Death ray
Theoretical weapon / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dear Wikiwand AI, let's keep it short by simply answering these key questions:
Can you list the top facts and stats about Death ray?
Summarize this article for a 10 year old
The death ray or death beam was a theoretical particle beam or electromagnetic weapon first theorized around the 1920s and 1930s. Around that time, notable inventors such as Guglielmo Marconi,[1] Nikola Tesla, Harry Grindell Matthews, Edwin R. Scott, Erich Graichen[2] and others claimed to have invented it independently.[3] In 1957, the National Inventors Council was still issuing lists of needed military inventions that included a death ray.[4]
While based in fiction, research into energy-based weapons inspired by past speculation has contributed to real-life weapons in use by modern militaries sometimes called a sort of "death ray", such as the United States Navy and its Laser Weapon System (LaWS) deployed in mid-2014.[5][6] Such armaments are technically known as directed-energy weapons.