Free research tool
Interactive Keely Timeline
Search and filter the major events in the Keely Motor story without leaving the browser.
Key facts
- The tool uses sourced milestones already represented elsewhere in the archive.
- Filters let researchers separate company history, demonstration reports, and expose evidence.
- The birth-year conflict remains visible instead of being normalized away.
Timeline FAQ
Does this timeline prove the Keely Motor was a fraud?
The timeline alone does not prove fraud. It shows the sequence of claims, investor pressure, failed disclosure, death, and 1899 hidden-apparatus findings that make the fraud interpretation strongest.
Why does the timeline show 1827 / 1837?
Accessible sources conflict on Keely's birth year. The archive keeps that conflict visible because a false certainty would be less accurate than a sourced uncertainty.
Does this tool send filter choices anywhere?
No. The filter and search code runs in your browser on static data embedded in the page.
Sources used on this page
Gale Encyclopedia entry on John Ernst Worrell Keely
Concise reference for incorporation, devices, supporters, death, and posthumous fraud findings.
Robert MacDougall, Sympathetic Physics (Technology and Culture, 2019)
Modern history-of-technology analysis of the motor, stock promotion, thermodynamics debate, and Clara Moore.
Clara Bloomfield Moore, Keely and His Discoveries (1893)
Public-domain supporter account and primary witness to the late sympathetic-vibratory framing around Keely.
New York Times, Keely's Secret Disclosed (January 20, 1899)
Contemporary report summarizing the Philadelphia Press investigation and hidden-tube claims.
Wikimedia Commons / New York Journal, sphere under Keely laboratory
Public-domain 1899 image of the large sphere found below Keely-related laboratory space after his death.
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