Topic summary
Disintegrator ray
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Raygun.
History
The variant "ray projector" was used by John W. Campbell in The Black Star Passes in 1930. Related terms "disintegrator ray" dates to 1898 in Garrett P. Serviss' Edison's Conquest of Mars; "blaster" dates to 1925 in Nictzin Dyalhis' story "When the Green Star Waned"; and "needle ray" and "needler" date to 1934 in E. E. Smith's The Skylark of Valeron.