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T \ W * \ A Ray to Send Al! Airships and Battleships to the Scrap Heap First Details of the New Masterpiece of Destruc tion Discovered by a Young Italian Engineer Which May Make War Impossible by Annihi lating Anything That Holds Explosives or Gas. The Martians in their machines using their deadly heat ray. (From Well's "War of the Worlds," copyright Harper and Brothers, New i orli). Palis, Aur. 22. (By Cable from Our Special Staff Correspondent) T EN days a*o every war department In Europe wan startled by the report that Signor Guillo IJllvl. a young Italian en gineer, had discovered a hitherto unknown, invisible and deadly ray with which he could explode the magazines of warships, powder within torpedos and mines, and the gas within airships at a maximum distance of twelve and one-half miles. The report at first met with Incredulity on the part of scientists. Within the last three days, however, this attitude of disbelief has entirely changed, and It Is now freely con ceded on every side that Signor Ulivi has dis covered a secret of nature which will In all probability make war Impossible, or, If not impossible, will cause It to be carried on In ways hitherto utterly unfamiliar. I have been enabled to get the first and only interview which the discoverer has granted to a newspaper man. The ray used belongs to what is known as the infra-red portion of the spectrum, and Is really a heat ray. Signor Ulivl’s weapon Is, In fact, almost exactly like that dreadful weapon of destruction with which H. G. W’ells, the famous English writer, armed his octopus-like Martians In the "War of the Worlds.” Wells’s conception, looked upon at the time of writing as a scien tific fantasy, now turns out. It appears, to have been really a marvelous case of scien tific clairvoyance. The ray can be directed at will by the appa ratus invented by Ullvl. Neither metal nor glass, wood nor cement, nor air nor water offers any obstruction to It. It penetrates one just as easily as the other, and explodes what ever explosives may be stored within. For instance, conceive a powder magazine built all of steel and located at Yonkers. A dirigible balloon operating the ray and floating off the Battery, twelve miles away, could direct it straight through the tops of New York’s highest buildings and npon the Yonkers mag azine. With almost the speed of light the Ulivi ray would pass through the stone and metal of skyscrapers, Igniting whatever gas it found there, and, penetrating the armor-clad walls of the magazine, would blow It to atoms. Fills, at least, Is the claim of the Inventor, who has asked the French Government to let him demonstrate his discovery upon a French warship. But before I enter upon my Interview with Signor Ulivi and Into the scientific phases of the subject, let me sketch briefly the episodes that led up to the announcement of this epoch- making discovery. Ten days ago the yacht "Marie Henriette," belonging to M. Emile Mayen, a rich French manufacturer, drew up at Deauville. It flew an English flag, and had on board Signor Ulivi, the ship owner, his wife, and an Eng lish crew. The gay crowd at this gayest of French resorts paid no attention to it until the next day, when General Castelneau, of the headquarters staff, Major Ferrle, head of the wireless company of the EifTel Tower, and Captain Cloitre, from the Admiralty, came quietly on board. Just as quietly the “Mario Henriette” steamed away at early morning. That evening the yacht returned, and General Castelneau went ashore and departed straight fo" Paris. The yacht again put out. Almost at once It became known that Ulivi had successfully demonstrated a method of exploding at distances varying from 600 yards (o twelve and one-half miles various charges of explosives hermetically sealed In metal receptacles and sunk at random. A series of these receptacles had been laid down at dis tances of 500 yards apart for a total distance of 6,000 yards near Villers, and the engineer had “felt them out" at a distance of twelve miles and had exploded them. Then came the report of the astonishing ray which he had used to do It. The “Marie Henriette” appeared again at Havre. No one could board her because. It appeared, strict orders had been given by the French government that no one but the in ventor, the owner of the yacht and Ills Eng lish crew should board the vessel. 1 found the mystery boat, as it has come :o be called, in dock and coaling I was able :o board and was received by Signor Ulivi and M. Mayen. Somewhere below me was an In fernal workshop hedged about with doors of steel in which, unless the whole story of the Ulivi rays is false, the history of the world was being changed. Signor Ulivi ts short and rather boyish, a man thirty-two or three, with light brown hair, light brown beard and moustache. His eyes and forehead speak for his intelligence. He is very modest. “I do not claim to have Invented anything.” he said. ”1 have merely developed certain well known laws of science. As for myself, 1 was born in Italy where I studied aviation. For some time I was head of a big aviation school. Seven years ago matters connected with my studies "took me to England. On my way back I stopped in Paris and since then 1 have spent most of my life in France. "My rays have been christened F-Ravs. and as F stands for France I do not mind, although 1 did not name them. They have more vlbra- ions than the Hertzian waves or rays, and ewer than the red rays. I have, in fact, dis covered a new note in radiation which corre sponds with a certain number of vibrations, just as a note in music corresponds with other vi brations. t “1 nave found a means of locating metals containing explosives at a maximum distance of twenty-five and one-fifth kilometers, (about twelve and one-half miles). Once this metal U located I can, with my rays produce a spark which will Ignite the explosive. “Mv invention affects battleships and anv vessels containing not only gunpowder, but also gas, unless the explosives are quite pure or are protected by metal absolutely uniform in qual ity—both of which are well nigh physical im possibilities. Contrary to opinions which have been expressed neither glass, nor air, nor water, nor cement protects the explosives which aro menaced by the Ulivi rays. Water is the best of all conductors. There is nothing easier to destroy than battleships: "Moreover, and this fact has not been pub lished, with my rays I can locate metals in the earth and tell how deep they lie. “What I have not yet found It possible to do Is to identify the concealed metal "Let me show you," continued the young en- 1 hour »t .... i «... glneer, “what remains of a torpedo which 1 ex ploded lately.” He took me to a room and showed me a la-pe cylinder with an outer coating of tin, an Inner coating two and one-half inches thick of cement Inclosing steel rims, containing first sawdust, then air and then a chamber which had once been filled with gunpowder. The torpedo was shattered like a broken firecracker. Leaving, I asked M. Ulivi the plain question: "Is your invention moral or Immoral?" “If,’” he replied, "It- merely meant my sitting here at ease and blowing up defenceless fleets, It would certainly be immoral. Rut soon or late all secrets are revealed and when the world knows mine war njay be killed. This will, perhaps, be moral. But the real answer is: Science is neither moral nor Immoral. It sim ply discovers. It has nothing to do with the uses to which Its discoveries are put. “I have spent a fortune on this invention,” said M. Mayen, “but all the credit for it be longs to Mr. Ulivi.” > * ,*•, Ws in 9 )m I m; An airship wielding the ray could send it through the tops of New York’s highest buildings, exploding any gas within them and blowing up a powder magazine at Yonkers, twelve miles away. )KV* -- Book A single battery at Sandy Hook could, with the Ulivi ray, nweep th e skies clear of an invading u eet of Zeppelins before a single airship could (ire a shot. II A single Zeppelin in possession of the ray could explode the magazine s of a fleet of battleships, drawn up to prevent invasion and in less time than it takes to tell, could render our coast line defenseless. ULTRAVIOLET INFRA PtD CAMERA RED bolometer so m .ioi ft# iiiTra HIGH. XANGE OF THE HUMAN-'EAR On the left is the visible range oi the spectrum shown between the squares marked "red” and “violet.” Above the violet are the rays or rapid light vibrations, which are invisible except to the camera; below are the rays or vibrations too slow to be apprehended by our eyes but which can be measured by the bolometer. On the right is the range of vibrations we call sound. Like the light vibrations there are sound vibrations too fast and too slow for us to hear but which can be heard by the lower animals, tions and the lowest light vibrations is the destructive ray of Ulivi. Somewhere between the highest audtiory vibta- The aftermath of the Ray. A conception by Lanos, the imaginative French artis t, of “Aeroplanes shattered to litter horribly the ground below with fragments of machines and men.” I was told that the experiments which have culminated so sensationally began several months ago. They were conducted iu the most absolute seciecy at one of M. Mayen’s various factories. None except M. Ulivi and bis backer, not even Madame Mayen, had any indication of their significance. Outsiders were informed that M. Ulivi was planning a new system of wire less telegraphy. When, after painful setbacks, M. Mayen had convinced h’mseif that the great problem had at last been solved, he said laugh ingly, one day. to lime. Mayen, “We had better get our lives insured for we are working on an idea which may destroy us all.” Mme. Mayen at once put off a projected trip to Deauville and insisted upon joining her hus band and M. Ulivi on their yacht when they be gan their tests at sea. Two parts of M, t’livi’s apparatus, it appears, need the most careful handling. The slightest carelessness would mean annihilation. General Joffre. the French commander-in- chief, with General Casteneau and others in authority, have been taken into the inventor’s confidence. Quite lately the French Ministry of Marine has bfeen investigating the discovery. I talked with a very great scientist who has been taken into the confidence of Ulivi. It would be a breach of confidence to name him. He said: “Up to the present It had been proved that charges could be exploded by Hertzian waves, or what is called ‘the wireless’ if filled with a ‘Branly coherer,’ which vyas useful for subma rine mines and, in fact, any charge that the ex ploder wished to ignite. But Ulivi’s method is of infinitely greater possibilities, aiming at the enemy’s explosives wherever and however they may be stored. Should trials at longer dis tances succeed it would almost seem as if an end were approaching to all naval warfare and to navies themselves. “Torpedoes will be exploded on board their own ships, and charges inside the guns. "Airships with metal envelopes, like the Zeppelin, will he foredoomed, ana It Is impos sible to see how far the whole art of war may not be revolutionized, if war itself be not ren dered almost absurd by an invention that ren ders the possession of explosives more danger- pus to their owners than to their adversaries. “Stripped of technical details the following Is Signor Ulivi’s method, which he repudi ates as an invention, it being merely an appli cation of known laws. We know now that luminous rays are due to vibrations of ether, and rays of different color are distinguished by the frequency of vibrations, or. in other words, by the length of their wave. The colors of the solar spectrum, violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow,) orange and red, range be tween 750 billions of vibrations (violet) down to 400 billions (red), and as the same prin ciple applies to sound, violet may be called the 'top note’ and red the lowest. So much for visible rays. "But as there are notes too high or too low for our ears to perceive, so there are rays in visible to our eyes. These are generically known as the ultra-violet, up to 1,500 billions of vibrations per second, ' and infra-red, of about 300 billions. It is these infra-red rays that Signor Ulivi produces and uses. We know that the ultra-violet kill microbes and germs at a distance, and by resonance Signor Ulivi ob tains ignition of explosives. "Between the highest ‘sound’ vibrations that we can hear and the lowest ‘light’ vibrations that we can see is an enormous field whose activities we cannot apprehend. The lowest light vibrations perceptible give us the sensa tion we call ‘red.’ Ulivi has captured a vibra tion in this unknown field below the red. “Broadly speaking. Signor Ulivi’s method consists in seeking with a projector the me tallic masses situated within range toward which he is to shoot his infra-red rays, and by the range-finding process of the ‘return waves’ he can calculate the exact distance of each and its radio-magnetic capacity. A fixed calculation then allows of despatching the ex actly necessary wave toward this object of known capacity at a known distance. The cardinal pOlnt is accuracy and precision in determining the locality and capacity of the target, and this was the princiDai obiect of the experiments outside Havre, since the rest of the operation is admittedly and scientifically one of comparative ease. The attuned wave in traversing the metal it meets diminishes the frequency of its vibrations, and the task of the operator consists in bringing the frequency to the critical point at which a spark is emitted, and emitted on the other side of the metal plate of resistance. Signor Ulivi has succeeded in evolving a method of certainty in effecting the production of this spark, and proved it tri umphantly last week on the sunken charges outside Havre. It has been said that Ulivi rays may be called “heat rays.” Being close below the per ceptible red, belonging indeed to the “infra red” end of the spectrum they must be closely allied to the phenomenon of heat. It was to ward t..e close of the eighteenth century that Herschel, the noted astronomer, conceived the taea that there might he other properties con nected directly with the colors of the spec trum. He exposed a thermometer to each of the colors separately, and to his surprise found that though it remained stationary when ex posed to violet rays, it rose gradually as he brought it nearer to the red rays. Stranger than this, after he had passed the red rays and gone into the dark region the thermometer continued to rise. Were there then some other rays present, invisible to the naked eye, but warmer even than their red neighbors? There must be—and so he termed them the infra-red rays of the spectrum. Since then an instru ment called the bolometer has been invented which actually registers these rays. It has been said, too, that Wells foreshadowed the Ulivi ray in his “War of the Worlds.” He did more than that. He pictured exactly what the Italian says would happen if he directed his ray against batteries of guns or battle ships. Thus Wells: "It is still a matter of wonder how the Martians are able to slay men so swiftly and so silently. Many think that in some way they are able to generate an intense heat in a chamber of practically absolute non-conduc tivity. This intense heat they project in a parallel beam against any object they choose by means of a polished parabolic mirror of unknown composition, much as the parabolic mirror of a lighthouse projects a beam of light. But no one has absolutely proved these de tails. However it is done, it is certain that a beam of heat is the essence of the matter. Heat, and invisible, instead of visible light. Whatever is combustible flashes into flame at its touch, lead runs like water, it softens iron, cracks and melts glass and, when it falls upon water, incontinently that explodes into steam.” What would happen to our dreadnoughts under the Ulivi rays? They would crumple into flaming wreckage just as Wells describes the "Thunder Child” doing after its battle against the hooded monsters from Mars. There has as yet been no Imaginative writer to describe what would happen If a heat ray were directed against a fleet of invading Zep pelins and aeroplanes. Yet the picture is easy to draw. The great balloons with their metal casings protecting the bags of gas that lift them would have no chance at all. Before they could get within distance to shoot the rav would rake them, exploding the gas and send ing them flaming to earth. The areoplanes de spite their swiftness could not move as fast as the ray, and they, too, if they carried ex plosives, would sink shattered to litter hor ribly the ground below with fragments of machines and men. Thus if the Ulivi ray is proven, the frightful menace of a war in the air is swept away—unless the fleets them selves carry the ray. In this case war would be so swift and ter rible as to be well nigh unthinkable. It has been said that a balloon off the Battery could at the present development of the apparatus, explode a powder magazine in Y r onkers twelve miles away. In the same way a dirigible off at sea could from a safe distance to itself explode it lit We Thank the Doctor for Keeping Us Alive? By T. CLAY SHAW, M. D„ Member of the British Medical Association. W HEN discussing the subject of educa ting the public to what he called a “sanitary resurrection,” Dr. Hope recently told the British Medical Association that “upward of a million and a half of people who are alive in Great Britain to-day would have been in their graves” had it not been for the reduction in the rate of mortality brought about by recent improvements over the whole range of medicine and surgery. Of these saved many were young children with great potentialities for the future, others of maturity, helping in the present progress of the race, and many in the senile stage, whose life-work was practically already accomplished. Hut In whichever category—however young or however decrepit—most of these lives are of value in different ways, the young for what they will achieve, the adult for what they aro doing, the senile for thp ties of the families which rev erence and cherish them. It is a matter of pride and self-congratulation for the profession that It has been able to diminish the rate of mortality, but this knowledge is tempered by the fact that after all It Is only n temporary amelioration—we cannot overcome death, which Is the one certainty that we do inherit. There are doubts as to the direct transmission of disease—whether, that Is to say, such a dis ease as consumption can be transmitted or whether it is only the tendency to it that can be passed on Iu the family—but there is no doubt that we do inherit the certainty of decay and death: and though there Is free talk about the bacillus senilis and the bacillus cadavcris, the serum lias not yet been evolved which eau guarantee perpetual youth and plane to a level the slopes of decay—such a chimera belongs to the poets and to ancient mythology. There is another side to this jubilation at the prolongation of life. Is life too long already? That is what many ask. We may, they say, have lengthened the span'of life, but we have taken away the necessity for it. What is the use of old people nowadays? they ask. By all means put plenty cl you g blood on the market, but why Increase the span of those who are now so early pushed aside by the all-devouring youth, who, in his eagerness to monopolize the fruits of the earth, helps to swell the ranks of the leisured classes, the compulsory do-nothings, whose ineptitude is forced upon them because, forsooth, they have passed an early meridian beyond which, according to the new enlighten ment, nothing is of value. In a way it is a good thing to prolong and save life, but it is a blind chance! Of those saved many have only been rescued from the scissors of Atropos to become criminals or fail ures, while some of the others have used their escape to become of material benefit to the race or to develop their own salvation. No one wants to die; the older a person becomes tin longer he wants to live, and even when the joie de vivre has become the passion to live, when the mere fact of being alive, apart from the pleas ures of it. Is all that is left, it is interesting to note the eagerness with which people will re sort to the most stringent processes and methods If by any means they can delay the climax, can prolong the stops of the fatal ladder. All have the selfishness of wishing to live, even those who know that all the time they are giving off morbific products, and no one so hugs his doctor as he whose despair of getting well shows how deep-seated is the feeling of staying in the flesh, however inconvenient may be the environments of it. If it were not that the spirit of inquiry urges, and will continue to urge, scientific men to de vote their energies to what is thought to be for the ultimate benefit of the race, we might well ask what is the use of trying to prolong life on the one hand, while on the other we wage war and cynically deplore the violent slaughter of hundreds of the best men, men iu the prime of life and health. Truly, civilization is to a large extent a failure! It looks, indeed, as if the proper definition of it Is that it has come to be the toleration of abuses! ’ We talk with pride of our civilization; yet what numbers of useful lives it has sacrificed! Have we not annexed thousands of acres of land and myriads of human beings, but have de stroyed the unfortunate recipients of our “civi lization'’ by the introduction of smallpox, phthisis, and alcohol? he greed of possession and tlie necessity of providing for the increase of population urge us on to fight and plunder and to impose our new ideas upon those who do hot want them, and we bolster up our acts by the pretext of the advantages of our civilization. What, indeed, should we do without death? Perhaps the angel of sleep and the angel of death are our most beneficent ministers, the one temporary and alleviating, the other perma nent and curative. Better than the mere pro longation of life among the accomplishments of modern science is the progress tout has been made in the relief of pain. Here is a territory which has been very successfully exploited. And that is why science ought to be acclaimed with reverence and eagerness. the magazines of a fleet and sweep the water free of an enemy in less time than it takes to tell it. Can war persist in the face of such a weapon as this? So much for the Ulivi ray. rt is Interesting to note that the unseen rays at the other end of the spectrum—the ultra violet rays—have even greater potentialities of deadliness. The discovery of the infra-red stimulated research into what was at the other end of the spectrum. The Swedish physicist Scheele first gave the answer. While the blue and violet rays of the spectrum seemed to have no caloric action they had what was even more important, a powerful chemical action. Thus it was demon strated by exposing chloride of silver to their rays that this salt became black and was de composed into other salts (this became later the principle in photography.) But Scheele followed Herschel and went beyond the visible spectrum, exposing the chloride beyond the vio let rays, and lo, and behold, it w-as decom posed! There could be no doubt that beyond the violet rays which were visible, sharing their action along chemical lines, were other rays, imperceptible to our eyes—the ultra violet. Since these discoveries scientific researches as to these invisible rays have been increased all the world over, covering not only those at One end of the spectrum which produce heat, but also those at the other end which produce chemical action. To tell the truth, we do not yet know very much about the infra-red rays. But the contrary Is true as to the ultra-violets, for it is in the world of these rays that all the wondrous marvels have been discovered of late: the X-rays, Cathode rays, N rays, Radium rays and radioactive rays, rays of mercury lamps, etc., which seem about to revolutionize science. To begin with the X-rays. Here is a Crookes Tube, with a vacuum, with platinum poles at each end, connected with some source of elec tricity. If the room be darkened and the cur rent turned on that strange thing happens, the rays which we can not see enter at one end of the tube. Although invisible to our eyes the rays exist, and illuminate all the bodies near them if phosphorescent. Bring out a plate covered with sulphur of chalk calcium. The plate Is illumined at once, proving the presence of the ultra-violet rays. Look at the glass articles in the roofn, the porcelains become • opalescent, the crystal of the lamps becomes orange. If you wear a ruby it looks yellow, if an emerald the reflection is crimson and the diamonds shoot yellowish-greep flames. But this is not all. These Cathode rays have still another power, even more magical. They not only makes the vases phosphorescent, but they force these vases to emit rays, and these rays seemer greater than the parent Cathode rays, which, though invis'tle, seem to penetrate everything. Some bodies seem to resist them, metals and stones, but everything else sur renders, paper, wood, materials. Even our flesh, skin, tissues, all but our bones yield to the power of these rays. These are the rays discovered by Roentgen in 1895, and whichhe wisely called X-rays, or the unknown. But there are other ultra-violet rays, which flow from radium and the radio-active bodies: uranium, actinium, thorium, lithium, polonium. Like the X-rays they are invisible to our eyes, and manifest their presence by the illumina tion of phosphorescent bodies, and penetrate opaque bodies even better than the X-rays. Be sides, instead of borrowing their power from some external source, (an electrical current) the rays of radio-active meals seept to emerge spontaneously from these metals, and this spontaneous energy, which is given to all neighboring bodies, seems to be inexhaustible. Only lately Professor Garrett P. Serviss called attention to the very destructive char acter of the ultra-violet rays, showing how Professor Houllevigue, of Marseilles had sug gested that a wicked magician of science might some day construct a machine capable of send ing out an invisible beam of ultra-violet rays to a distance of hundreds of yards, which will strike blind the eyes of any person upon wnorn it may be directed. He did not suspect then what seems now as sured. that a magician of science, like M. Ulivi, would send out an invisible beam of the infra red rays and with this beam explode all of the dynamite, powder and nitro-glycerine in the ships, storehouses or arsenals of the world. If any one world power secures this secret from M. Ulivi it will not need to build any more ships, but will simply have a few aeroplanes, armed with this deadly machine, and if ever in danger of attack, sweep the enemy’s navy from the sea, or annihilate the power of the army by exploding all of its ammunition. T t r A: