Cleveland death ray of 1934

Whatever became of the Cleveland death ray that Modern Mechanix reported on in the September, 1934? Suppressed by the gubmint!

REPORTED to have tremendous military possibilities, a successful death ray machine is said to have been invented, after lengthy experiments, by a Cleveland scientist.
A partial description of the machine’s construction and operating principles was recently offered at a session of the National Inventors’ Congress at Omaha, Nebraska.
Privileged witnesses to demonstrations of the machine declared that experiments were successful to a startling degree. Dogs, cats and rabbits were killed instantly, their blood turning to water as the ray was turned upon them. It is reported that the machine has been suppressed by the government until such time as it may be needed as a defensive weapon.

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Trantor

Better use for those cool looking tubes:
Tri-D Magneto OptiScope
jordan

“Cleveland Death Ray” is a great name for a band.
airship

Come on, people! You all talk as though you don’t already know that the government has hushed up all private work on death rays, hyperspace drives, and water-to-gasoline converters for DECADES! Maybe they’ve used their top secret memory-eraser ray on you…
DailyCaveat

Many moons ago I worked for the National Archives in downtown DC. Among other things I pulled boxes for the military records branch. Interesting stuff – you never know what you’d find. Often what you’ll see at the Archives are series of 3×5 card file boxes that represent compressed versions of paper memos – retyped on a smaller format for better storage. While minding my own business in the stacks one day, pulling an order I noticed a card file with a very interesting alphabetical range indicated DEATH RAY to well, whatever. I had to check it out! I dug up the cards, which documented a whole series of letters from the War Department about a inventor with a death ray weapon that he wanted to pitch. I can only imagine the exchange related to this gentleman. Somewhere at home I have photocopies of the whole series of letters. Our history – WEIRDER THAN YOU THINK!
Shanjaq

Hey, the description of its effects on the victim reminds of something in Firefly, where they staged that heist on Ariel and these two g-men wiped out the entire arresting party with these two-prong thingamabobs that emit some blood-boiling frequency.. Creepy!
operator99

I believe it was bought by Republic Pictures and used in countless serials during the 40′s; always in the back of a truck with a tarp roof.

And KipW – that is one of my favorite Chas. Addams cartoons.
OM

…Lessee, Siegel & Shuster were from Cleveland, Superman was from S&S, and this death ray was from Cleveland as well. Lex Luthor’s inspiration, anyone?
w000t

Still not as scary as the Cleveland steamer ray.
silkox

This week Studio 360 did a segment about Nicola Tesla, who claimed to have invented a death ray. It’s pretty interesting, and you can listen at the bottom of http://www.studio360.org/episodes/2008/01/25 .

It’s also interesting why so many people called so many things “death ray” at that particuar time in history.
ridl

@#1: Regardless of the veracity of this thing, the military just announced last year a crowd control ray that makes victims skins feel like they are about to catch on fire. Though they haven’t officially announced a lethal version, it doesn’t take much to up the power and turn “less-than-lethal-ray” to “death-ray.”

So yes, Virginia, there is a Death Ray. USA!
pshaffer

Note: I’m a radiologist.

The device the guy is holding looks exactly like an x-ray tube from that era (in fact one of the organizations I belong to uses a representation of that on their logo.)

Now can that be used as a “death ray”? Certainly, but with the usual output, it would take some long exposure to kill a human.

This strikes me as more of the fantastical, breathless hype that surrounded physics in general, and x-rays in particular at that time. It was touted as a cure for virtually everything. Indeed, x-ray therapy was used for benign conditions like ringworm of the scalp (a fungal infection) as late as the mid 50′s.
Anonymous

Actually there were tons of people that claimed to have invented death rays in the 1920s-40s. I think one person above mentioned Tesla’s death ray, but Harry-Grindell Matthews, who was partially responsible for the invention of talking movies, T.D. Wall, another British inventor also claimed to have invented rays. There was quite a big scare about Germany developing a death ray during WWII (there are numerous articles about it if you search in the major news papers of the era), and the Russians supposedly developed one after WWII. The Japanese also pumped a million yen in to developing a ray during WWII according to a group of scientists who went over there after the war to have a look at their weapon’s research. Many of the rays seemed to based on Tesla’s work on transmitting electricity through the air. Tesla’s ray, however, was more like a particle cannon.
Antinous

RIDL,
The face microwave is less likely to be a weapon and more likely to be an enhanced interrogation technique.
Bender

One thing is for sure- there is no such thing as a death ray. No one ever says, “OK, that seems to work really well. But let’s not use it until we know all it’s true implications.”
cha0tic

I like the way ‘they’ suppressed it “…until such time as it may be needed as a defensive weapon.”
lava

Yeah – good thing ol’ George took the fight to the terrorists or he would have had to unleash the death ray on our shores.

Oh darn! He’s already aimed it at our rights, and turned their blood into water… sort of a reverse jesus thing..
RDean

Dogs, cats and rabbits were killed instantly, their blood turning to water as the ray was turned upon them.

So when did these evil bastards turn it on humans? Blood turning to water?
pauldrye

I’m guessing that, if it wasn’t a scam, the guy just invented the microwave a coupla decades early.
Michael Zed

Perhaps the contemporary model was considered a defensive weapon because the effective range was only about sixteen centimetres, or the rate of fire was twenty rounds per calendar quarter.
Dildonics

I think Antinous said it. About the Active Denial System (ADS) the Us Govt has used on rioters. I just dont get why people think this is so far fetched.
loudiamondphillips

PSHAFFER, you’re actually a band leader.
Larskydoodle

I don’t know; parts of Cleveland definitely have that “hit with a death ray” appearance.
Art

The “Death Ray”.

Now we can finally fight
those damn “Space Roaches”.
js7a

That looks like a Farnsworth fusor to me. It can be a dangerous x-ray and neutron source.
kip w

Classic Charles Addams cartoon: A patent attorney to a hopeful inventor. Attorney is pointing something out the window. “Death ray, fiddlesticks! Why, it doesn’t even slow them up!”
Larskydoodle

Actually, I just did a Google patent search for “death ray,” and came up with something interesting. Patent No. 2045519–filed on December 21, 1933 by Jay Gould Coutant of New York City–is for a device that purifies gases. It uses a death ray.

Here are a couple of quotes from the patent, with the key words capitalized for emphasis:

“Finally, before reaching the stack or the final outlet, the now transparent gases are subject to DEATH RAY treatment for the destruction of bacteria[....]

“The bacteria destroying instrument or lamp may be one operating on the principles explained by Dr. Charles H. Mayo involving opposing DEATH DEALING WAVES.”

I guess this clears up the mystery. The death ray invented by the Cleveland scientist (in his laboratory) infringed on a pre-existing patent held by a New Yorker.

On a side note, I find it ironic that the beneficent founder of the Mayo Clinic is also the evil genius who came up with the scientific principle behind the death ray.