Keely claimed to have been able to reverse poles in different sorts of polar phenomena. One key to understanding some of his work with magnetism is how he was enabled to reverse, at will and with little actual work, magnetic poles. Modern computer physics works with the "coercive force" in recording media. The flipping of a pole which is normally work intensive can happen with little work when heat vibrations are also employed:

"The force necessary to flip a bit from the down to the up state is known as the coercive force and is a strong function of temperature. At room temperature, a normal magnet is too weak to flip the bits because the coercive force required is too high. Thus all the bits remain in the north-pole-down state in spite of the presence of the north-pole-up bias magnet in the drive. But at 150°C, the coercive force required to flip a domain falls almost to zero, and the bias magnet field is strong enough to record a north-pole-up state." (source unknown)