Browning chief. [volume] (Browning, Mont.) 1941-1953, 1941-07-18
Secret War Ideas Used to Cheat Many
Investors" Out of Their Life-Lon Savings

- ltN llOlllllS ago a SudVe stranger
made his way from farm to farm in
northern Missouri
At each farm he would stop and
extoll the wonders Of a new project
he was promoting.
The world, he noted accurately, was
at war. Death was the merchandise
that was at premium. And he had
the wonder machine of all time to
produce it.
BY devious chain Of circumstances,
it appeared, he had come into sole
ownership and possession Of blueprints
for producing an ultra violet ray lethal
to planes, battleships and Notifications,
even at a great distance.
He proposed to build a plant TO gen.
crate the power for this ray at Oregon,
Mo. And all he needed-hrrmph!- was
little financing. 1t was a golden
opportunity. Look at the people who
had invested in Ford Motor.
The promoter collected S35 900 from
the farmers before authorities nailed
him. The jury deliberated only Is min
utes, and the gentleman is now doing
his hrrmphing in a federally sponsored
institution.
Secret Weapon
A homely tale, but it illustrates the
perpetual fascination miraculous ma
chimes have for the multitude, the
faith that underlies the perennial quest
for the secret weapon"
1t has long been agreed by sober
scientists that since the discovery of
the law of gravity. Boyle's law and
few other fundamentals, most Scien-
| tific advances are logical, expectable
step-by-step Improvements on previous
discoveries, rather than radical as
founding departures.
But that fact, oft reiterated, does
not dampen the ardor of the inventive
and the imaginative, who pour forth
in peacetime and in war, but especial
y in wartime, steady stream of SEN
sational schemes for shaking up the
cosmos.
To handle the flood of ideas for
winning the war that are pouring into
the government the National Investors
rection of the inventive-genius of the
General Motors Research Corp, Charles
F. kettering.
/ The general objection to the anna
/ teur wizards is that they think along
| too broad lines. There are hundred
| fantastic schemes for winning the war
in one quick stroke-highly improbable
to every idea for some small i'm
provement that might be really helpful.
I The favorite notion, OF course, IS
the death ray, which originated gen.
erations ago in the mind of some fic-
ton writer who wanted quick way
to kill off superfluous characteristic
who didn't have to explain just how
the gadget worked
! With X-rays, ultra violet rays, mira
red rays, beta rays and gamma-rays
common commodities nowadays, many
people think up machines based on
them that will kill anything within
miles. But if they come anywhere near
producing a workable device. it gen.
orally turns out that they overlooked
the problem of controlling it SO 1t
wouldn't kill the people operating it, or
disintegrating the foundation 1t was
set on. If you have workable dlsm-
( tegrator ray, you practically have to
have some substance lmpervlous to 1t
/ that you can shield it with. And II
you can devise an impervious substance,
the enemy can too.
Double-E Ended Cartridge
! Another stock idea is dropping
scourges on the campaigning from
poisonous snakes and spiders to hungry
rats and germs.
/ Some other mites among the recent
proposals:
Net trap for parachutists knives
on soldiers boots SO they could kick
the enemy more hastily . big
array of hidden holes in the ground
to trap the enemy's tanks highly
charged wires dangling in streets to
electrocute enemy tank corps Gn the
tide of battle shifts, how are your
men going to dodge them2 :. and
(the payoff) double-ended cartridges
which, the inventor imagined, would
eliminate recoil. He obviously had never
fired a gun, at least not one with a
double-ended cartridge.