Links and comments on the state of the art by Al.
William R Corliss and Charles Fort
An Amazon advertisement for William Corliss' books declares: "William Corliss: Charles Fort's TRUE heir!!!" Even though his work is excellent, I don't think that Fort would have agreed with the statement. Fort disliked the authoritarian stance of the science establishment of his day not to mention the disregards and would have seen Corliss as the lesser of many greater evils. Corliss is a scientist at heart and his books, or something like them, should be the basis for all science - but they're not and sadly never will be. The very idea of anomalies has been rejected by scientific arrogance and even the word itself has been altered to mean some kind of equipment malfunction.
The idea of Fort's Heir stems from the mistaken ideal that all Forteana and anomalousness will one day be incorporated into science. This tends to be the the philosophy of Fortean Times and much other “Fortean” literature. Fort declared scientists to be lazy and closed-minded and today the situation is little changed with ideas having to run the gauntlet of peer review with the reviewers rejecting anything outside of, or at the edges of the declared “Box” creating an inward-looking, geocentric discipline that will likely, one day collapse in on itself. However, as observed by Fort, “everyone thinks they are a scientist” and scientific sounding utterances are popular and assumed to be true by many.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_R._Corliss
A sample of Corliss work below and more at: http://www.science-frontiers.com
"Potentially more important to geological thinking are those unconformities that signal large chunks of geological history are missing, even though the strata on either side of the unconformity are perfectly parallel and show no evidence of erosion. Did millions of years fly by with no discernible effect? A possible though controversial inference is that our geological clocks and stratigraphic concepts need working on." William R. Corliss, Unknown Earth (Glen Arm, Maryland: The Sourcebook Project, 1980), p. 219. http://www.conservapedia.com/William_R._Corliss
By contrast, many of Fort's anomalies are of a paranormal leaning, tending to highlight the unknown content of what science has labelled mundane. If taken at face value, his intelligent observations of things taken for granted provide much food for thought for the open-minded. But, we are so indoctrinated with the scientific paradigm that we find it hard to accept that there are other areas of the ocean of possibilty to trawl.
That there is another way of thinking that does not include the plea for scientific affirmation; and why not?
That science has admitted that there is a full ninety percent of the universe that is unobserved and unobservable and it is this that I for one intend to explore.
Fort was a pioneer of this domain and to ignore the record of his journey to new lands is to deny ourselves knowledge of most of the world that we live in.
Fortean Times do get it right sometimes and there is an excellent piece on Fort by Ian Kid at : http://www.forteantimes.com/features/commentary/395/who_was_charles_fort.html
Fort was the champion of the underdog, the victim who lost out as a result of convenient explanations. I tend to think that he wanted to show that the excuse of benefit for the greater good was the biggest sham of all, although he seems to have had a genuine empathy for the victims. There are several examples in his work of the young being blamed and forced into confession for what seem to be paranormal events.
One such victim though not obviously paranormal, was John Worrel Keely, the inventor of the Keely Motor, a man with ideas debunked from Forts day right up to the present:
"Imposture exposed-the motor had been run by a compressed air engine, in the cellar.
Anybody who has ever tried to keep a secret twenty-four hours, will marvel at this story of an impostor who, against all the forces of revelation, such as gas men, and coal men, and other persons who get into cellars-against inquisitive neighbors, and, if possible, even more inquisitive newspaper men-against disappointed stockholders and outraged conventionalists-kept secret, for twenty-four years, his engine in the cellar." Fort, Wild Talents.
The offending object was a large vessel used by Keely in earlier experiments and buried under the floor to get it out of the way. Everyone who worked for Keely knew it was there. The charge was that Keely's motors had been run from compressed air and that this was the vessel used to store the air.
John Worrel Keely
Anyone who knows anything or nothing of compressed air, also knows that you need a compressor and that compressors are the most noisy of machinery. No one had ever mentioned a compressor or the sound of one and Keely used extreme pressures almost unheard of at the time for his motors. Pipes would burst and it's said that the pressure forced water through the very pores of the metal castings he used.
"It made no difference what else came out. Taboo had, or pretended it had, something to base on. Almost all people of all eras are hypnotics. Their beliefs are induced beliefs. The proper authorities saw to it that the proper belief should be induced, and people believed properly." Fort, Wild Talents
There is a thorough debunking of Keely here that is representative of all such writings today :http://www.nuscam.com/ord_hume.htm
There were, we are told, other fraudulent means that Keely used to defraud his shareholders, not least is what was described by the press of the day as a "Small Water Motor of unusual design" or words to that effect (See the drawing at the link above). This Water Motor was said to have been used to drive hidden belts and pulleys that in turn drove Keely's "impossible machines".
Keely's workshop was in effect a machine-shop where parts were manufactured, with all the machines and equipment that one would expect. At that time, all machine-shop machines were powered by overhead belts driven by pulleys situated above. Any belts that descended to floor level were encased or hidden because they were dangerous in a place frequented by visitors and so we see that a belt "hidden" in a wall cavity was not unusual.
Note overhead belts driving machines: http://www.timetableimages.com/i-a/aerfac09.jpg
And also here: http://www.timetableimages.com/ttimages/aeromfac.htm
A small water motor of the type used at the time can be seen here:
http://physics.kenyon.edu/EarlyApparatus/Fluids/Water_Wheel/Water_Wheel.html
The best of these museum pieces that I've seen generated a quarter horsepower and was limited, in Keely's case as having to be driven by a domestic water supply - probably a tap. This would not provide enough power to drive the belts and pulleys let alone a machine-shop.
That there was a type of water motor at Keely's workshop is not disputed, but the only one that fits the bill is one of Keely's own design. This can be seen at Google Video, Dale Pond - The Basic Principles of SVP. Pond assures us in the video that he has had this one working and is intending to make a duplicate for testing purposes as the original is a museum exhibit and not free for experimentation.
From what I have discovered of the workings of this motor it basically works on the principal of the 'water hammer' - something well known to science.
And so we have the crazy situation of Keely's "impossible machines" being clandestinely driven by one of Keely's "impossible machines".
"There is a celestial mind-force, a great sympathetic force which is life itself, of which everything is composed." John Keely. http://www.svpvril.com/
See also: http://www.keelytech.com/
