The death ray, also called a death beam, is a type of weapon that uses energy, such as particles or electromagnetic waves. It was first imagined by scientists in the 1920s and 1930s. During this time, inventors like Guglielmo Marconi, Nikola Tesla, Harry Grindell Matthews, Edwin R. Scott, Erich Graichen, and others claimed they had created it separately. In 1957, the National Inventors Council still listed the death ray as a needed invention for the military.

Although the death ray is mostly found in stories, research about energy-based weapons inspired by these early ideas has led to real weapons used today. For example, the United States Navy uses a weapon called the Laser Weapon System (LaWS), which was introduced in 2014. These weapons are officially called directed-energy weapons.

History

In 1923, Edwin R. Scott, an inventor from San Francisco, said he created the first death ray that could harm people and damage airplanes from a distance. He was born in Detroit and claimed to have studied for nine years under Charles P. Steinmetz. In 1924, Harry Grindell-Matthews tried to sell a death ray to the British Air Ministry but could not show a working model or demonstrate it to the military.

Nikola Tesla claimed to have invented a "death beam," which he called teleforce, in the 1930s. He continued these claims until his death. Tesla explained that his invention did not use "death rays" because they cannot be produced in enough amounts and lose strength quickly over distance. He said that even if all the energy from New York City (about two million horsepower) were turned into rays and sent twenty miles, it would not harm a person. This is because energy spreads out as it travels, making it too weak to be useful. Instead, Tesla’s device used tiny particles that could carry much more energy to a distant area. He said this technology could allow a nation to protect itself against attacks from far away. Tesla claimed he worked on the project since about 1900 and used power from the ionosphere, a layer of energy surrounding Earth. He used a 50-foot Tesla coil to help with this. The "well known law of physics" Tesla mentioned refers to the inverse-square law, which explains how energy from rays weakens as it moves farther away.

In 1934, Antonio Longoria claimed to have a death ray that could kill pigeons from four miles away and could harm a mouse inside a thick metal container.

During World War II, Germany had at least two projects and Japan had one to create death rays. One German project, led by Ernst Schiebold, involved a particle accelerator with a directable group of beryllium rods. Another project, developed by Rolf Widerøe, was described in his biography. The machine built by Widerøe was in the Dresden Plasma Physics laboratory in February 1945 when the city was bombed. In March 1945, Widerøe led a team to remove the device from the damaged lab and deliver it to General Patton’s 3rd Army at Burggrub. The device was taken into U.S. custody on April 14, 1945. Japan’s weapon, called the "Ku-Go," aimed to use microwaves generated in a large magnetron.

In science fiction

The idea of a death ray first appeared in science fiction stories as early as 1898 in H.G. Wells's novel The War of the Worlds and in Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy's 1927 book The Garin Death Ray. Later, science fiction stories introduced the idea of a raygun that can be held in the hand, used by characters like Flash Gordon. In Alfred Noyes's 1940 novel The Last Man (US title: No Other Man), a death ray created by a German scientist named Mardok is used in a world war and nearly destroys the human race. Similar weapons are also found in spy-fi films such as Murderers' Row and George Lucas's science-fiction series Star Wars.