7. A Hard Worker Who Eventually Figured Out He Could Make More Money by Deceit Than by Hard Work
John Ernst Worrell Keely (1837 – 1898) tried his hand at a variety of jobs as a young man. A hard worker, he was employed at times as a painter, a carpenter, a member of a theatrical orchestra, a carnival barker, and a mechanic. Eventually, he came to the realization that he could make more money by deceit than by hard work. In 1872, he declared that he had invented a new engine that would revolutionize the world because it drew its energy from a new physical force that held limitless potential power. The claim fell on receptive ears. Back in the nineteenth century, there was a widespread and mistaken belief that all space was filled with something called a “luminiferous ether“. It was a hypothetical substance thought necessary for the movement of light or electric waves, and without which those things would be impossible.
Keely claimed to have figured out how to tap into and extract energy from this (nonexistent) ether. Having unraveled the secrets of the luminiferous ether, Keely claimed that he could now tap the power of atoms in water to furnish energy. As he explained it to listeners, atoms were in a state of constant vibration, and by harnessing and channeling water’s vibrations in his revolutionary Keely engine, people could tap into limitless energy. By getting the water’s atoms to vibrate in unison in accordance with the principles of the luminiferous ether, you could use its “etheric force” to power motors. Put another way, the Keely Engine was a perpetual motion machine – an impossibility under the basic laws of physics, because it would violate the first or second laws of thermodynamics.