DOUBTS OF THE DEATHE RAY.

Auckland Star, Volume LV, Issue 167, 16 July 1924, Page 15

DOUBTS OF THE DEATHE RAY.

ZEALANDER'S CLAIM. A STEAKGE COENTLDEXCE. rt-nm Our Special Correspondent.) LONDON, May 27. m,, invention labelled by v. Press more than accurate the death ray in the limelight. We trans- *'*£ particulars Of this invention of ' Mr Matthew can stop the working fj'enpine-can. indeed more than Id can destroy, and that from a dieanything which it is desired to ■St ThiB c prospect was calculated Jf3e the world shudder-and it did a first chance to obtain and his services after test. The tests were made yesterday in his own laboratory, with Ins own apparatus ?Tthe presence first of military, then of aval and finally of Air Force experts, Sd thereafter in offer of £1000 was made to Mr. Matthews, subject to a ftrther test by the Government. Indignant at what he considered an absolutely inadequate offer, Mr. MatVL VS went at once to Paris by aeroplane to resume negotiations with a FVench firm, being all but stopped at the moment of his flight by the arrival at Croidon aerodrome of emissaries armed with k" 111 claims to a sharo in his death. ia y invention. _ Heated recriminations are being bandied about in London—against the Government by the Matthews supporters- against the inventor by those who uphold the Government in not buying a pi? in a poke, a pig which, after all, may not in reality bo wholly in the ownership of Mr. Matthews; and those who saw wisdom in the Government's caution. It was at that moment a JNew Zealander took a hand in the game. Right away in Copenhagen there is a Mr. A. J Koberts, a New Zealander-born, who spent his early life in Australia, and he happens in his way to be an inventor of parts. Hearing through the Danish press of l'affaire Matthews, Mr. Roberta declared that not Mr. Matthews, but he, A. J. Eoberts, is the inventor of the powerful "ray" which Mr. Grindell Matthews is exploiting, that at one time Mr. Matthews employed bim (Roberts) precisely.because of Roberts' knowledge of rays, not only wireless, but other varieties of vibratory energy. By one of those strange coincidental happenings (writes our London correspondent), I knew Mr. Roberts when he first came to London from Australia Iβ years ago, to demonstrate what he could do by wireless, then in its infancy. I can still remember (continues our correspondent) the terrible day on which I paid a visit to Mr. Roberts' hangar at Dagenham, on the Essex marshes, through a wild and stormy winter gale. He and his brother, Fletcher, were building an aeroplane, on that day awash with half-melted snow. Wβ got what little comfort of food and warmth we could by boiling the billy in the hanger, and then adjourned to one of the creeks near by, where, from the shore, Mr. A. J. Eoberts showed mc a torpedo in the water, the movements of which were controlled by wireless on shore. Mr. Roberts waa then trying to get support from the English Government for his wireless torpedo control, but at the moment, "weary of waiting, he had switched off in another direction in which his inventive brain had been busy to a device helpful in aviation. A.: J. Roberts was one of the first to ..see and to utilise the properties of the gyroscope in aviation, and at that time he was building an aeroplane and engine by means of which he could show tie world some of the principles of gyroscope action, since then accepted and made use of for stabilisation purposes in boata, torpedoes, submarines, and the monorail. Mr. Roberts at that time forsook wireless, and took up the flying game, and at one of the early flying meetings in the Midlands he -was a competitor. It was then I saw him, last. In the Great War period that has intervened, Mr. Eoberts first of al] joined the Flying Service. He then was appointed to special work for the Government in connection with torpedoes and submarines. To come hack to the present imbroglio, Mr. Roberts has been telling the Danish Press that he does not believe Mr. Matthews has any real novelty in hand. Mr. Roberts seems to think that Mr. Matthews is exploiting a notion which is not new, which, by means of turning ultra-violet rays on to chlorine gas (one of the poison gases), the gas can be made to explode from a distance. Mr. Roberts is engaged at present in Copenhagen in the somewhat curious ro.e of demonstrator at a circus of certain properties of waves of light and sound. It would appear that such a method of exploiting scientific knowledge is more lucrative than the prosaic one of research worker and inventor. Urtamly Mr. Matthews does not seem to nnd the path of commercial sale of scientific knowledge an easy one. ft i 3 somewhat curious that circumstances should have placed Mr. Roberts >n Copenhagen, for it is there that Mr Awls Bohr, the brilliant Dane, pupil and collaborator of Sir Ernest Rutherlord in X-ray and atomic research, is now working, and should the Danish «-ess interview Professor Bohr in the matter one would hear something authoritative. «\^ d S ,', r , Richard Gregory, editor of Mature, has already told us scientists £new the different rays from the X-ray, *hich WM the shortest, right through r e , . rava ÜBe <l broadcasting. Tbly had knowledge of the whole sclle, except res^" 6 f ° r Ule m ° ment tl,e matter