A "LIFE RAY."

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 238, 8 October 1935, Page 6

A "LIFE RAY."

A Danish inventor named Eavn has been invited to visit this country (says the "Manchester Guardian") to demonstrate the use of an electrical ray which he asserts has the power to disable aircraft at a distance. He makes remarkable claims for his device. Given a sufficiently high electrical potential his ray will, he. says, "explode" an aeroplane fifty miles off. A civilisation that has taken to hewing colossal bomb-proof shelters out of the earth and training children in the use of gas masks would be content with less than that. Let Mr. Eavn merely provide us with a means of gently paralysing • bombing 'planes before tliej' reach centres of habitation so that they are forced to land, and the world will breathe a great deal more freely.

But rumours of such deliverance arise, alas! only to 'lie discredited. Some little stir was caused last May", by a tale that Senator Marconi had brought a string of motor cars to a standstill 011 the road between Rome and Ostia by using a short-wave ray to disorganise their magnetos, and had held them spellbound as long as he pleased; but, whatever the truth of tiie story, 110 practical consequences emerged from it. Electrical power can be uncannily used to guide the movements of a 'plane in which no pilot sits, and the nightmare is even taking shape of air attacks controlled from a distance and without risk to the man-power of the attacking force. But for comparable wizardry directed to defence a nervous world still looks eagerly. There seems 110 reason why it should not be found. Science, blind to mortal issues, has happened in latter years to tip the balance with appalling weight against the weak and defenceless. It may equally well stumble to-morrow upon some "life ray" that would still the internal-combustion engine, whether of 'plane, tank or armoured car. But would mankind rest under that happy dispensation? We should more likely at once seek t > fit our instruments of destruction with Diesel compression-ignition engines which, lacking both magneto and coil, could defy the defence and have civilisation at their mercy once more.