Edisons Conquest of Mars | Page 5

period of vibration. A great suspension
bridge vibrates, under the impulse of forces that are applied to it, in long periods. No

company of soldiers ever crosses such a bridge without breaking step. If they tramped
together, and were followed by other companies keeping the same time with their feet,
after a while the vibrations of the bridge would become so great and destructive that it
would fall in pieces. So any structure, if its vibration rate is known, could easily be
destroyed by a force applied to it in such a way that it should simply increase the swing
of those vibrations up to the point of destruction.
Now Mr. Edison had been able to ascertain the vibratory swing of many well-known
substances, and to produce, by means of the instrument which he had contrived,
pulsations in the ether which were completely under his control, and which could be
made long or short, quick or slow, at his will. He could run through the whole gamut
from the slow vibrations of sound in air up to the four hundred and twenty-five millions
of millions of vibrations per second of the ultra red rays.
Having obtained an instrument of such power, it only remained to concentrate its energy
upon a given object in order that the atoms composing that object should be set into
violent undulation, sufficient to burst it asunder and to scatter its molecules broadcast.
This the inventor effected by the simplest means in the world--simply a parabolic
reflector by which the destructive waves could be sent like a beam of light, but invisible,
in any direction and focused upon any desired point.
Testing the "Disintegrator."
I had the good fortune to be present when this powerful engine of destruction was
submitted to its first test. We had gone upon the roof of Mr. Edison's laboratory and the
inventor held the little instrument, with its attached mirror, in his hand. We looked about
for some object on which to try its powers. On a bare limb of a tree not far away, for it
was late in the Fall, sat a disconsolate crow.
"Good," said Mr. Edison, "that will do." He touched a button at the side of the instrument
and a soft, whirring noise was heard.
"Feathers," said Mr. Edison, "have a vibration period of three hundred and eighty-six
million per second."
He adjusted the index as he spoke. Then, through a sighting tube, he aimed at the bird.
"Now watch," he said.
The Crow's Fate.
Another soft whirr in the instrument, a momentary flash of light close around it, and,
behold, the crow had turned from black to white!
"Its feathers are gone," said the inventor; "they have been dissipated into their constituent
atoms. Now, we will finish the crow."
Instantly there was another adjustment of the index, another outshooting of vibratory

force, a rapid up and down motion of the index to include a certain range of vibrations,
and the crow itself was gone--vanished in empty space! There was the bare twig on
which a moment before it had stood. Behind, in the sky, was the white cloud against
which its black form had been sharply outlined, but there was no more crow.
Bad for the Martians.
"That looks bad for the Martians, doesn't it?" said the Wizard. "I have ascertained the
vibration rate of all the materials of which their war engines whose remains we have
collected together are composed. They can be shattered into nothingness in the fraction of
a second. Even if the vibration period were not known, it could quickly be hit upon by
simply running through the gamut."
"Hurrah!" cried one of the onlookers. "We have met the Martians and they are ours."
Such in brief was the first of the contrivances which Mr. Edison invented for the
approaching war with Mars.
And these facts had become widely known. Additional experiments had completed the
demonstration of the inventor's ability, with the aid of his wonderful instrument, to
destroy any given object, or any part of an object, provided that that part differed in its
atomic constitution, and consequently in its vibratory period, from the other parts.
A most impressive public exhibition of the powers of the little disintegrator was given
amid the ruins of New York. On lower Broadway a part of the walls of one of the
gigantic buildings, which had been destroyed by the Martians, impended in such a
manner that it threatened at any moment to fall upon the heads of the passers-by. The Fire
Department did not dare touch it. To blow it up seemed a dangerous expedient, because
already new buildings had been erected in its neighborhood, and their safety would be
imperiled by the flying fragments. The fact happened to come to my knowledge.
"Here is