21):
He stepped away. He stepped away from the engine and
the motor company. He had a new invention. What is it,
the the poric gun vaporic gun.

Speaker 3 (26:30):
Oh, he's going to do like a gas gun.

Speaker 2 (26:32):
Yeah. This was a weapon that he claimed was powered
by the same etheric or vaporic force that drove his
motor And this time he wasn't looking to the public
for money. Of course, he went to the government instead.

Speaker 3 (26:47):
Oh what year are we ineen four? Okay?

Speaker 2 (26:52):
So the army in this time period, early eighteen eighties,
they wanted new weapons technology.

Speaker 3 (26:57):
So I was just wondering, are we getting ready for
a war? But not quite? But they're like, let's just
on the horizon.

Speaker 2 (27:02):
Why not.

Speaker 3 (27:02):
We're gonna be a strong power. We need.

Speaker 2 (27:05):
Me these. So he figured like if he could show
government officials this crazy new gun, get them on board,
it'd be great publicity. For him totally, and maybe he
gets some of these sweet government contracts.

Speaker 3 (27:18):
Being a defense contractor looks like a real good gig.

Speaker 2 (27:20):
It's they make, They make a whole lot.

Speaker 3 (27:22):
Of and it's a low bar to like convince these
people you know what we need.

Speaker 2 (27:25):
You know we need, and they're always just like, yeah,
throw money, Zaron. Yes, I want you to picture it.
It's September twentieth, eighteen eighty four. You are sitting on
bleachers under a warm autumn, cloudless sky at the US

(27:47):
Army proving Ground at Sandy Hook, New Jersey. Your wool
uniform soaks up the sun, but you remain cool and calm.
That's just who you are. You are Lieutenant Edmund L. Zelensky.
All around you on the bleachers are other military higher
ups and weapons experts. You are a United States Army
military engineer of considerable distinction. Your current project is developing

(28:12):
a pneumatic dynamite gun for the Army's use. And today
you're waiting to observe a demonstration by some character named
John Ernst Worrell Keeley. He stands on the bare ground
before you, prepping his presentation. He has with him five
gallons of what he described as veporic force contained in
a receiver. His claim is that this quantity of stored

(28:34):
force would be sufficient to fire a high caliber weapon.
He moves a large metal container and sets up what
looks like a tiny cannon. The gun itself is a
small weapon. The bore is just one and a quarter inches.
Connected to it is an iron wire tube three sixteenths
of an inch in diameter, leading to an iron receiver

(28:55):
four and a half feet long, containing the alleged viporic force.
Look the setup and think to yourself that it looks
an awful lot like an ordinary compressed air gun, not
some revolutionary physics defying super weapon. Kihi loads the gun
by ramming a small lead ball into the muzzle. He
then taps the iron receiver with a hammer. He turns

(29:17):
to the crowd and explains that this action was necessary
to stimulate the vibratory force within it. Vibratory force such nonsense,
You think, why that hammer tap is nothing more than
a piece of theater, you grumble. Kihi then turns a handle.
The ball is fired from the gun with a short,
sharp report and minimal recoil, and notably, you see no

(29:41):
powder smoke. He goes through the process and fires again.
A man at a table with a clipboard full of
papers scribbles notes and then announces a velocity of four
hundred and eighty two feet per second. Kiley fires the
weapon again, this time a target consisting of three spruce planks,
each three inches thick. The ball penetrates the purse plank

(30:03):
and goes halfway through the second. Keighley announces to the
gathered group that he has used a pressure of seven
thousand pounds per square inch for these demonstrations, and that
he could employ thirty thousand pounds per square inch if
he wanted to. You are thoroughly familiar with the properties
and behavior of compressed air as a propulsive force. You

(30:25):
think the aport gun bears a suspicious and unmistakable resemblance
to compressed air weapons with which you are already familiar.
The speed, the lack of smoke and recoil, the use
of a pressure vessel connected to a firing chamber by
a tube. That's simple compressed air. There's nothing mysterious, and

(30:46):
certainly nothing new. You turn to the man sitting beside you,
aar Edy, the president of the Kihlei Motor Company. You
could replicate everything Keighley had shown and go further. You
tell him, he tells you, he'll speak about it to
mister Keeley. No need for you to demonstrate, you huff,

(31:06):
no wonder all you suckers are all going broke. So
the day after the Sandy Hook demonstration, Keihley met with
a reporter from the New York Times and declared that
his experimenting days were over and that complete success was
now close at hand. Like, I don't need to keep
tinkering on this, I'm done. He was, like that motor,

(31:28):
Remember the motor. It's going to be done in less
than two months. So he bumped it out.

Speaker 3 (31:33):
Not the two weeks too much, It's going to be
a two.

Speaker 2 (31:36):
Then I'm gonna give a whole exhibition of its massive.

Speaker 3 (31:39):
How like Tony Stark over here, the same old.

Speaker 2 (31:42):
Song and dance. So Lieutenant Zelenski's interest in Keeley didn't
end at Sandy Hook. So November eighteen eighty four he
attended just like the next month, he attends a demonstration
at Keihey's workshop in Philadelphia. And during the show, Zelensky
saw this large reservoir that kee should to his guests,
and so he made a suggestion he thought that if

(32:04):
Keighley's generator truly produced force from water, as he claimed
that the complete and convincing test would be to discharge
the reservoir entirely and then recharge it using the generator.
With Zelensky watching. This was a closed cycle demonstration of
if this is supposed to be an over unity device,

(32:26):
this is exactly what would be able to prove it up.
Yea exhibition of it was like big no, and he
was like, you know, if we recharging the reservoir is
going to take two hours, who has two hours in
their life? And like, even though he had been saying
over and over that he could produce large quantities of
force in a matter of seconds, so he also offered

(32:49):
the explanation that the reservoir had been carefully negatized. Oh,
a term that means nothing.

Speaker 3 (32:55):
So he's like, instead of saying calibrated, he's like, it's been.

Speaker 2 (33:00):
I can't discharge it all right if you're.

Speaker 3 (33:02):
A pneumatic whatever dynamite gun.

Speaker 2 (33:04):
So Kiley, he's also in this demonstration, he says that
he's achieved pressures of fifty thousand pounds per square inch
and that it was so much that it broke all
his pressure gage. He's like, oh yeah, but he brought
with him a calibrated pressure gauge that could register up
to ten thousand pounds per square inch. He's like, here,

(33:27):
you use this, try and break it. And he knew, like, okay,
we can. We can disprove all this pressure stuff right here.
If he declines, like, we're going to expose him. So
Keiley pauses and he's like for a second, He's like,
you can tell his say. Then he comes up with
this response that became one of the most quoted lines

(33:48):
of his career. He told Zelinsky that he did not
believe in pressure gauges anyway.

Speaker 3 (33:57):
I don't trust a rule.

Speaker 2 (33:58):
Takes science, you know. So it's on June sixth, eighteen
eighty five. Kiley Stage is another exhibition at the workshop.
This time he's got twenty people, including newspaper reporters, a
mechanical engineer, officers, stockholders from Kiley Motors. For this one,

(34:19):
he puts together this like crazy apparatus that was mostly
just visually complex.

Speaker 3 (34:26):
So really a steampunk stuff. It's like a lot of
copper coil, a lot of wires.

Speaker 2 (34:32):
So at the centerpiece is a globe fitted with all
these apertures from which tubes ran to cylinders. Yeah, a
lot of globe was on top of a structure that
also incorporated two large tuning forks and a latticed framework
of rods and rings, described by observers as looking like

(34:53):
a big old bird cage. There were more tuning forks,
more rings that contain steel wires projecting out of their centers,
all these other weirds.

Speaker 3 (35:02):
Is like vibratory collection.

Speaker 2 (35:04):
Yes, all these attachments. The structural function of the bird
cage was, as a New York Times reporter would later note,
to attract the eye and the attention of observers toward
the musical apparatus and away from the globe and cylinders,
which were the components actually connected to the concealed power source.
So he's like, don't look at this ugly old engine,

(35:26):
Look at this crazy steampunk.

Speaker 3 (35:27):
Look at this sculpture burning man. Ready.

Speaker 2 (35:31):
Yeah, So when a reporter asked whether he could examine
the contents of the globe, Key was like, no, no,
your vibes are bad. He's like, it'll take too long.
I want to show this, Like you're what are you
trying to stall me here?

Speaker 3 (35:44):
Like sabotage, sabotage. What are you doing here?

Speaker 2 (35:47):
Elon musk of it all is so out of control.
So Keighley started the demonstration by rubbing a greased violin
bow across one of the tuning forks.

Speaker 3 (35:56):
Okay, and the vibration like, listen to that tune. You
can hear the distribution of the vibe.

Speaker 2 (36:05):
It looks impressive. Then he made like little adjustments. He
opened up a stopcock that was leading to one of
the cylinders. And when he did that, the witness has
heard what was described as a hiss of escaping air,
and then they're kind of like huh, And he immediately
talks and he's like, oh, what you heard wasn't compressed air.
That was etheric vapor, and it's a force without material nature.

Speaker 3 (36:28):
Guys, don't get hung up.

Speaker 2 (36:30):
It's whatever you do. Don't believe that it's compressed air.
And so the distinction he was drawing was between a
real gas, which would have weight, chemical properties, behavior describable
by physical laws. And then his alleged etheric vapor is
free energy had none of that. Yeah, because he's saying
it's pure force rather than matter.

Speaker 3 (36:51):
It's pure energy. He's dissolved the chemical bonds structure. It's
now just oscillating in and out of the ether.

Speaker 2 (36:59):
Yes, And he's like, you know, once I released this
through the stopcock, it's going to go to these weights,
which it did, and he's like, now they are at
approximately twenty two thousand pounds per square inch of pressure,
all at my disposal, and like there are no pressure measurements,
because he was like, gages are for suckers, and so
everyone's just like.

Speaker 3 (37:18):
Oh, that's craztastic.

Speaker 2 (37:21):
And so the second part of the demonstration involved a
rotating iron globe that was like suspended on this axle
and connected by pulley and belting to a small bandsaw,
and the globe is set in motion, the saw starts up,
it cuts through several inches of planking and so like
non scientists were like, that's crazy, that's pretty impressive.

Speaker 3 (37:43):
It's an engine and.

Speaker 2 (37:44):
But it but then the Times reporter noted, there's like
a big limitation here. So the period during which any
actual work was performed and he sawing, including both the
weightlifting and a sawing, was like twenty minutes in total,
and that was within a session that took up three
and a half hours of set up, adjustment, explanation, fussing.

(38:07):
But an ordinary small gas engine would have cut through
that wood like butter in those twenty minutes.

Speaker 3 (38:13):
Yeah, Diesel has already shown them.

Speaker 2 (38:14):
Yeah, look so, And twenty two thousand pounds per square
inch should have been capable of way more mechanical output
than cutting through a couple pieces of wood. So all
the audience got was basically a spinning globe cutting a
little piece of wood over less than half an hour,
scattered across a three and a half hour performance.

Speaker 3 (38:33):
I hope they got like refreshments.

Speaker 2 (38:34):
I know, I hope so too. Okay, so I'm going
to take a pause here when we come back refreshments,
We're gonna stick with this demonstration.

Speaker 3 (38:43):
I got to see where this goes.

Speaker 2 (39:05):
So we're back in the in the lab. We're in
the workshop.

Speaker 3 (39:09):
This is so smacking of our modern AI and whatever
we are Internet three point zero four point h I
don't know if I've lost track, but the whole musk like, oh,
welcome to the also Zuckerberg's welcome to the metaverse. No,
you ignore the metaverse now, it's about AI, you know,
like it's all these guys. Just keep it moving here's
the new thing. Does it do anything anybody wants? Nobody

(39:29):
was about to next week, could.

Speaker 2 (39:32):
If it wanted to. So we just saw the band
saw that took for a weightlifting Okay, so we had
that rotating globe. That's what Kelly was calling the engine.
It was like stopped and started a bunch of times
during the demonstration. The Times reporter was like, you know,
it looks like the globe seems to operate on like

(39:52):
a compressed material that's depleting. This isn't one of those,
you know, perpetual motion machines. He's like, how about you
run this thing continuously for half an hour without interruption.
Don't touch it and don't attach the bandsaw or anything
else to it. Just let it rotate. That'd be cool.
And so the reporters being clever, there's minimal friction. It

(40:15):
requires little power to rotate. If the force was available
was as abundant as Keiley said it was, then it
should you know, there should be no problems. It's in
that thing for thirty minutes, thirty hours. So the stockholders
in the audience they got a little worried about it.
But Keiley's like, okay, yeah, we'll do it well. I

(40:35):
think they thought, well, if he doesn't agree, and then
they put it in the paper. So the globe rotated
for twelve minutes a little over that and then and
kept consistently slowing, and then Kelley reached out and stopped
it before it petered out in front of everybody. Because
like the power source was finite, it was probably conpressed
gas like a genuine etheric vapor generator. It used force

(41:00):
from water and airs claimed would have only grown in
capacity the way he had been trying to describe it.

Speaker 3 (41:05):
He has like a balloon pushing like a you know,
like a radial mill, you know, yes, and it's running out.

Speaker 2 (41:12):
It's running out exactly. So the mechanical engineer who attended
that demonstration made his opinion available to the reporter for
the Times. He was straight up, He's like, this is
a fraud. So his professional judgment, based on familiarity with
machinery and pressure systems, matched what Lieutenant Zelensky had reached.
He was like, this is compressed air. It's so inconsistent

(41:37):
with this force that he claims to have discovered.

Speaker 3 (41:40):
This is literally hot air.

Speaker 2 (41:41):
Stockholders and company officers, though they loved the demonstration, they
applauded at the end. I mean they weren't stupid people.
These are like businessmen, investors. They had put so much
money into.

Speaker 3 (41:52):
It, and that's what it costs fallacy.

Speaker 2 (41:54):
Yeah, that's what colored their need for it to succeed.
So the applause was the applause of people for whom
the alternative to being impressed was just like, you can't.
I don't want to even think about that.

Speaker 3 (42:05):
Yeah, it is too much. And also it's like the
parents when like their child doesn't mess up the lines
in the school play.

Speaker 2 (42:11):
Yeah, it's crillian. I love the end of the New
York Times article about this whole debacle. I'm going to
read it to you. Quote. Before the party dispersed, there
came in a reporter who, having fallen sick while the
trials were in progress, had not been able to follow
the drift of them. He applied to Keighley to have
the thing explained to him, and Keighley answered, quote, it

(42:36):
is an elaboration of interatomic ether by vibration. The atomic
ether vibrates all around the molecules of matter. There is
a magnetic force attached to it at the same time,
and it assimilates with the molecular atomic aggregations that is,
assimilates with a certain attractive force that is hard to

(42:58):
tell what it is. I call it vibratory negative. It
does not act like a magnet draws metal toward it.
There's a certain magnetic effect about it that causes it
to adhere by vibratory rotation to different forms of matter,
that is, the molecular atomic etheric and ether etheric. The

(43:20):
impulse is given by metallic impulses, the rotary power that
is formed by ethereal vibration, that is, that is the
force that holds it in position. And the reporter went
his way wondering, quote.

Speaker 3 (43:34):
There was so many words. He's basically saying, it's zero
point energy. But ether magnets.

Speaker 2 (43:39):
Sounds so much like when Elon Musk bss his way
through an interview about space or Grock or.

Speaker 3 (43:48):
Why we should be on Mars and going to get
us there, or like how in the future economy it's
going to be so abundant, nobody's gonna have to do anything.
We're gonna have.

Speaker 2 (43:58):
There's there's elements that he like, you know, with power
and energy and like you know, all these things in
space that he doesn't take into account.

Speaker 3 (44:08):
Oh yeah, Well, like when you want to have the
data centers like in space, You're like, well, what about
the heat? Yes, you can't dissipate the heat. He's like,
oh you can't. They can come up with a heat sinc.
That will work on it, Like am I, and he does.
This's going to be in the ether.

Speaker 2 (44:22):
It's in the ether. So he's a con man of science. Keeley,
Oh him, but he and he's about to get his
at least a little bit. In eighteen eighty eight, a
former business partner named Bennett Wilson sued him. He said
that back in eighteen sixty three he fronted Keeley's original

(44:42):
efforts at making the signature Vibe motor okay, and Keighley
was like, yeah, you know what, I'll cut you in.
Keeley had not, and so Wilson wanted the court to
make Keeley show all the parts and processes in the motor.
So we're doing this again, like going to court, like
show us how this works.

Speaker 3 (45:00):
Does he have patents at this point?

Speaker 2 (45:02):
No, he wants research, schematics, prove it all up that
this is what Wilson was in on back of the day.
He wants full disclosure Keighley stalled the inspection over and
over and avoided it completely and then gets found in
contempt of court. So he refused to disclose the principles
underlying the machine. So they sent him to uh moyementcing

(45:26):
prison in Philadelphia.

Speaker 3 (45:27):
Got himself lockdown.

Speaker 2 (45:29):
He was only there for a couple of days because
then missus Bloomfield More remember her, and then other supporters
they rallied to his defense. They sprung him out. There
was also the problem that the court didn't have a
clear mechanism to compel a man to explain a physical
principle he claimed to understand only intuitively.

Speaker 3 (45:50):
Oh sure, but that was Can you try writing it down?

Speaker 2 (45:54):
Yeah? But no, but has you got a field?

Speaker 3 (45:57):
How do I write down? In Oora and.

Speaker 2 (45:59):
Keiley, he saw his imprisonment as like this martyrdom o god,
and it was evidence that he is a visionary and
he's being persecuted by those who have too small of
a brain. You don't understand my genius.

Speaker 3 (46:12):
I'm the future and people are troggling.

Speaker 2 (46:15):
So bloomfield More, She's like, yes, he's a martyr. She
looked for support, so she reached out to Thomas Edison
and Nicola Tesla's.

Speaker 3 (46:23):
Oh god, both of them would hate this.

Speaker 2 (46:26):
Well, They're like, please come and examine his inventions, and
both of them were like, uh, we're going to pass.

Speaker 3 (46:33):
Yeah hard no interesting, I want no association in a
news story with him.

Speaker 2 (46:38):
Yeah, that's like, you know, I'm busy, I'm I'm would
have been something else on my schedule. So if they
couldn't get scientific support, at least they could try and
get money. So Bloomfield Moore took Keighley and went to
New York and they met No, they met with none
other than John Jacob Astor the four.

Speaker 3 (46:57):
Oh yeah, there you go.

Speaker 2 (46:57):
Get to a Robert Barres, ultimate wealthy saw one of
a major moneyed family. He was at one time the
richest man in the world, and then he died in
the sinking of the Titanic. Oops oopsie. But before that happened,
he bought into the Kili Motor Company.

Speaker 3 (47:11):
If I'm not mistaken, he actually did do a decent
thing when he died on the Titanic, where he like
let other people go if I remember correctly, and he
wanted to stay behind. You know, he was saying, I'm
not going to let it be said that an Astor
shot the spot of a woman or a child.

Speaker 2 (47:24):
Yeah, remember, don't let me, you know, slam to him.
So like he gets this new infusion of cash. They
are all these phony demonstrations and pitches to follow. His
supporters went to bat for him over and over and over,
but they were growing weary. Even Bloomfield more she got
tired of the stalling and the refusals for inspection. She

(47:45):
didn't cut him off, though, she just like reduced his
monthly stipend.

Speaker 3 (47:49):
He was too tall to cut off. I think I
wanted to work.

Speaker 2 (47:54):
So by the eighteen nineties he had pretty much abandoned
the language of hydraulic and moved into a more explicitly
mystical realm. He talked about quote sympathetic vibratory physics, and
he described a theoretical universe of interconnected resonances that drew
on Pythagorean, harmonic, Hindu mystical thought and the writings of theosophist.

Speaker 3 (48:23):
And also because spiritualism that's also be a backdrop right
this time.

Speaker 2 (48:27):
So this was but this was on purpose because he
found that the theosophical movement of the eighteen eighties eighteen nineties,
they were ready to accept the existence of hidden forces
unknown conventional science.

Speaker 3 (48:41):
So they were big into that they were early WU.

Speaker 2 (48:44):
Right, So what is this theosophical movement? It was the
Theosophical Society was founded in New York in eighteen seventy
five by Helena Petrovna Blovotsky, Russian born occultist mystic, and
then as well Henry Steel all caught. He was an
American lawyer and journalist. So their central claim was that

(49:05):
beneath the surface of all the world's religious traditions was
just a single, universal, ancient wisdom. Theosophists called it the
quote perennial philosophy or the ancient wisdom tradition. So Blavotsky
argued that this hidden knowledge had been preserved across millennia
by a brotherhood of advanced spiritual masters who she called

(49:29):
Mahatmas or masters, and they all live pretty much in Tibet,
and she said that she's like, I write directly to
the Guide my writings. So theosophy drew eclectically on Hinduism, Buddhism,
uh Neo Platonism, her Meticism, basically Western esoteric. So they

(49:57):
blended all these together into a system that put forward
the existence of hidden laws of nature inaccessible to materialist science,
and the spiritual evolution of the soul, all these reincarnations
a cosmic hierarchy.

Speaker 3 (50:13):
Oh my god.

Speaker 2 (50:15):
Yeah, I think maybe we should like get in on
it and sell her on it, because that's like a
less poisonous doctor philosophy.

Speaker 3 (50:24):
Yeah, let's do it. Bring it.

Speaker 2 (50:27):
So this spread like huge in the eighteen eighties eighteen nineties,
and there was incredible membership. Intellectuals are seekers, people who
were dissatisfied with like orthodox Christianity and then also the
hard materialism of contemporary science.

Speaker 3 (50:43):
You can still find it today. I have friends who
have like you know, used it or adjacent or inspired
by Yeah.

Speaker 2 (50:49):
Yeah, well it was you know where it had it
took a foothold, was in Ireland, and it shaped the
mystical interests of W. B. Yates Whiting that. Yeah, So
Blavatsky herself, she expressed an interest in Keeley's work, and
her publications talked about his claims like pretty sympathetically. Keighley

(51:11):
was seen as a man who had accessed hidden natural
forces through this like intuitive spiritual attainment instead of boring
scientific man.

Speaker 3 (51:21):
Loved because he couldn't express it.

Speaker 2 (51:23):
Yes, this totally worked for Keeley because like it made
it out that he refused to submit to scientific investigation
as a spiritual necessity. That's not fraud. I need this.
I am protecting the vibe. So it all had to
come to an end at some point, and that end
was actually the end of John Ernst World Keiey. He

(51:46):
died on November eighteenth, eighteen ninety eight, in Philadelphia. He
was sixty one years old. He the full run, Yeah,
pneumonia and then out. So he died without having produced
a commercially operational machine. He died with having demonstrated his
principles under conditions acceptable to independent scientific investigation. And he

(52:07):
died having consumed tens of millions of dollars in investor funds. Yes,
over a quarter century, he promises, the huckster dream.

Speaker 3 (52:15):
Yeah, he never had to really, other than those few
days where he was incarcerated, He never really had to
pay up, you know, face justice.

Speaker 2 (52:21):
The reaction among his supporters was just grief. They were bereft,
but in some cases great men, and they're like, you
know what, the secrets died with him, of course, and
that's such a shame. But then among the skeptics, they're
like full of anticipation.

Speaker 3 (52:38):
Let me get the notebooks.

Speaker 2 (52:39):
Yeah. Within weeks of his death, the scientific and journalistic
communities like descended to see what he left behind.

Speaker 3 (52:46):
The ancient James Randys.

Speaker 2 (52:48):
Oh my god.

Speaker 3 (52:49):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (52:49):
So the results were reported in detail in the Philadelphia
Press newspaper. They sent investigators to examine the workshop at
fourteen twenty two North twentieth Street. What they found totally
dismantled the entire edifice of all his claim discoveries. The
building had this really super complex concealed hydraulic pressure system

(53:11):
built into it. Under the floorboards, they found a system
of tubes. Not the Internet, just another system of tubes
connected to a large sphere of compressed water or air
buried in the basement, and those tubes ran through the
walls and the floors to connect to all these various
machines they supplied the power that had driven all the demonstrations,

(53:33):
just a huge air compressor under the house. The gauges
that had registered all the huge pressures. They were connected
to the concealed reservoir rather than any energy released by
the machines themselves.

Speaker 3 (53:46):
Oh that's smart.

Speaker 2 (53:48):
The globe motor that looked like it was spinning by
the power of vibe sure that contained a secret compartment
that had a small motor in it that was also
powered by compressed air. The iron sphere that he once
said had restrained teams of horses that was connected to
the same network. Even the like he had this apparently

(54:10):
spontaneous levitation of weights that he would do and bending
of metal bars. They could trace that all to mechanical
connections and you know, hidden stuff.

Speaker 3 (54:20):
So he was still using the traditional heat beaten treat.

Speaker 2 (54:22):
Yes, the investigators found false floors, hidden panels, pipes, involves
all over the place. Is pretty a genius, it really is.
And he but and he hadn't just pulled off like simple.

Speaker 3 (54:34):
Frauds like Wizard of Oz level of.

Speaker 2 (54:37):
He spent decades engineering one of the most elaborate deceptions
in the history of American science. Like the work that
he had to put into that.

Speaker 3 (54:46):
I mean, he was actually scientifically gifted, just with.

Speaker 2 (54:50):
Precision, the sophistication, Like he had genuine mechanical ability. And
he wasn't ignorant. No, he just directed that mechanical ability
towards rather than the solution of any like real physical totally.

Speaker 3 (55:03):
He kept old things and made them new by putting
them together.

Speaker 2 (55:06):
The scale of the hidden infrastructure also made it clear
that the fraud was one hundred percent deliberate, rather than
being like, oh, he has this delusion and resort to trickery,
like no, this is this is from the ground, or
he didn't.

Speaker 3 (55:19):
He was It was intuition. He was working with a
belief and it turned out to be wrong and he
wanted to make it right. No, this is very much.

Speaker 2 (55:26):
None of the investors ever received any return on their investment, obviously,
and there were no assets to the Kili Motor Company
beyond the financial losses. The whole thing really damaged the
culture of Americans speculative investment in scientific credibility at the time.
That's going to say, we do it now.

Speaker 3 (55:45):
That's like how Tesla got screwed his guys like him.

Speaker 2 (55:48):
So, you know, the willingness of really smart and well
educated people to get duped by his charad became this
cautionary tale for everyone, and it was cited in all
these discussions about scientific fraud and the psychology of con artists.

Speaker 3 (56:03):
Mark Twain used to be suckered by people like this.
You know, he was.

Speaker 2 (56:07):
Friends with It's miracle and wonder.

Speaker 3 (56:09):
Yeah, and you want something oscillating and shaking and doing
all this stuff well.

Speaker 2 (56:13):
And it illustrated for people of the era, and it
should do the same for people now. Like the trappings
of technical complexity, Like when it's deployed by a really
skilled performer, you can disable critical thinking in folks who
should know.

Speaker 3 (56:29):
Better, totally promise is blinding in that way.

Speaker 2 (56:31):
Yes, yes, so Zaren, what's your ridiculous takeaway?

Speaker 3 (56:35):
Like I would have loved if actually I'm just mentioned
Mark Twain, if he would have gotten a chance to
see when he's exhibitions and then gotten like all excited
about it, invested some of his money like he often did,
lost it like he often did, and then wrote after
the guy passed some scathing like his like letters of
like you know, like his books about God and they

(56:56):
were published posthumously where he just brought the heat something
like that, just for this guy, you know, the innocence
of broad level of like mockery of Hubris, but for
this guy. Yes, I would have loved that, just for
the for the sake of Tesla, who I absolutely love
as like one of these figures at this time, who
I get so mad, how screwed. He was either by

(57:16):
short sighted, greedy or Charlatan's like what's yours? Elizabeth?

Speaker 2 (57:21):
My takeaway is that we see this over and over
of con artists who or crimers who have a skill
and have a talent and use it in the wrong way,
like we see it with like forgers, where they're like,
you're a wonderful artist, why why do you come up
with something else? And so here he spent all this

(57:42):
time like fitting an entire building and rather than you know,
because I think that when you have the confidence there,
their confidence is false confidence and they're gaining the confidence
of others. They're building on something that exists. But it
is such a terrible, terrifying saying risk to go out
on your own and try something that may that may fail.

(58:04):
So as a painter, you know you could paint it
and no one sees what you see. You know, you
and I know it. As writers, and you write something
that you really resonates with with you and you put
it out there and if it's it hurts when people
don't get it, or if it just falls, you know,
it fails, And so I can see, like I just
think it's really interesting the amount of time that these

(58:24):
people put into their cons.

Speaker 3 (58:26):
Oh yeah, the amount of time he spent just like
shining the copper.

Speaker 2 (58:29):
Yeah, the copper shining alone. With that said, I Dave,
if it's okay with you, I'd like a talkback.

Speaker 3 (58:37):
I would be delighted. Oh my god, I went cheat.

Speaker 1 (58:52):
Hey, Saron, this is actually just for the lady host
this time.

Speaker 2 (58:56):
This is Laura and I need some TV recommendations from
somebody who.

Speaker 3 (59:00):
Doesn't watch TV as much as I don't watch TV.

Speaker 4 (59:04):
I just got brit Box and I really liked Ludwig
and the Cleaner.

Speaker 1 (59:09):
So if you have any recommendations, Lady Host.

Speaker 2 (59:12):
I would love to hear them. Love you guys. Bye,
totally fair enough, I gotcha, I gotcha. Okay, So brit
Box Shetland. If you haven't watched Shetland, I think it's
like season ten now. It's great. It's very contemplative and
a little slow, as Zarin would say, but I love
I love Shetland. And then moving out of you know

(59:33):
what I'm really into right now is Paradise on Hulu.
Great show. Season two is going on. And then the
other thing that I watch on the regular right now,
aside from the hit ABC show, nine one one, but
not nine to one in Nashville because it's I couldn't
make through the first episode is ru Paul's Drag Race.

(59:54):
It's really good this season and I'm all about Jane
don't so anyway, those are my recommendations. There was all
so another one on britt Box recently with the guy
who was in Wire in the Blood and you probably
know what I'm talking about anyway. I think it was
like a one off. Check that one out too. It's
super good bye. People know what I'm talking about. That's

(01:00:17):
it for today. You can find us online at ridiculous
Crime dot com. We're also at Ridiculous Crime on both
Blue Sky and Instagram, and we're on YouTube at ridiculous
Crime Pod. You can email us at ridiculous Crime at
gmail dot com. You may or may not get an answer,
likely won't, but we still love you. Leave us a
talkback on the iHeart app. I can also make other

(01:00:38):
music recommendations, cookbook recommendations, or just maybe don't ever ask
me these things because it's driving Zara nuts. But iHeart
app is free. Download it. Leave us at talkback reach out.
Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dunton and Zarah Burnette,
produced and edited by Perpetual Motion Machine Dave Cousten starring

(01:01:02):
Annals Rutger as Judas. Research is by vibologist Marissa Brown
and Magic bandsaw peddler Jabbari Davis. The theme song is
by air Compressor salesman Thomas Lee and Mystified investor Travis Duck.
Post wardrobe is provided by Botany five hundred. Guest hair
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(01:01:24):
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Speaker 3 (01:01:36):
Ridicus Crime Say It One More Timequous Crime.

Speaker 1 (01:01:43):
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio four more Podcasts.
My heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
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