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INTRIGUE AND INVENTION: THE CURIOUS TALE OF HARRY GRINDELL MATTHEWS AND HIS TERRIFYING RAY OF DEATH ANDREW DULLEY 'A death-ray inventor? Here?' I could hardly believe my ears. I was in conversation with a researcher from S4C back in 1998. They were researching a programme about an inventor called Harry Grindell Matthews: I had to admit I had never heard of him or his death-ray, although my curiosity was certainly whetted. Several months passed. I had all but forgotten the conversation when, out of the blue, I took another telephone call from a member of the public who wanted to deposit some albums of photographs and newspaper cuttings with the Archive Service, all about Harry Grindell Matthews. Naturally I agreed. When the albums came in they did not disappoint. The story they revealed was stranger than fiction. The resourceful Greek Archimedes (he of the bathtub fame) is generally credited with creating the first ever death ray. He used a parabolic arrangement of bronze mirrors to set fire to the Roman warships during the Siege of Syracuse, 214-212 BC. In more recent times the concept of death rays first entered the public consciousness in 1898 when H. G. Wells published his book The War of the Worlds. The author armed his Martians with death-rays, which he described as 'a flaming death, an invisible, inevitable sword of heat.' It was the heavy casualties of trench warfare during the First World War that prompted serious research into making the fictional death ray a reality. Nikola Tesla, the Serbian inventor, worked on various projects involving powerful beams of light. In an article published by Liberty magazine in 1937, the eighty-one year old Tesla declared, 'It will be possible to destroy anything approaching within 200 miles. My invention will provide a wall of power.' In the build-up to the Second World War, his invention must have had a special resonance. However, he was not the only one to have experimented in this field. By the time of his article, Harry Grindell Matthews was already a pariah in British military circles. The albums in the Archive Service reveal his fascinating story. Harry Grindell Matthews was born in 1880 in Winterbourne, Gloucestershire, the son of a local farmer and small landowner. After going to school in Bristol, he was