Show A M in ch t 6 bar p 40 9 is P av A r va MIKOLA IKOLA TESLA all 44 electrical sa scientist dentist isaas says noi not armies armies alone but hut 4 N THE science which man has spun thole populations will wilt ROM out of his brain he has created a monstrous frankenstein which is now rending him limb from limb on the battle be destroyed lesbo b by y use of fields of europe aut one of the fatal qualities of science Is that it always progresses wireless W rel ess currents carrent as his 0 S what part will it play in the next world W ar will the inventive intellect by then have unloosed forces which compared to the 42 centimeter how 14 own owl air all torpedo deadly atzer of today will be as the 42 centimeter gun to to 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 provided by electricity according to a writer in the st louis post dispatch then it will not be a question of the annihilation ot of armies it will be one of the extermination ot of whole populations it will not be a matter ot 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 nia his innate murderous instincts and cease from war or else in the end the human race will perish in a universal act ol 01 suicide such as OV hauer foretold self slain by the unspeakable agencies of destruction with which science will inevitably arm us Roger for years gunpowder and its derivatives have ruled the destinies of mankind A flash from the pestle of the scientist monk roger bacon blew feudalism off the globe and made possible the coming of democracy gunpowder gave to the european races sway away or over the whole world it subjected to them america asia and africa little did bacon dream of these consequences from his expert ment with saltpeter and sulphur perhaps as little do we today realize the possibilities of the wireless wi relesa current which in an instant bears the spoken word from arlington to honolulu 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 ol 01 electricity will ba be flashed through the air to explode the enemy a bombs torpedoes cartridges and magazines the man who first perfects this device will go down in history it if any historians are left alive as a greater man than roger bacon tor for his invention will make and picric acid obsolete and will send rifles cannon and dread to the junk heap 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 than nikola tesia tesla electrical wizard who has just been awarded a part of this year s noble prize tor for physics in an interview the other day he laid down these prophesies I 1 41 1 this Is the last war in which the explosive power of chemicals will decide the issue 2 in the next war electricity will be the force of organized slaughter the confidence with which tesia tesla uttered these predictions Is based upon an invention which he says he has just completed but the details of which he Is for the present jealously guarding for tear fear they might be worked out by one of the belligerents in the present war n case the united states were involved in war however he says he would place his device un reservedly at the disposition of the military authorities it Is of course possible he eald said to a EL senta tentative tive of the post dispatch sunday magazine a few days ago to produce electrical effects at a distance by means ot of wireless energy but the insurmountable difficulty thus tar far has been to aim an electric wave in one direction only with all ot of its force concentrated on a given target I 1 will go so far as to say that after twenty years of application to the problem of transmitting energy by wireless I 1 have just made a valuable advance in this direction the stage has been reached where to an extent it Is practicable to use this force in war and to predict such a develop ment as will make electricity supplant cannon in battle i it Is impossible to give details at this time but in a general way my invention can be used in three methods in the first place it will be possible to send an explosive body through the air an aerial tor flying many times faster than an aeroplane kedo and to direct this projectile to the spot desired where it can be exploded by wireless it will be possible to guide the projectile by wireless after 1 t has passed beyond the range of the eye and the baim taim alm Is so accurate that it Is possible to reduce I 1 athe the error to a few feet in a thousand miles I 1 in the second place it will be practicable with athis I 1 this apparatus to produce effects at a distance which w ich will interfere with the enemy and tend to make him ineffective in the third place it promises to be able to f produce at a distance such effects of electrical intension 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 fact but one would gather from the words he lair did speak that he has contrived a torpedo of the air flying under its own power as a torpedo swims lin the water which can be steered by wireless and exploded by the same force such a projectile would have a range not of some twenty miles like ithe the highest power cannon but one limited only by its own flying endurance it would be harder ito 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 magical formulas used today by gunners whose target is beyond the range of eye and telescope could be dispatched for the destruction of a bat long before her own guna guns would be able to come into play sate 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 tesia 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 DI 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 could be obtained with elec triciti with this idea worked out to its ultimate per faction one might foretell such appalling events in warfare as this an entire army in its trenches Is without warning seized with 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 la 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 tesia tesla appears to see in the future a warfare of electrical appliances more deadly than all the can non ever made he sees entire areas electrified and made untenable tor 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 la 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 tesia tesla his own imant nation recoiling in horror says I 1 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 telegraphy declared that such an invention would mean the abolition of firearms and a re version to hand to hand fighting A dutch inventor named canzius now in new york claims to have made such a device an italian inventor won considerable notoriety for himself two years ago by demonstrating an appa ratus which he declared would explode ammu at a distance by means of a wireless cur rent but be he was shown to be a fraud A young new yorker who already has bas several authentic inventions to his credit declares he has perfected a method of emitting wireless current which will melt all metals within a certain radius A call cali fornia inventor asserts that he can create a flame at a a distance by means of wireless and offers to set fire to any fleet approaching the pacific coast the germans are reported to have used heat to destroy the barbed wire entanglements of the rus tesia tesla believes that the result was obtained it at all by the projection of a fiame bame 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 tear fear they may sometime become bel balliger belll liger ger ants the best brains are hard at work on the problem of contriving new now methods of murder more deadly and more wholesale than those now employed some of their dreams of future war fare are may seem fantastic but the rude cannon ot of the turks seemed att art 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 it if man con finues to maintain bis his delight in war science will be at hand to supply him with weapons as ad danced in murderous power over those today as the arms of today surpass the sling and stone with which david introducing the artillery of his era slew the armored giant will human nerves be able to endure these colossal horrors probably today they endure the shock of explosives the sound of which would have sent achilles to the madhouse |