blue halos of 'St. Elmo's Fire.'" The most pronounced effect, and the one that captured the attention of Department Of Defense, occurred at the Colorado Springs Electric Company generating station. One day while Tesla was conducting a high power test, the crackling from inside the laboratory suddenly stopped. Bursting into the lab Tesla demanded to know why his assistant had disconnected the coil. The assistant protested that he had not done anything. The power from the city's generator, the assistant said, must have quit. When the angry Tesla telephoned the power company he received an equally angry reply that the electric company had not cut the power, but that Tesla's experiment had destroyed the generator! While running his transmitter at a power level of "several hundred kilowatts" highfrequency currents were set up in the electric company's generators. These powerful currents "caused heavy sparks to jump thru the windings and destroy the insulation." When the insulation failed, the generator shorted out and was destroyed.

1935 statement to Liberty magazine: "My invention requires a large plant, but once it is established it will be possible to destroy anything, men or machines, approaching within a radius of hundreds of miles". He had created a device which, according to contemporary reports, used a powerful ultra-violet beam to make the air conducting so that high energy current could be directed to the target. He said: "My apparatus projects particles which may be relatively large or of microscopic dimensions, enabling us to convey to a small area at a great distance trillions