DEATH RAY INVENTION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18730, 9 June 1924, Page 5

DEATH RAY INVENTION.

AN AUCKLAND CLAIMANT.

IDEA" DEVISED Iff FRANCE.

RECORD IN WAR OFFICE.

The claim to the invention of deathdealing ravs for war purposes is not confined to Mr. Grindell Mathews and the other people in England and elsewhere who have been mentioned in the cable news as having put themselves forward in rivalry. An Auckland resident who served in the Great War also asserts his right to the distinction.

Mr. Harry Fyfe, of Park Road, an em- { ployee of the Union Steam Ship Company on the wharves, states that in 1917 he demonstrated on the field in France with an appliance of his own devising the possibility of projecting destructive heat rays. At the time Mr, Fvfe was in the New Zealand Artillery, stationed in the neighbourhood of Ypres, under the command of Colonel Mackenzie. His original idea was that the rays could be utilised advantageously for the fusing of the barbed wire entanglements of the Germans, which were a terrible hindrance to the attacks of the Allied forces, but he claims that he can bring witnesses from among his surviving comrades and some of the officers of the New Zealand forces to the fact that he killed dogs and cattle which came within the range of his rays. * Mr. Fyfe adds that on becoming aware of the effect of the rays upon living creatures and metals, he reported the main facts to the War Office, and asked that department to supply him with particular lenses which he required to give full effect to his idea. The war authorities, in reply, asked for further details as to the nature and application of his invention, which, however, on finding that he would receive no personal return for his invention, he did not feel disposed to disclose. He was given some weeks' leave of absence from the. front for the purpose of developing the scheme, and was allowed to visit the establishment of an optician firm in London. Eventually, as the British authorities would noli promise him any • advantage from his discovery. he was advised to take no further steps in the matter until he returned to civil life. After the end of the war he did nothing until he saw in the cable news the reports of M.r. Grindell Mathews' enterprise. As, however, the fact of his representations in 1917 must be on record at the War Office, he now intends to press his claims to whatever recognition may await whoever proves to have been the" real originator of the proposal.