The death ray or death beam was a theoretical particle beam or electromagnetic weapon first theorized around the 1920s and 1930s. Around that time, notable inventors such as Guglielmo Marconi,[1] Nikola Tesla, Harry Grindell Matthews, Edwin R. Scott, Erich Graichen[2] and others claimed to have invented it independently.[3] In 1957, the National Inventors Council was still issuing lists of needed military inventions that included a death ray.[4]
While based in fiction, research into energy-based weapons inspired by past speculation has contributed to real-life weapons in use by modern militaries sometimes called a sort of "death ray", such as the United States Navy and its Laser Weapon System (LaWS) deployed in mid-2014.[5][6] Such armaments are technically known as directed-energy weapons.
Berlin, June 4, 1928. The discovery of a new 'death ray,' capable of destroying, though not intended to destroy, human life, has just been announced by Dr. Graichen, a young physicist and engineer employed as an experimenter by the Siemens Halske Electric Company.
The inventors of a 'death ray' multiply every day. To H. Grindell-Matthews and Professor T.F. Wall have been added two other Englishmen, Prior and Raffe, and Grammachikoff, a Russian. Herr Wulle, 'chief of the militarists' in the Reichstag, has informed that body that the Government has a device that will bring down airplanes, stop tank engines, and 'spread a curtain of death.'
Washington, DC, Nov. 2, 1957 (AP) Anyone who has a death ray lying around the house, a hole digger that disposes of the dirt as it goes along, or a greaseless ball bearing that can be used in temperatures ranging