File:Grindell-Matthews death ray.jpg

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English: Picture of a purported "death ray" invented by British engineer Harry Grindell Matthews
from a 1925 radio magazine. In 1921 Grindell-Matthews claimed to have invented a ray that would stop a magneto. In a demonstration to some select journalists he purportedly stopped a motorcycle engine from a distance. He claimed that with more power it could shoot down airplanes, explode gunpowder, stop ships and incapacitate infantry from a distance of 4 miles. He refused to say how the ray worked or allow anyone to examine it. In 1924 the British War Office contacted him and asked for a demonstration. He didn't answer them, but in a demonstration to a newspaperman reportedly ignited gunpowder. The popular media was fascinated with him and he became a celebrity. The British He went to France, then the United States, threatening to sell it to a foreign power if the British did not meet his terms. Despite his claims to have "8 offers" for his device, and several subsequent false announcements, apparently no government agency would invest.

By the time this picture was published, he was working for Warner Brothers movie studio. A 1924 film The Death Ray by Pathé shows Grindell-Matthews operating a (fictional) death ray cannon; this picture may have been taken from that film.

Caption:"CARRIER RAYS THAT KILL. A spectacular night-demonstration of the "death ray" apparatus of H. Grindell-Matthews (described in detail by the inventor for the first time in Popular Radio) was recently held on the island of Flatholme in England. The inventor states that this machine is now capable of projecting its death-dealing powers more than 3,000 feet. "
Date
Source Retrieved March 7, 2014 from Popular Radio magazine, Popular Radio, Inc., New York, Vol. 7, No. 1, January 1925, frontispiece, p. 2 on American Radio History website
Author Credited to Underwood and Underwood
Permission
(Reusing this file)		 This 1925 issue of Popular Radio magazine would have the copyright renewed in 1953. Online page scans of the Catalog of Copyright Entries, published by the US Copyright Office can be found here. [1] Search of the Renewals for Periodicals for 1952, 1953 and 1954 show no renewal entries for Radio World. Therefore the magazine's copyright was not renewed and it is in the public domain.

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Public domain
This work is in the public domain because it was published in the United States between 1929 and 1963, and although there may or may not have been a copyright notice, the copyright was not renewed. For further explanation, see Commons:Hirtle chart and the copyright renewal logs.
Note that it may still be copyrighted in jurisdictions that do not apply the rule of the shorter term for US works (depending on the date of the author's death), such as Canada (70 years p.m.a.), Mainland China (50 years p.m.a., not Hong Kong or Macao), Germany (70 years p.m.a.), Mexico (100 years p.m.a.), Switzerland (70 years p.m.a.), and other countries with individual treaties.

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