The New Death-Dealing "Diabolic Rays" Page 154

The current passes through the plane, which either burns up or becomes paralyzed.

An automobile or a protected ammunition dump is not so easy to attack. An armored car would need only to drag a chain or a heavy copper wire along the road. This would create a perfect ground. Current thrown, then, against the car along the carrier beam would simply enter the steel sides of the car and pass through them and the ground-chain into the earth, doing little or no damage. It might be possible, however, to project such a powerful stroke of current that the electrical field set up would stun or partially disable the driver, causing him to run off the road or into an obstacle.

With an airplane it would be practically impossible to insulate it or otherwise protect it and still have it airworthy. Should the airplane be insulated, a different form of attack could be adopted; a series of shocks being delivered against it, like the blows from a hammer, rather than a steady stream of energy. These hammer-like blows would be almost irresistible for breaking down insulation or other resistance. Indeed, we have found great difficulty in our laboratory in insulating our apparatus against the assaults of the current.

It has been found that a high-frequency current flowing along this carrier beam gives it a much higher conductivity; so that now two generator plants are being used instead of only the one. One generator produces the low-frequency current that constitutes the power passed along the beam; the other supplies the separate current of higher frequency which serves to increase the conductivity.

The carrier beam itself is produced in its own special apparatus and projected through a glass lens. The two electric currents are introduced into it after it has passed through this lens, which avoids any danger of melting the glass.

The spreading of the carrier beam with distance is much the same as that of a searchlight beam, so that the loss of current becomes quite high as the distance increases. Even so, a generating unit such as could be carried on an automobile truck would be sufficient, it is estimated, to supply current which would be effective at several hundred yards or even at one or two miles.

The tests were begun about eight months ago. Before the carrier-beam system was discovered the stopping of a motor (the test cited above) was being attempted at a distance of about ten inches. When at last we hit upon the carrier beam, within ten minutes, using the same generating group, the length of the laboratory had been traversed with equal success and the future of the work assured. So far, the full possible power has never been used, because of the cramped quarters.

The carrier beam can be made luminous if so desired, and this seems in the long run perhaps the most practical way of using it. The principal would be that of a tracer bullet. To see clearly what one is doing with the ray one must be able to follow it, especially at night. And if at times it seems desirable to make the ray invisible, a series of filters can be inserted which will take out the longer waves of the beam, rendering it absolutely secret.

What the outcome of this discovery will be, it is too soon yet to say. Some are of the opinion that it will cause the annihilation of the human race; others think that it will make war so terrible that it will be realized how useless it is. The optimists see in it (and I hope that they are right) the vindication of the man who has through all the discouragement and labor of my work been my inspiration and my greatest source of hope — Nikola Tesla, to me the greatest man on earth today.