Keely Motor Company

Stock certificate for one share of the Keely Motor Company, made out to M.F. Freeman, printed by National Bank Note Co., c. 1879.

Keely Motor Company was a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania-based corporation, chartered in 1874 as a holding company for the inventions of John W. Keely, both patented and unpatented, in particular for his various perpetual motion machines. The company continued operations after Keely's death in 1898, even briefly employing one T. B. Kinraide to try to figure out Keely's machines, but eventually shuttered in the early years of the twentieth century.

Press Coverage

• "NOTICES.", The Philadelphia Inquirer (Philadelphia, PA): 7, 18 Nov. 1874, https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/167956192/ 
  

  NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN THAT John W. Keely, John Stilz, James S. Yarnall, Jacobs W. Schuckers and Charles G. Till, and their associates, intend to make application for a charter for an incorporation company, to be known by the name of the KEELY MOTOR COMPANY, pursuant to an act of the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, approved April 29, 1874, entitled "An act to provide for the incorporation and regulation of certain corporations," the purpose and object of which said corporation is to be the purchasing, holding and selling of patent rights for the inventions of John W. Keely, and for other inventions, and the manufacturing and selling of machines and apparatus embodying in whole or part such inventions.

• "A KEELY SEANCE.", Scientific American (New York: Munn & Co.): 401, 29 June 1878, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=pst.000062999403&view=1up&seq=403 
• "The Secret of the Keely Motor", Chicago Tribune (Chicago, IL): 42, 43, 29 Jan. 1899, https://www.newspapers.com/image/349875156  — a double-page exposé from the Hearst papers, including statements by Charles S. Hill and J. J. Smith, references to the studies of T. B. Kinraide
• "DEFENDS THE KEELY MOTOR. President of the Company Denies the Compressed Air Theory. Says the Pipes and Tubes Were Known to the Directors of the Company.", Evening Star (Washington, D.C.): 3, 25 Jan. 1899, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1899-01-25/ed-1/seq-3/