“ DEATH BEAM ” CLAIMS

Evening Star, Issue 21820, 8 September 1934, Page 4

“ DEATH BEAM ” CLAIMS

A method and apparatus which will send concentrated beams of particles through the free air, of such tremendous energy that they will bring down a fleet of 10,000 enemy aeroplanes at a distance of 250 miles from a defending nation’s border and will cause crimes of millions to. drop dead in their tracks, is claimed by X)r Nikola Tesla to have been perfected by hinij and will, he declares, be presented, in the cause of world peace, to the Disarmament Conference at Geneva.

This “ death beam,” Dr Tesla said, will operate silently but effectively at distances, “ as far as a telescope could see an object on the ground, and as far as the curvature of the earth would permit it.” It will be invisible, and leave no marks behind it, beyond its evidence of destruction. An army of 1,000,000 dead, annihilated in an instant, he said,, would hot reveal, even under the most powerful microscope, what catastrophe had caused its destruction. Dr Tesla, said this latest, invention of his would, make war impossible. This death beam, he asserted, would surround each country like an invisible Chinese wall, only a million times more impenetrable. It would make every nation impregnable against. attack by air or by large invading armies. I But, while it wilt make every nation safe against any attack by,a would-be invader, Dr Tesla added, the death beam, by its nature, could nob be employed similarly as a weapon for offence. For, he explained, it could be. generated only from large, stationary, and immovable plants, stationed, in_the manner of old-time, forts, at various strategic distances from each country’s border. An exception would: he made in the case of battleships, which could equip themselves with smaller plants for generating the death beam, with enough power to destroy any attacking aeroplane. They .could, in addition, sweep the seas clean of any other craft. The death beam could destroy submarines under water. The power to be employed in propelling the death beam would attain the lightning-like potential of 50,000,000 volts. With this enormous voltage! hitherto . unattained by.. . man-made means, microscopic particles of_ matter would be catapulted on their mission of defensive destruction. The beam could be utilised in peace-time Tor the transmission of power, the plant could send power 200 miles with 99 per cent, efficiency. . The production of the death beam involved four new inventions,, not yet announced by him, Dr Tesla declared. The first comprised a method, for producing rays and other manifestations of energy in free air, eliminating the high vacuum necessary at present for the production of great electrical force; the third, for amplifying this process; the fourth, he said, was ‘ a new method of producing a ) tremendous electrical repelling force.” Dr Tesla made his announcement on his seventy-eighth birthday.