Vibe Criming: John Ernst Worrell Keely

Ridiculous crime. It is a production of iHeartRadio.

Zaren Elizabeth Zarn. How are you?

I'm really good good. I'm happy to say that.

You really are really good.

Yeah.

Oh, thank goodness.

How about you? How you feeling?

How you doing all right? I'm alright?

How you be? Girl?

You know what? Above ground and getting paid? I like to say, that's me h. Do you know what's ridiculous?

Yes? I do. Oh have you ever heard of the Kentucky meat shower?

Is that like a euphemism?

No, it's a thing.

It's an actual, literal thing.

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.

Like stew beef.

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. These are big chunks of meat. Yeah. Some people thought it was beef. Some people thought it was lamb, some

Right.

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

And they didn't even say it was what it was. They got it wrong. It was like human lung, totally like medicine.

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.

It was desperate to.

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

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.

A meat cannon, and fell into it and then broke.

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.

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.

Yes, so what that would be a euphemism.

For probably something I order at a restaurant that I go to. What is this Kentucky No, that's like.

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 and a burrito.

I don't know, I don't know.

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?

Yeah, this is This is Ridiculous Crime, a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists, and cons.

It's always ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous.

This I know you done herd have yes? Uh?

Con men right.

Yeah, those are especially when they aim up.

They traffic in vibes.

This is true. It's a good way of putting in Yeah.

Let's just put that out there. They create vibes that get people engaged. People want in on vibes.

They're vibe criming.

They're total vibe criming. I you know, it's interesting because on Tuesday you were talking about scientists death.

This is true, and our.

Cycles have synked once again. Yes, yeah, I have a scientist for you.

Really look at us, girls.

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.

Oh what a mouthful name.

Yeah, so Keeley, that's his stepsister.

Okay, So.

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?

Actually? Uh?

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 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

Rizz City?

What's your Raccoon Escape from Raccoon City or whatever?

Oh?

Yes, what was that? Welcome to Raccoon City.

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 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.

Me, thinking like P. T. Barnum, like where he's like got the you know, Carnival Barker.

It's more like flourishes in my mind.

Okay, like this.

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.

Okay.

So around eighteen seventy two he starts attracting attention because he claimed that he had discovered an entirely new, an inexhaustible source of energy.

Oh yes, energy story.

And he called this etheric force.

Oh yes, I'm familiar. I've seen this reference. Well.

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, wash me cook, and I can release a force of like unimaginable power from virtually any substance.

You think lightning's cool, and you know all.

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.

Alecazoo.

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.

Yeah. He's like, I'm creating nuclear energy out of this water.

Yes. Yes, So his spiel was like this infection of invented terminology. Love that and like half baked scientific concepts.

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.

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 these totally.

This guy's are like a glossy So.

To the uninitiated people like me, they're impressed, like that's technical.

A lot of.

Actual physicists and engineers they're like, this is nonsense, babble. Absolutely so ps, you're violating the laws of thermodynamics.

Newton would be tear his hair cuts.

Up on that. Yeah, so Keeley, he wasn't talking to physicists. He was talking to fat cat because.

They're critical, Elizabeth, they are faking, they've read books.

Yeah, so he No. Keeley is like, hey, wealthy industrialists.

You guys are investor.

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.

Well.

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 like trying something like more marketing forward.

These are the people who made it hard to be Nikola Tesla. He's like, look, I got this, and vibrates that are.

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 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

Scientist must have been losing. Oh god, which is like getting.

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?

Unbelievable.

So the most significant of his investors over the years was this woman. This is Clara Jessup Bloomfield more.

Does everybody have crazy names? This is amazing.

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.

She's curious about the cutting edge.

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.

So let's convert that, please, I need a converted.

That's a three million dollar investment. And she was given him like eight grand a month. I know I know.

I'm telling you, it's so much more fun of your comment.

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. Please everybody understand this, Franklin. Yeah, her advocacy gave him this like social and intellectual respectability that he couldn't get

Verge of a I just need to attach a belt to this.

And two weeks away. He's always two weeks away, and then two weeks comes and goes.

Lather idea for a carburetor exactly.

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, 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.

Proprietary of form.

Yeah, in essence, these people are going to the theater. Yeah, like they can't.

Do so it's like watching it a tom and On played chess.

Yes, but it wasn't a bunch of rubes that he led into the workshop.

I bet not.

They're like smart professional.

Engineers, engineers, I was guessing.

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 team of horses.

Okay, so he's generating enough.

Yeah, the device called a globe motor that spun in perpetual motion. Everything was really physically impressive.

So Jewels Verne level technology. It's a lot of yeah, exactly, vacuum tubes, vacuum.

So the question that investigators like couldn't ever resolve was the source of the energy driving this.

That's my question.

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.

Vibes, A bobs ain't right in his vibes are off.

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.

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.

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

You guy, Yeah, there's my machines on there.

You're harshing my mellow. How do you argue against that?

So they're like, we want blueprints or receipts, and he's like, no, bro, the auras are not right.

Let's take a break, go to commercial. When we come back, we're going to see how he plays this all out. All right, Cesarin, he vibes.

Loving vibes.

The vibes are not off.

Right now, I feel really good. We can keep going back and forth and take.

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.

Because they formed the basically corporation, I got stockholders stockholder.

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.

Yeah, this steampunk has given me nothing.

So steampunk. And another thing in the report was how worried everyone was about what would happen if Keighley got incapacitated or died.

Oh, because nobody knows.

He has no assistance, no backup, no one can.

Look at anything legitimate concern.

Yeah. So the report made public what had previously just been like whispers and private grumbles.

Basically a wizard pretty much you don't nobody spell.

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, they wanted a court order that would force Keighley to disclose the principles and operating methods of his motors.

Show you son, yes, okay.

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 decline to grant the plaintiffs the relief they saw it.

The exciting patent laws.

Yeah, none of which engaged with the underlying question like can you disclose your process?

And does this stuff work?

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 was to be made. But it basically said, you have to show how this motor works.

Let them fly, wheels fly.

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 in the construction and operation of the inventions.

Okay, that's very fitting. About time.

Killey's got to teach Bocal how to do it.

We need somebody to know.

And that's the absolute most that Keihey would agree to. Just telling one guy.

Sure, but if you're still a business partner, that seems reasonable.

It seems reasonable. So at the annual stockholders meeting December thirteenth, eighteen eighty two, Bocal delivers his report on what he's

Like excitory alchemy.

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.

Oh, he took his back.

He took his back.

He's like he's shaking these water molecules. So they don't care.

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.

He doesn't outline like this. He goes to beg to see.

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 yet complete. I'll explain it to you when the engine's done.

Engines. Sorry, it's not done.

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.

They picked a bad age.

Yes, So by the summer of eighteen eighty four, Kelley's situation was like precarious.

Do you think he kind of like slipped him a five and like, hey, go tell them, okay.

And I think he also was like.

Just dumb enough to believe him, yes, but smart enough to kind of understand.

And I think that Keiley had just a way to dance around people with scientific sounding language.

People love promise. Look at Sam Altman.

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. And he's like, so this is in March. She's like, I will demonstrate it on or before April tenth. April

Ah, so the Zuckerberg model.

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.

Oh, he's going to do like a gas gun.

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.

Oh what year are we ineen four? Okay?

So the army in this time period, early eighteen eighties, they wanted new weapons technology.

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.

Why not.

We're gonna be a strong power. We need.

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.

Being a defense contractor looks like a real good gig.

It's they make, They make a whole lot.

Of and it's a low bar to like convince these people you know what we need.

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 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

Not the two weeks too much, It's going to be a two.

Then I'm gonna give a whole exhibition of its massive.

How like Tony Stark over here, the same old.

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

So he's like, instead of saying calibrated, he's like, it's been.

I can't discharge it all right if you're.

A pneumatic whatever dynamite gun.

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, you use this, try and break it. And he knew, like, okay, we can. We can disprove all this pressure stuff right here.

I don't trust a rule.

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, he puts together this like crazy apparatus that was mostly just visually complex.

So really a steampunk stuff. It's like a lot of copper coil, a lot of wires.

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 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.

Is like vibratory collection.

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, Look at this crazy steampunk.

Look at this sculpture burning man. Ready.

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?

Like sabotage, sabotage. What are you doing here?

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.

Okay, and the vibration like, listen to that tune. You can hear the distribution of the vibe.

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.

Guys, don't get hung up.

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.

It's pure energy. He's dissolved the chemical bonds structure. It's now just oscillating in and out of the ether.

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.

Oh, that's craztastic.

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.

It's an engine and.

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. But an ordinary small gas engine would have cut through that wood like butter in those twenty minutes.

Yeah, Diesel has already shown them.

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.

I hope they got like refreshments.

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.

I got to see where this goes.

So we're back in the in the lab. We're in the workshop.

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 was about to next week, could.

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 a compressed material that's depleting. This isn't one of those,

He has like a balloon pushing like a you know, like a radial mill, you know, yes, and it's running out.

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 with this force that he claims to have discovered.

This is literally hot air.

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.

It, and that's what it costs fallacy.

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.

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.

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 is an elaboration of interatomic ether by vibration. The atomic

There was so many words. He's basically saying, it's zero point energy. But ether magnets.

Sounds so much like when Elon Musk bss his way through an interview about space or Grock or.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

Does he have patents at this point?

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 prison in Philadelphia.

Got himself lockdown.

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.

Oh sure, but that was Can you try writing it down?

Yeah? But no, but has you got a field?

How do I write down? In Oora and.

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.

I'm the future and people are troggling.

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.

Oh god, both of them would hate this.

Well, They're like, please come and examine his inventions, and both of them were like, uh, we're going to pass.

Yeah hard no interesting, I want no association in a news story with him.

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.

Oh yeah, there you go.

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.

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.

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 didn't cut him off, though, she just like reduced his monthly stipend.

He was too tall to cut off. I think I wanted to work.

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.

And also because spiritualism that's also be a backdrop right this time.

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.

So they were big into that they were early WU.

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 beneath the surface of all the world's religious traditions was just a single, universal, ancient wisdom. Theosophists called it the

Oh my god.

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.

Yeah, let's do it. Bring it.

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.

You can still find it today. I have friends who have like you know, used it or adjacent or inspired by Yeah.

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

Loved because he couldn't express it.

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 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

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.

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.

Let me get the notebooks.

Yeah. Within weeks of his death, the scientific and journalistic communities like descended to see what he left behind.

The ancient James Randys.

Oh my god.

Yes.

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 built into it. Under the floorboards, they found a system

Oh that's smart.

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 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.

So he was still using the traditional heat beaten treat.

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.

Frauds like Wizard of Oz level of.

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.

I mean, he was actually scientifically gifted, just with.

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.

He kept old things and made them new by putting them together.

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.

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.

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.

That's like how Tesla got screwed his guys like him.

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.

Mark Twain used to be suckered by people like this. You know, he was.

Friends with It's miracle and wonder.

Yeah, and you want something oscillating and shaking and doing all this stuff well.

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.

Better, totally promise is blinding in that way.

Yes, yes, so Zaren, what's your ridiculous takeaway?

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 were published posthumously where he just brought the heat something like that, just for this guy, you know, the innocence

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 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

Oh yeah, the amount of time he spent just like shining the copper.

Yeah, the copper shining alone. With that said, I Dave, if it's okay with you, I'd like a talkback.

I would be delighted. Oh my god, I went cheat.

Hey, Saron, this is actually just for the lady host this time.

This is Laura and I need some TV recommendations from somebody who.

Doesn't watch TV as much as I don't watch TV.

I just got brit Box and I really liked Ludwig and the Cleaner.

So if you have any recommendations, Lady Host.

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 what I'm really into right now is Paradise on Hulu.

Ridicus Crime Say It One More Timequous Crime.

Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio four more Podcasts. My heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.