The Chinese invention of gunpowder for fireworks prompted humanity to create firearms. The discovery of nuclear energy led to the creation of the atomic bomb and, as a result, to the mass loss of life in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But no less tragic, and sometimes mysterious, were the deaths of the creators of weapons.
Writer, scientist, revolutionary
Petersburg professor-chemist Mikhail Mikhailovich Filippov was by the age of 45 an outstanding and famous man. Not a bad writer (he wrote the story "Besieged Sevastopol" in his youth, for which he was praised by Leo Tolstoy), a revolutionary Marxist, under the close scrutiny of the gendarmerie. The publisher and editor of the journal "Scientific Review", in which famous scientists, including D. I. Mendeleev, whose book "Fundamentals of Chemistry" Filippov translated into French. But the main occupation of the scientist was theoretical research and practical experiments.
And on June 12, 1903, the body of a 45-year-old scientist was discovered in his laboratory. The doctor concluded that death was due to acute heart failure. But what was strange - they had not yet had time to take the body to the morgue, when the officers of the security department appeared on the threshold of the apartment, who seized not only all the papers of the deceased, but also equipment and reagents.
At first glance, it might seem that the hero of our story was related to a terrorist organization and was engaged in the manufacture of, as they said then, "projectiles." But everything turned out to be much more complicated. The topic of the main research was called "Revolution through Science, or the End of Wars". Filippov did not hide the essence of the development from his friends: transmission at a distance of an explosion using an electromagnetic wave. So, by detonating a dynamite charge at one point, you can send a blast wave at a distance of a thousand kilometers. And if revolutionaries get such weapons, they will be able to force the ruling classes to abandon large-scale wars.
Genius or swindler?
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In principle, the creation of such a weapon based on the action of "parametric resonance" is possible. The principle is that any physical body is an oscillatory circuit. And if a pulse of frequency is applied to it, which coincides with its natural frequency, then as a result of powerful "swinging" the object simply falls apart.
I must say that until now they have not learned how to transmit a blast wave. But this principle is partially used in the so-called "inert bomb". The essence of its action is as follows. The charge is detonated in a special container filled with an inert gas such as argon. As a result of a chemical reaction, the gas starts to glow, and the light energy, concentrated in a beam, turns into a laser gun, the beam of which can blow up, for example, an aircraft gas tank.
And here are several versions of the causes of death of the scientist. The first, most likely the most probable: heart paralysis occurred as a result of the fact that Filippov himself turned into an "oscillatory circuit" during the experiment. Second: he became a victim of German spies who managed to steal secrets. After all, it is known that in Germany already at that time they were working on the "death rays". Third: to send the scientist to the next world was ordered by Nicholas II, since the emperor was the initiator of the Hague Convention on the Laws of War and could not allow the emergence of new weapons, and even developed by a revolutionary.
The son of the priest Tesla
The future genius of electrical engineering was born in 1856 in Smiliany, on the territory of present-day Croatia, in the family of an Orthodox priest. When the Serbian youth returned home to Gospić after graduating from a real school, he fell ill with cholera. Doctors believed that Tesla's days were numbered. But suddenly regaining consciousness, he asked his father for permission to continue his education. In case of consent, the guy promised to heal himself, since he would have a craving for life. A miracle happened - after consent was obtained, Nikola quickly went on the mend.
After graduating from a higher technical school in Graz (then located on the territory of Austria-Hungary), Tesla first taught at his own gymnasium, and after the death of his father, in order to feed his family, he began working as an engineer in various companies.
At the Budapest Telegraph Company, he invented the telephone amplifier. In February 1882, in Budapest, Tesla discovered the phenomenon of a rotating magnetic field and moved to work in Paris. Engaged in projects for the reconstruction of Edison dynamos, the construction of a power station in Strasbourg, as well as the construction of the first models of an induction motor. In 1884, he moved to the United States and worked for the parent company of the telephone and telegraph magnate Edison.
Here are just all Tesla's rationalization proposals were left without payment. Then he, together with fellow enthusiasts, created a small electrical company, buying a site in the Colorado Springs highlands, but it quickly went bankrupt. Although at that time Tesla invented the electric arc lamp, switches and regulator for the DC dynamo. The first applications of Tesla's arc lamp to illuminate the streets of large cities date back to 1886. However, Tesla quickly found a sponsor in the person of the billionaire Pierpont Morgan, with whose money he organized a company on Long Island in 1899.
And then Morgan, having learned that his money was being spent not on the electrification of cities, but on some strange experiments, refused further funding. After that, Tesla works for hire in various laboratories - he participates in the creation of hydroacoustic devices for detecting submarines, his name is inscribed in the history of electrical engineering as the creator of an alternator and, as a result, a transformer. In 1940, Tesla was hit by a car in New York.
Broken ribs, resulting in chronic pneumonia and death in a New York hotel room on January 8, 1943. But what makes him related to Filippov?
Lord of lightning
This title was tacitly called by the scientific world of a scientist who all his life was really engaged in experiments that were far from household electrical engineering. Back in Colorado Springs, Tesla studied the effect of a standing electromagnetic wave using a "lightning meter" - a transformer, one end of the primary winding of which was grounded and the other connected to a metal ball that attracts lightning. This will be followed by the construction on Long Island of a wooden tower with a metal ball on a spire. Purpose: This power transmission station could direct electrical energy anywhere on Earth, reflecting it from the ionosphere - the upper atmosphere - and through the Earth itself. Tesla wanted to concentrate the lightning discharge into a static electromagnetic wave that could reach the Indian Ocean. A variant of the source of detonation of explosives. And so it happened. The signal reached the islands of Amsterdam and St. Paul in the Indian Ocean.
There is also an opinion that the 1908 Tunguska explosion was caused not by a meteorite, but by Tesla's secret invention. It was an experiment in wireless transmission of electricity from a distance. A few months before the explosion, Tesla claimed that he could light the way to the North Pole for the expedition of the famous traveler Pirri. But when trying to do this, he made a mistake in the calculations …
Another experiment, which was known only to the closest employees: attaching a certain device to the beam of the house, which caused the structure to vibrate. Experiments with resonance? But this remained a mystery, since Tesla personally smashed the mysterious device with a hammer.
After Tesla's death, agents of the special department of the FBI seized and classified all the papers that were found in the scientist's room. It was not unreasonably believed that the car accident was set up by agents of German intelligence, and part of the documents relating to the development of the "death rays" still ended up in Berlin. The saboteurs were initially credited with the explosion of the Long Island Tower in 1917, but then it turned out that this was done by order of the local authorities, since the approaches to the New York port were clearly visible from the height of the structure, which was an ideal observation point for spies. It is also known that after the Americans abandoned it, Tesla proposed the "generator of death rays" to the governments of Great Britain, Canada and even the USSR. Whether his projects were accepted remained a mystery behind seven seals. But it's safe to saythat the "electromagnetic gun" was created both in our country and overseas.