The New Death-Dealing "Diabolic Rays" Page 149

Has the dream of inventors come true at last? Can destructive power now be sent through space by what has been called “the most terrible invention ever made by man?” Scientists disagree. In this exclusive article the inventor himself tells what his ray can do and how it works.

THE projection of energy through space without the use of wires or other mechanical contrivances has long been a dream of scientists and inventors. The great Serb, Nikola Tesla, predicted this many years ago, more or less on the theory of radio waves. Other scientists have attempted the projection of beams of caloric or heat rays. Neither of these ideas proved to be successful.

Now, however, electrical energy can be transmitted across distances without the use of wires, cables, pipes, tubing or any other “visible means of support” for the current projected.

Not only that, but a current powerful enough to destroy life, machinery or any ordinary material can be controlled from the base of operations and can be directed at will against an enemy attack, much as the same attack might spray with machine-gun fire or as a man might play the stream of water from a garden hose against a bed of plants.

Many of the scientists who have attempted hitherto to accomplish this have been blocked because they were working on the theory of projecting heat rays. The natural and inevitable result was that the beams lost much of their strength with every foot traveled and became almost nil at a distance of thirty or forty feet.

It was reported a few years ago that a young officer of the French army had succeeded in projecting a heat ray to a distance of some sixty feet, with still greater distances in promise. The actual experiment turned out, however, to have been the explosion of detonators at a distance by means of a light ray impinging on a selenium cell. The projection of energy in any quantity was not involved.

Tesla’s original idea was the development of a “field” of energy in the higher atmosphere. This could be tapped, he thought, at any time or place and could be used as a sort of “mine” of power from which factories, conveyances or homes might draw power as needed. People sneered at him, as they had done before. He merely said, “Very well; I was right before; I shall be right again. You will see.”

The present experiments, though inspired by Tesla and by his quiet confidence in what can be done with the genii of electricity, differ considerably from his plan. That does not prove that they will fail to open the door to the prospects that he has foreseen. These experiments have been performed before witnesses; not once, but many times. At the present writing they are being carried out on a far greater scale in the new laboratory devoted entirely to this work.