Death Rays and the Popular Media, 1876-1939 by William J. Fanning

He claimed to have worked on the project since about 1900, and said that it drew power from the ionosphere, which he called 'an invisible ball of energy surrounding Earth'. will provide a wall of power' in order to 'make any country, large or small, impregnable against armies, airplanes, and other means for attack'. Many thousands of horsepower can thus be transmitted by a stream thinner than a hair, so that nothing can resist.' Tesla proposed that a nation could 'destroy anything approaching within 200 miles.

My apparatus projects particles which may be relatively large or of microscopic dimensions, enabling us to convey to a small area at a great distance trillions of times more energy than is possible with rays of any kind. All the energy of New York City (approximately two million horsepower) transformed into rays and projected twenty miles, could not kill a human being, because, according to a well known law of physics, it would disperse to such an extent as to be ineffectual. Rays are not applicable because they cannot be produced in requisite quantities and diminish rapidly in intensity with distance. Tesla explained that 'this invention of mine does not contemplate the use of any so-called 'death rays'. Nikola Tesla claimed to have invented a 'death beam' which he called teleforce in the 1930s and continued the claims up until his death. He was never able to show a functioning model or demonstrate it to the military. Harry Grindell-Matthews tried to sell what he reported to be a death ray to the British Air Ministry in 1924. He was born in Detroit, and he claimed he worked for nine years as a student and protégé of Charles P.

Scott, an inventor from San Francisco, claimed he was the first to develop a death ray that would destroy human life and bring down planes at a distance.

Death Rays and the Popular Media, 1876-1939 by William J. Fanning