MAN-MADE THUKDEEBOLT

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 118, 14 November 1929, Page 7

MAN-MADE THUKDEEBOLT

HIGH TENSION ELECTRICITY (Copyright.) A man-made thunderbolt of 3,000,000 volts, hurled across a thirteen-foot gap, recently was put to -work refining ores by a Californian mining company. When the giant tongue of fire and death streaks through the air its unleashed power disintegrates solutions in. its path. This spectacular experiment of separating mineral solutions by means of harnessed lightning suggests again the possibility of sending giant sparks as "death rays" in time of war to blow up battleships or wipe out cities. About five years ago, an Englishman, H. Grindell Matthews, claimed that he perfected such a death ray. He' showed moving pictures of his device bringing instant death to an animal sixty-five feet away and.blowing up a motor-cycle. He maintained that by increasing the power of his machine, he could bring down 'planes from the sky or stun the populations of cities so they could be easily, taken in time of war.

During the World War a report was circulated that a German had invented an electrical ray that could short-circuit the motors of 'planes flying overhead. Neither of these claims was ever confirmed.

High tension electricity has been applied before—usually in voltage under. 60,000 —to break down chemical solutions into their various elements. In. the laboratories of the Carnegie Institution in Washington, and of the General Electric Company in Pittsfield, Mass., 5,000,000 r v01t "guns" recently gave awe-inspiring exhibitions of their powers. Even greater voltages are promised for the future. Whether these growing thunderbolts "of the laboratory; will ever burst open the tiny find mysterious atom, and allow science to create metals at will, is a fascinating conjecture that only time can answer.