I haven't posted to this group in ages, but thought some of you might find this interesting and could comment on the technical aspects of it.
My wife dropped the August 1st, 2016 page from her Downton Abbey day-by-day calendar on my desk today. It reads:
Science, Medicine, and Technology
The British War Office was on the hunt for powerful weapons. Enter Harry Grindell Matthews, who demonstrated his "death ray," able to cut of a motorbike's power from a distance. In 1924, the War Office invited him to showoff the invention, and Matthews sailed for London, bragging to the newspapers along the way. Although he used the machine to illuminate a lightbulb and stop an engine, the top generals suspected fakery. Matthews insisted he could disable machines and injure enemies from miles away, but he refused to give further demonstrations, and the War Office declined to purchase the invention. Today, some engineers believe that the "death ray" was a basic magnetron, or high-powered vacuum that that creates microwaves, which Matthews had build through trail and error and did not fully understand.
And, of course, read the Wikipedia entry on him: