The War of the Worlds by Henrique Alvim Corrêa 11

The death ray or death beam was a theoretical

particle beam A particle beam is a stream of charged or neutral particles. In particle accelerators, these particles can move with a velocity close to the speed of light. There is a difference between the creation and control of charged particle beams and neu ...

electromagnetic In physics, electromagnetism is an interaction that occurs between particles with electric charge. It is the second-strongest of the four fundamental interactions, after the strong force, and it is the dominant force in the interactions of a ...

weapon first theorized around the 1920s and 1930s. Around that time, notable inventors such as

Guglielmo Marconi Guglielmo Giovanni Maria Marconi, 1st Marquis of Marconi (; 25 April 187420 July 1937) was an Italians, Italian inventor and electrical engineering, electrical engineer, known for his creation of a practical radio wave-based Wireless telegrap ...

Nikola Tesla Nikola Tesla ( ; ,"Tesla"
''

Harry Grindell Matthews Harry Grindell Matthews (17 March 1880 – 11 September 1941) was an English inventor who claimed to have invented a death ray in the 1920s. Earlier life and inventions Harry Grindell Matthews was born on 17 March 1880 in Winterbourne, Glo ...

, Edwin R. Scott, Erich Graichen and others claimed to have invented it independently. In 1957, the National Inventors Council was still issuing lists of needed military inventions that included a death ray. While based in fiction, research into energy-based weapons inspired by past speculation has contributed to real-life weapons in use by modern militaries sometimes called a sort of "death ray", such as the

United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...

and its

Laser Weapon System The AN/SEQ-3 Laser Weapon System or XN-1 LaWS is a laser weapon developed by the United States Navy. The weapon was installed on for field testing in 2014. In December 2014, the United States Navy reported that the LaWS system worked perfectly ...

(LaWS) deployed in mid-2014. Such armaments are technically known as

directed-energy weapons A directed-energy weapon (DEW) is a ranged weapon that damages its target with highly focused energy without a solid projectile, including lasers, microwaves, particle beams, and sound beams. Potential applications of this technology include w ...

History

In 1923, Edwin R. Scott, an inventor from

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

, claimed he was the first to develop a death ray that would destroy human life and bring down planes at a distance. He was born in

Detroit Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at th ...

, and he claimed he worked for nine years as a student and protégé of

Charles P. Steinmetz Charles Proteus Steinmetz (born Karl August Rudolph Steinmetz, April 9, 1865 – October 26, 1923) was a German-born American mathematician and electrical engineer and professor at Union College. He fostered the development of alternating ...

. Harry Grindell-Matthews tried to sell what he reported to be a death ray to the British

Air Ministry The Air Ministry was a department of the Government of the United Kingdom with the responsibility of managing the affairs of the Royal Air Force, that existed from 1918 to 1964. It was under the political authority of the Secretary of State ...

in 1924. He was never able to show a functioning model or demonstrate it to the military.

Nikola Tesla Nikola Tesla ( ; ,"Tesla"
''

teleforce Teleforce is a proposed defensive weapon by Nikola Tesla that accelerated pellets or slugs of material to a high velocity inside a vacuum chamber via electrostatic repulsion and then fired them out of aimed nozzles at intended targets. Tesla clai ...

in the 1930s and continued the claims up until his death. Tesla explained that "this invention of mine does not contemplate the use of any so-called 'death rays'.

Rays Ray may refer to: Fish * Ray (fish), any cartilaginous fish of the superorder Batoidea * Ray (fish fin anatomy), a bony or horny spine on a fin Science and mathematics * Ray (geometry), half of a line proceeding from an initial point * Ray (gra ...

are not applicable because they cannot be produced in requisite quantities and diminish rapidly in intensity with distance. All the energy of

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

(approximately two million horsepower) transformed into rays and projected twenty miles, could not kill a human being, because, according to a well known law of physics, it would disperse to such an extent as to be ineffectual. My apparatus projects particles which may be relatively large or of microscopic dimensions, enabling us to convey to a small area at a great distance trillions of times more energy than is possible with rays of any kind. Many thousands of

horsepower Horsepower (hp) is a unit of measurement of power, or the rate at which work is done, usually in reference to the output of engines or motors. There are many different standards and types of horsepower. Two common definitions used today are the ...

can thus be transmitted by a stream thinner than a hair, so that nothing can resist." Tesla proposed that a nation could "destroy anything approaching within 200 miles... ndwill provide a wall of power" in order to "make any country, large or small, impregnable against armies, airplanes, and other means for attack". He claimed to have worked on the project since about 1900, and said that it drew power from the ionosphere, which he called "an invisible ball of energy surrounding Earth". He said that he had done this with the help of a 50-foot tesla coil. Antonio Longoria in 1934 claimed to have a death ray that could kill pigeons from four miles away and could kill a mouse enclosed in a "thick walled metal chamber". During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, the Germans had at least two projects, and the Japanese one, to create so-called death rays. One German project led by Ernst Schiebold concerned a

particle accelerator A particle accelerator is a machine that uses electromagnetic fields to propel charged particles to very high speeds and energies, and to contain them in well-defined beams. Large accelerators are used for fundamental research in particle ...

with a steerable bundle of

beryllium Beryllium is a chemical element with the symbol Be and atomic number 4. It is a steel-gray, strong, lightweight and brittle alkaline earth metal. It is a divalent element that occurs naturally only in combination with other elements to form mi ...

rods running through the vertical axis. The other was developed by Dr.

Rolf Widerøe Rolf Widerøe (11 July 1902 – 11 October 1996) was a Norwegian accelerator physicist who was the originator of many particle acceleration concepts, including the ''resonance accelerator'' and the betatron accelerator. Early life Widerøe w ...

and is referred to in his biography. The machine developed by Widerøe was in the

Dresden Dresden (, ; Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; wen, label=Upper Sorbian, Drježdźany) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city, after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth larg ...

Plasma Physics laboratory in February 1945 when the city was bombed. Widerøe led a team in March 1945 to remove the device from the ruined laboratory and deliver it to

General Patton George Smith Patton Jr. (November 11, 1885 – December 21, 1945) was a general in the United States Army who commanded the Seventh United States Army in the Mediterranean Theater of World War II, and the Third United States Army in France ...

's 3rd Army at Burggrub where it was taken into US custody on 14 April 1945. The Japanese weapon was called Death ray "Ku-Go" which aimed to employ

microwaves Microwave is a form of electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths ranging from about one meter to one millimeter corresponding to frequencies between 300 MHz and 300 GHz respectively. Different sources define different frequency rang ...

created in a large

magnetron The cavity magnetron is a high-power vacuum tube used in early radar systems and currently in microwave ovens and linear particle accelerators. It generates microwaves using the interaction of a stream of electrons with a magnetic field while ...

In science fiction

The concept of a death ray has fueled science fiction stories at least as early as

Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy (russian: link= no, Алексей Николаевич Толстой; – 23 February 1945) was a Russian writer who wrote in many genres but specialized in science fiction and historical novels. Despite having ...

's 1927 novel '' The Garin Death Ray''. Later science fiction introduced the concept of the handheld

raygun A raygun is a science-fiction directed-energy weapon that releases energy, usually with destructive effect.Jeff Prucher, '' Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction,'' Oxford University Press, 2007, page 162 They have vario ...

used by fictional characters such as

Flash Gordon Flash Gordon is the protagonist of a space adventure comic strip created and originally drawn by Alex Raymond. First published January 7, 1934, the strip was inspired by, and created to compete with, the already established ''Buck Rogers'' adve ...

. In

Alfred Noyes Alfred Noyes CBE (16 September 188025 June 1958) was an English poet, short-story writer and playwright. Early years Noyes was born in Wolverhampton, England the son of Alfred and Amelia Adams Noyes. When he was four, the family moved to Ab ...

' 1940 novel ''The Last Man'' (US title: ''No Other Man''), a death ray developed by a German scientist named Mardok is unleashed in a global war and almost wipes out the human race. Similar weapons are found in spy-fi films such as '' Murderers' Row'' and

George Lucas George Walton Lucas Jr. (born May 14, 1944) is an American filmmaker. Lucas is best known for creating the ''Star Wars'' and ''Indiana Jones'' franchises and founding Lucasfilm, LucasArts, Industrial Light & Magic and THX. He served as chairm ...

's science-fiction saga ''

Star Wars ''Star Wars'' is an American epic film, epic space opera multimedia franchise created by George Lucas, which began with the Star Wars (film), eponymous 1977 film and quickly became a worldwide popular culture, pop-culture Cultural impact of S ...

''.Holland, Charles
"Alfred Noyes, ''The Last Man''"
, ''St. Dunstan's Red and White'',

St. Dunstan's University :''St. Andrew's College, Prince Edward Island'' redirects to here. St. Dunstan's University (SDU) is a former university which was located on the northern outskirts of Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada. SDU merged with Prince of Wales C ...

References

External links

Defense Update article on M-THELMicrowave weapons: Wasted energy (Nature)High Power Microwaves - Strategic and Operational Implications for Warfare (Eileen M. Walling, Colonel, USAF)
{{Science fiction Fringe physics Fictional energy weapons Lost inventions

History

In science fiction

See also

References

Further reading

External links