Perpetual Motion 71 



powder and dynamite, a predetermined rate of vibration set up in 

 the surrounding medium is, by sympathetic vibration, sufficient;to 

 start an action which ends in the recorrbination of the atoms into 

 new molecules, an action accompanied by the emission of energy 

 in enormous quantity ; so, by the striking of some particular 

 vibratory note, an atom, acting as a resonator, may start within 

 itself such an action as may result in the rupture of its bonds and 

 may thus set free the almost incalculable energy which there exists. 

 Now-a-days, when we are familiar with such an action in the 

 different experiments on radiation, when we know that a gradual 

 release of some portion of the radium atom is constantly going on 

 accompanied by an apparent generation of energy, the claims of 

 such an hypothesis are not lightly to be dismissed as absurd. 



When Professor Fitzgerald was discussing Hertz' experi- 

 ments, then new, he used the words : " If we consider the possible 

 radiating power of the atom we find it may be millions of millions 

 of times greater than Professor Wiedermann has found to be the 

 radiating power of the sodium atom in a Bunsen flame, so that, if 

 there is any reason to think that any greater oscillation might 

 disintegrate the atom, we are still a long way from such a rate." 



Keely declared, however, that by his many years of experi- 

 ment in vibratory physics he had discovered the means of 

 obtaining just such a rate of vibration, and that by means of an 

 instrument which he called the Liberator, he was able to disinteg- 

 rate water, not into its molecules or atoms, but to disintegrate the 

 atoms themselves, instantaneously obtaining from a charge of a 

 few drops a pressure approximating to twenty tons to the square 

 inch, and providing power as the atomic ether passed through an 

 orifice of about one hundredth of an inch in diameter equal to 

 that developed by a hundred horse steam engine. Keely held 

 that the ether exists in several forms and combinations. The 

 ultimate ether cannot be restrained, but passes freely through the 

 interstices of matter as wind passes through a coarse netting, but 

 in its combinations, one of which he calls "atomic ether," it 

 behaves as a gas. Of course, if Keely's machines had been suc- 

 cessful, they would not have solved " Perpetual Motion " in our 



