Tesla's Death Rays

Nikola Tesla, a truly great inventor, and successor to Thomas A. Edison as an electrical wizard, celebrated his 78th birthday with some amazing announcements. National defense could be made easy by means of powerful electric rays. Tremendous energies would be produced, of such a nature that they would create walls of death around our national borders many miles high, which no enemy could get through by land or air. They could be produced by warships, or by projecting plants on land, a couple of hundred miles apart. A fleet of hostile airplanes flying into this invisible curtain would be annihilated.

It is a thrilling conception. It comes from a genius whose pictures show him as a weary old man. If it is possible of realization, something of which the scientific world expresses serious doubt, can Tesla at his age bring it to fulfillment? Such rays as he speaks of are not known, as yet, to have been projected more than a few feet. Will man ever be master of the enormous voltages and velocities necessary to project them 100 miles?

While the scientists fight over these claims, practical laymen may be more interested in another invention revealed by Tesla, an "electric bath." He says you step into a box, pull a string, and electrical forces quickly drive all foreign particles from the surface of your body, leaving it clean and invigorated. Such a dry bath sounds attractive. No scrubbing, no muss.