The FBI and the Missing Tesla Papers Page 469

body, and again at the place where it passed out. The particles in the beam of force, [i.e, the] ammunition...will travel far faster. (p. 15)

Other evidence has been reported by Corum and Corum (1985). They begin with a reference by the inventor concerning the

"Death Ray".... The underlying idea was to render the air conducting by suitable ionizing radiations and to convey high tension currents along the path of the rays. Experiments conducted on a large scale showed that with pressures of many millions of volts virtually unlimited quantities of energy can be projected to a small distance, as a few hundred feet. (Tesla, 1927, p. 459)

This invention, they suggest, is an outcropping of Nikola Tesla's work on X-ray machines patented in the mid-1890's (see Chap.'s 24,25). This passage could also be paired with Nikola Tesla's independent idea of illuminating the skies with his magnifying transmitter by beaming up eletrical energy to the stratusphere and creating, somehow, an illuminating effect.

Corum and Corum (1985) refer to concrete plans and "artist conceptions" drafted in the mid-1930's that were "made of a building with a tower in the form of a cylinder 16.5 feet in diameter, 115 feet tall. The structure was capped at the top by a 10 meter diameter sphere (covered with hemispheric shells as in the 1914 patent)" (p. 47; their source, Tesla Museum files). The inventor had also contacted Alcoa Aluminum Company throughout 1935 who were "ready to start as soon as Nikola Tesla advanced the funds" (p. 47).

Two years later, at the age of 81, Nikola Tesla (1937b/1984) stated at a luncheon attended by ministers of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia that he had constructed a number of beam transmission devices including the death ray for protecting a country from incoming invasions and a laser-like machine that could send impulses to the moon and other planets. He also said that he was going to take the death ray to a Geneva conference for world peace. When pressed by the columnists to "give a full discription.... Dr. Tesla said...,'But it is not an experiment.... I have built, demonstrated and used it. Only a little time will pass before I can give it to the world" (p. 278).

We are left with a mystery. Did Nikola Tesla really "scam" the hotel management of the Governor Clinton by frightening them into accepting a bogus invention in lieu of $400 rent? He left the hotel at the height of the depression when a quarter could purchase