Tag Archives: nikola Tesla

Tesla Death Beam on a Humvee

As much as I hate to beat a dead horse, I think I should call “Tesla” on another modern military system. The Army Times reported last week that an airman at Moody AFB in Georgia was injured in a test of the directed energy ‘heat-beam’. The 50,000 volt, humvee-mounted system fires a ‘less than lethal’ beam of energy that makes people feel as if they are about to catch fire.

Let it be known far and wide that in the last stages of Nikola Telsa’s life he declared that he had devised a directed energy “Death Ray” that would end all war. In 1934 the New York Times ran the Headline “Tesla, at Age 78, Bares New Death Beam”

Ah Ha……..

The Birth of the RC Weapons

Cruise missiles, unmanned air vehicles, unmanned underwater vehicles, and other forms of remote control drones are all the rage today. Over the skies of Kandahar and Baghdad today fly remotely operated aircraft that carry smart weapons of their own, ready for use at a moments notice. In the Baltic Sea the German navy has for years used ‘troika’ drones, small radio controlled boats, to sweep minefields without putting sailors at risk. Your modern military thinkers believe that this will be the way of future combat arranged in graceful patterns for the coming century.

However what a lot of people fail to realize is that this space age 21st technology was actually produced in the 19th. In 1898 at Madison Square Garden the uber-genius Nikola Tesla (no relation to the 90’s neo-hair band of the same name) thrilled spectators with a remote controlled boat capable of becoming a warship with very little modification.

Tesla offered his design to the navy then without success— but today maybe they should pay his estate royalties?