The Tesla Death Ray Mystery

Thomas Edison gets all the credit as the father of electricity as we know and use it today, but engineers and historians know better. The real credit should go to a man named Nikola Tesla. While many people are familiar with the name and associate it with the modern radio, in fact Tesla's greatest contribution was the understanding that AC electricity would prove far more superior to Edison's DC, and illustrated this by building the first hydroelectric plant at Niagara Falls. Although Serbian-born, Tesla was named one of the 100 greatest Americans of all time by the Discovery Channel and completed most of his work within the United States. Cities all over the world host monuments and museums to the work and to the person of Nikola Tesla.

Of the many inventions that Nikola Tesla is credited with, there is but one that no one seems to be aware of the location of. Tesla made statements during his lifetime that he had invented a Death Ray, which would be of benefit to warfare. According to Tesla the ray was capable of destroying up to 10,000 enemy aircraft at a distance of 250 miles away! Tesla's Death Ray was featured in the July 23, 1934 issue of Time Magazine, which stated that Nikola Tesla had announced a combination of four weapons that would make war 'unthinkable'. The article went on to describe how the weapon would work: "the nucleus of the idea is a death beam of submicroscopic particles flying at velocities approaching that of light".

This may sound like a fantasy, even for a man as brilliant as Tesla, but it may surprise the casual reader to learn that we use Tesla's Particle beam everyday in the modern world. Particle beams are simply light beams, constructed of a special combination of electromagnetic waves. Unlike naturally occurring light the waves in a particle beam are very special because they all end at the same point, creating a sort of imaginary 'knife edge' of light waves. Particle beams are utilized in doctor's offices and hospitals in delicate micro-laser surgeries, such as brain surgeries and cauterization within deep tissue, they can also be use to determine distance, cut diamonds or guide missiles. So what become of Nikola Tesla's brilliant Death Ray invention? Well, that is the source of the mystery.

Nikola Tesla passed away only a few years after revealing that he had devised plans for the creation of such a weapon on January 7, 1943. When the room in which he passed was searched, the papers had disappeared. All traces of the papers he claimed to have written on the subject simply vanished thereafter. Governments world wide were openly clamoring to locate the documents, the USA, Germany and Russia foremost among them, considering the documents vitally important. In 1947 the military intelligence service identified the papers as extremely important, but to date, no one has claimed possession of them or knowledge of their whereabouts. It is strange to say the least , that no one has stepped forward, because it seems to reason that the person in possession of these papers would have quite a fortune (and a good bit of fame ) on hand.

There are a number of people who suggest that the reason the documents remain unfound is that they were never lost in the first place, but rather ceased by a government agency from the beginning, that has either kept the weapon top secret ever since, or has not been able to complete the work Tesla begun. Another reasonable theory would be that someone close to Tesla might have taken them to prevent the creation of such a weapon of mass destruction. Proponents of the government cover up theory point to the current program of light beam weaponry as supporting evidence of their theories.

Whatever became of Tesla's brilliant invention, were it to surface now in any form it would likely be used to devastating effect, as we have seen evidenced by the invention of nuclear power. If it is truly lost, then perhaps we , as humans, are better off without it, but it does lead to interesting questions for conspiracy theorists and UFO fanciers, doesn't it?