Death ray instance of fictional weapon
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, Nikola Tesla, Harry Grindell Matthews, Edwin R. Scott, Erich Graichen and others claimed to have invented it independently. In 1957, the National Inventors Council was still issuing lists of needed military inventions that included a death ray.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. Such armaments are technically known as directed-energy weapons.In science fiction
The concept of a death ray has fueled science fiction stories at least as early as Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy's 1927 novel The Garin Death Ray. Later science fiction introduced the concept of the handheld raygun used by fictional characters such as Flash Gordon. In Alfred Noyes' 1940 novel The Last Man (US title: No Other Man), a death ray developed by a German scientist named Mardok is unleashed in a global war and almost wipes out the human race. Similar weapons are found in spy-fi films such as Murderers' Row and  George Lucas's science-fiction saga Star Wars.See also
Havana syndrome
Heat-Ray
Sonic weapon
Sun gun
Weapons in science fiction
type of example of manifestation of representation of