The Death Ray

It doesn't get more succint than this. Also known, paradoxically, as the 'Peace Ray', this is Nicola Tesla's almost built, theoretical directed energy, or 'teleforce' weapon. If your not sure who Tesla was then its enough to know that he was probably the most brilliant practical scientist who ever lived, being at the same time, an original archetype for the pulp literature 'mad scientist' and like all mad scientists, Tesla naturally invented a Death Ray.

Tesla was a Serb born in 1856 in what is now Croatia, who later became an American citizen and who lived until 1943, dying alone in his hotel room in New York. During his long and productive life, Tesla discovered and invented so much that it is almost impossible to describe his accomplishements without writing a whole book, but for now we shall stay within the pulp realm of 1936.

All mad scientists have two standard props without which they lose their 'pedigree'. The first is the Einstein type wild hair (preferably white) denoting ungovernable, perverted intelligence, and the second is the arc of lightning, preferably crackling from one large orb to another in the back ground, denoting the Promethean power of the unchained human mind. This latter is often coupled to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, but I suspect that this modern iconography of the mad scientist was a by-product of Nicola Tesla's insistence that he would not give any public demonstration, or attend any convention without a Tesla coil sending terrifiying bolts of lightning about the room. The impact of this demonstration of harnessed lightning must have been overwhelming to a public still in awe of scientific trickery and played no doubt in Tesla's favour when seeking financial backers. Fritz Lang's classic science fiction film 'Metropolis', made in 1927, references Tesla's invention in a scene which has since been echoed many times as a potent symbol of the god like power of the corrupted human mind.

In 1934, the New York Sun made public the news that Tesla was building a 'Peace Ray'. Later that same year, Tesla described the defensive nature of the device to his some time backer, the financier JP Morgan:

“I have made recent discoveries of inestimable value. . . . The flying machine has completely demoralized the world, so much that in some cities, as London and Paris, people are in mortal fear from aerial bombing. The new means I have perfected afford absolute protection against this and other forms of attack. . . . These new discoveries, which I have carried out experimentally on a limited scale, have created a profound impression. One of the most pressing problems seems to be the protection of London and I am writing to some influential friends in England hoping that my plan will be adopted without delay. The Russians are very anxious to render their borders safe against Japanese invasion and I have made them a proposal which is being seriously considered.”

The 'teleforce' weapon was described as being an electrical energy field capable of throwing up an impenetrable barrier which would destroy anything that attempted to penetrate it. It could destroy air craft or ground troops with a theoretical range of some 200 miles but was limited by the curvature of the Earth. Tesla admitted at the time that the weapon could also be misused as a means of aggression, but never specified quite how. Later research has expanded upon Tesla's idea's and today several countries experiment with particle beam weapons which are very similar to Tesla's original concept. In 1934 however, the concept of a 'death ray' was pure science fiction.

Tesla had worked on and off on the idea of a directed energy weapon since 1900, but even as late as 1940, he was still advancing the idea to a sceptical world. Despite his many successes, Tesla was perceived to be deranged in later life and his weapon was never fully built. Though he claimed to have made a working prototype, no such device is known to have existed.

What is known about the workings of the teleforce weapon indicate it was to be powered by a Van de Graff generator (an electrostatic machine which uses a moving belt to accumulate very high voltages on a hollow metal globe) a powerful amplifier, a projecting device/vacum chamber (also sometimes refered to as the ray gun) and "a new method for producing a tremendous electrical repelling force. It appears this would be applied to the projector or gun element of the system in the form of “provisions for imparting to a minute particle an extremely high charge.” While the specific details about this aspect of the design are not readily apparent, it seems that strict attention to the fulfillment of requirements 1, 2 and 3 is critical to success. In Tesla’s words, “by the application of my discoveries it is possible to increase the force of repulsion more than a million times and what was heretofore impossible is rendered easy of accomplishment.”.

The image at the top of this post is a diagram of the actual ray gun element of the weapon.

Later observors, including some US scientists have predicted that, had it worked, the Tesla weapon could have been used to bounce off the ionosphere making it capable of hitting targets far over the curve of the Earth. There is even a conspiracy theory that the US military conducted secret tests of the weapon resulting in the 1908 'Tunguska Incident' when a mysterious explosion, estimated to be circa 15 megatons in strength levelled a vast, isolated region of Siberia. Modern expermentation at the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program with ionospheric processes have added further impetus to these conspiracies.

What ever the truth is regarding Tesla's weapon, its impact on popular culture has been profound, not least because when Tesla died, his papers and theories were confiscated on the orders of J Edgar Hoover and later several important documents and notes were claimed to be missing.

Wikipedia: Teleforce

A Machine to End War, by Nicola Tesla.

Nikola Tesla's Teleforce & Telegeodynamics Proposals.

Tesla's Wireless Power and the Tunguska Incident.