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Show SCtCNTISTS-WUL WW NIKOLA TESLA, electrical scientist, says not armies atone but ms33 f VJ .IN THE science which man haa spun Mole populations will ILL LaJZnhrTlo: 11. 11 r rending him limb from limb on the battle-De battle-De deStrOyed Dy USe Of elda of Europe. Qut one of the fatal qualities of science is that it always progresses. 7" MPflp C C rfiffiflfl nil What part will it play in the next world war? LUirClCOO I.HO Will the inventive intellect by then have unloosed , i 11 11 forces which, compared to the 42-centimeter how- I ' 01Un air tOrpedO deadly ttzer of today, will be as the 42-centimeter gun is j ' the two-handed sword of the Roman legions? Yes. reply the experts; the present war Is based ; on chemistry; but future warfare will wield the enormously more gigantic power of destruction pro-: pro-: vided by electricity, according to a writer in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. ; ' : Then it will not be a question of the annihilation of armies; it will be one of the extermination of whole populations. It will not be a matter of demolishing cities and fortresses, but of wiping whole nations at one stroke from the face of the earth. The scientists, in fact, offer us one ultimate alternative: Either man must conquer his )Vj ySC ' innate murderous Instincts and cease from war, or else in the end the human race will perish in a universal act of suicide such as Schopen- 2g W hauer foretold self-slain by the unspeakable agencies of destruction with which science will Inevitably arm us. AX !, For 600 years, gunpowder and its derivatives have ruled the destinies of mankind. A flash from the pestle of the scientist-monk, WXV j Roger Bacon, blew feudalism off the globe, and made possible the coming of democracy. Gunpowder gave to the European races sway AXOO i over the whole world; it subjected to them America, Asia and Africa. Little did Bacon dream of these consequences from his expert- YV XX ' inent with saltpeter and sulphur. Perhaps as little do we today realize the possibilities of the wireless current which In an Instant bears the spoken word from Arlington to Honolulu. Xx? In the Imagination of every scientist in the world today there is a vision of a machine with a key by means of which a wave of V) fY electricity will be flashed through the air to explode the enemy's bombs, torpedoes, cartridges and magazines. The man who first perfects XV vO this device will go down in history if any historians are left alive as a greater man than Roger Bacon, for his Invention will make lyddite xvOv and picric acid obsolete, and will send rifles, cannon and dreadnaughts to the Junk heap. KcJQiS Only one scientist so far makes a claim to have advanced some steps towards the perfect electric man-killer. But that man Is no other c JTV Y$ than Nikola Tesla, electrical wizard, who has Just been awarded a part of this year's Noble prize for physiCB. In an Interview the other W)XT day he laid down these prophesies: yWxV 1. This is the last war in which the explosive power of chemicals will decide the issue. u mT 2. In the next war electricity will be the force of organized slaughter. 'OvCy The confidence with which Tesla uttered these predictions Is based upon an invention which he says he has Just completed, but the XflOv details of which he is for the present Jealously guarding, for fear they might be worked out by one of the belligerents in the present war. , T(V In case the United States were involved in war, iff (x'v however, he says he would place his device un- t 'SjJ-' 'fflj reservedly at the disposition of the military , n-jSggsyS -.jgaX authorities. v ' ' 1 F "It is, of course, possible," he said to a repre- f ff " " "" " 5""Wt,,",3 W sentative of the Post-Dispatch Sunday Magazine fMwffip&,'. - $?Ji' a few days ago, "to produce electrical effects at a 'gf J J&it& distance by means of wireless energy. But the WWiyJS: 'l i " Sh insurmountable difficulty thus far has been to aim VwV W11P?S! a J&3? iX '--an electric wave in one direction only, with all I l 13- of its force concentrated on a given target. II ivfiffiill it WJM0 twJ "I will go so far as to say that after twenty 1 ' A' MM ! fM$fT Jv jTffe clIP H years of application to the problem of transmitting iffMMM jU ' i:0llfTJV. V energy by wireless, I have just made a valuable 1 j mMA fft, iL'LT' J I ILiwl ' tv fl advance In this direction. The Btage has been l'A'$m I Lr'L ' ik- 'IIwAa V reached where to an extent it is practicable to use W0 llf'yTMS Pf 'V- "- H V' this force in war, and to predict such a develop- viy JSy' esS" l' t ) ment as will make electricity supplant cannon in I C 1 VXl! C - "It is impossible to give details at this time, but i I T jin a general way my invention can be used in . j I I I "yyy s 'f' 'Ti?' ' "In the first place, it will be possible to Bend 7llsP ff l,1t,' rl-?- 'ttVWl I Ian explosive body through the air an aerial tor- fif VQ "Sr Tj a V :pedo flying many times faster than an aeroplane T T. .1 land to direct this projectile to the spot desired, ' W TYMitaSr?'"-'' Xp' 1 WT ; where it can be exploded by wireless. It will be r-S 7 - 'Jt" AvlS i possible to guide the projectile by wireless after t 'i ' '-CC '-r' LJfi V. Ai ,f f lit has passed beyond the range of the eye, and the 1 I fSy, ' . jyJf jj''ajbr & iaim is so accurate that it is possible to reduce l ' "ifgTCTv- 'gySS, 'V'-u 1LJ i the error to a few feet in a thousand miles. 1 jP ' I V-:-rit"5' l "In the second place, it wili be practicable with "fc i l . i- .ttL ' Ithis apparatus to produce effects at a distance - Wt 1- ' i which will interfere with the enemy and tend to Ky '?&yA make him ineffective. , . V V. "In the third place, it promises to be able to "VrV -: '. " hirnduce at a distance such effects of electrical X. 1 tension as will jeopardize life and property." The inventor declined to go into specific details, ! saying that it Is safer to be specific after the tfact. But one would gather from the words he j did speak that he has contrived a torpedo of the air flying under its own power as a torpedo swims I in the water, which can be steered by wireless land exploded by the same force. Such a projectile would have a range not of some twenty miles, like jthe highest power cannon, but one limited only by its own flying endurance. It would be harder !to hit with shell and rifle fire than an aeroplane, 'because of its smaller size and swifter velocity, 'and it need not be manned by a crew who would 'be exposed to death at every instant. Such a missile, aimed according to the mathe-matical mathe-matical formulas used today by gunners whose target is beyond the range of eye and telescope, could be dispatched for the destruction of a battleship bat-tleship long before her own guns would be able to come Into play. Safe from the shells of the greatest ordnance, it could start from a point miles beyond their range and destroy the batteries without the possibility of a reply. The second and third methods of which Tesla speaks are discussed in rather cryptic language, but leave the Inference that he believes himself already able, in some degree, to produce at a dis tance by wireless an electric shock similar to that produced by touching a charged wire. One can think of no other way In which effects perilous to life and property couli be obtained with electricity. elec-tricity. With this idea worked out to its ultimate perfection, per-fection, one might foretell such appalling events in warfare aB this: An entire army, in ita trenches, Is without warning seized witL the death agonies of a wretch in the electrical chair, and is exterminated by a silent enemy, using no bullets. Or, at a given moment, every living thing in a great city is struck dead as if by lightning, by means of a force unleashed hundreds of miles away by an officer who merely pulls a lever in a wireless tower. Tesla appears to see in the future a warfare of electrical appliances more deadly than all the cannon can-non ever made; he sees entire areas electrified and made untenable for any living creature. Death and destruction will be dealt out at unheard of distances, with zones of action more spacious than we now dream of. There is foreshadowed a conflict In which not armies but nations may be destroyed in a single action, by men armed with thunderbolts more mighty than those of the heavens. No wonder that Tesla, his own imagination imagi-nation recoiling in horror, says: "I hope this is the invention that will make war Impossible." Another device for which inventors are seeking is one that will be able, by means of the wireless current, to explode at a distance the enemy's magazines of ammunition. If this were perfected, one man in London, by pressing a button, could set fire to all the explosives in the Krupp factories and blow that institution Into bits; or he could blow up all the cartridges and explosives In the German army. Or another man in Berlin could with one stroke blow the English fleet out of the water with its own powder. In an article in a Paris newspaper recently, Marconi, father of wireless wire-less telegraphy, declared that such an Invention would mean the abolition of firearms and a reversion re-version to hand-to-hand lighting A Dutch inventor named Lanzlus, now In Now York, claims to have made such a device. An Italian Inventor won considerable notoriety for himself two yearB ago by demonstrating an apparatus appa-ratus which he declared would explode ammunition ammu-nition at a distance by moans of a wireless current cur-rent but he was shown to bo a fraud. A young New Yorker, who already hus several authentic Inventions to his credit, decluros ho has pnrfectod a method of emitting wireless current which will melt all metals witliiu a certain radius. A California Cali-fornia Inventor assorts that he can create a Hume at a distance by means of wlrolcss, and offers to .. set lire to any fleet approaching tho I'uclllc coast. Tho Germans are reported to havo used heat to destroy the barbed-wire ontunglcmcnts of tho Russians. Rus-sians. Tesla believes that tho rcHult was obtained, if at all, by the projection of a flame produced by hydrogen gas under high pressure. Such a flame can readily be projected for 10 feet, which might be sufficient when the trenches are close enough together. In such a flame barbed wire would melt like wax. In all of the belligerent countries, and In those which fear they may sometime become belligerents, belliger-ents, the best brains are hard at work on the problem of contriving new methods of murder more deadly and more wholesale than those now employed. Some of their dreams of future war-tare war-tare may seem fantastic. But the rude cannon of the Turks Beemed an Incredible prodigy at the siege of Constantinople In the fifteenth century; and to the artillerymen of our Revolutionary war the machine gun of today would appear an equal marvel On can scarcely doubt that If man continues con-tinues to maintain his delight In war, science will be at hand to supply hlra with weapons as advanced ad-vanced in murderous power over those today, as the arms of today surpass the sling and stone with which David, introducing the artillery of hlB era, Blew the armored giant. Will human nerves be able to endure these colossal horrors? Probably; today they endure the shock of explosives, the Bound of which would have sent Achilles to the madhouse. |