try to sell it for 30 million

Nikola Tesla has been one of the greatest inventors in all of historya figure who forever changed the world of science and technology. He promoted alternating current, X-rays, methods to harness and distribute light with fluorescent bulbs, he was the first to create FM radio, and he was even researching methods of wireless energy transmission.

Half myth, half reality, another of the inventions he boasted about was the so-called “Death Ray“, a science fiction weapon to carry out attacks hundreds of kilometers away. Rivers of ink have flowed about this supposed invention, but what is not so well known is that he is negotiating with Great Britain to sell it to them for 30 million dollars.

The United States also showed great interest in this invention, which Tesla claimed was successfully developed to end all wars as we knew them. We know this thanks to some documents declassified a few years agowhich also includes Tesla’s attempt to sell it to Great Britain.

Shooting down planes 400 kilometers away

During the 1920s several inventors claimed to have invented a “death ray” capable of destroying aircraft at great distances, but none of them were able to demonstrate its operation. In the early 1930s Tesla also claimed to have invented it under the name “Teleforce”and he claimed this achievement for the rest of his life.

In fact, already in the 1910s he had talked about a weapon capable of end wars as they were known, and to make gunpowder obsolete. During the following years, he began to reveal inconclusive details of this invention, which were collected and idealized by the press of the time until an entire myth was created around it.

Tesla allegedly developed his “Teleforce” electrostatic machine after studying the Van de Graaf generatorand according to what he said, he used a moving belt to accumulate large amounts of electrical charge inside a hollow sphere. This technology would allow electrical impulses to be launched capable of destroying anything, from ground infantry to ships or airplanes within a 400 kilometer radius.

Days after his death in January 1943, US Intelligence seized two trucks full of his belongings from his home. The FBI would later deny having any of these documents, but in one of the documents declassified last year we can see a narrative of who did it and how.

Tesla’s documents, notes and materials were of total importance, especially after the descriptions that had been made of that death ray in the press. For example, in some media was defined like a weapon 60 million voltsdeath and extermination 400 km away, capable of eliminating an army of a million men.

The electrical wave that this beam emitted through the air would also be capable of detonating enemy explosives at great distances. Tesla defended its scientific value beyond the battlefield, insisting that it could be used to maintain world peace based on weapons power.

In this declassified letter to John Edgar Hoover, the first director of the FBI, reference is made to a New York Times article about this Death Ray. “If based on proven facts, it should be of vital importance to our War Department as well as other nations now controlled by crazy dictators,” the letter says.

It is also recommended to constantly monitor Tesla to prevent foreign forces from kidnapping and torturing him to obtain his secrets. Hoover responded to thank him for the information, assuring him that his proposal would be taken into consideration, although without clarifying whether it ended up being carried out or not.

The attempted sale to the United Kingdom

Many media have published about the FBI’s interest in Tesla’s invention, but hidden among the hundreds of documents there is another very interesting which speaks of an attempted sale by Tesla to the United Kingdom. This document mentions the “death ray” as a weapon to defend any country, no matter how small, also describing how the discovery of “fireballs” generated through electricity was.

It talks about how Tesla discovered this phenomenon almost by chance during his experiments. in Colorado Springs during 1899and who continued to develop it later. It also explains how after tried to sell it to him to the United Kingdom government for thirty million dollars.

The declassified document also says that, during the negotiations, Tesla had stated that someone had broken into his room and examined all his papers, although those thieves or spies had left empty-handed. The inventor claimed that there was no chance that his invention had been stolen because he simply had not written it down yet. It was all in his memory, and there it stayed until his death.

The fact that the FBI took a large amount of material belonging to Tesla has fueled conspiracy theorists for decades, with dozens of theories about how the United States could have learned how to use the Death Ray. But today gunpowder is still what we use in wars, so it seems that if such a weapon really existed, Its secret died at the same time as its creatorwhich since it never manufactured it, nor did it patent it.

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