Harry Grindell Matthews: the strangely inventive mind behind the aerophone and Death Ray

In the interwar years, the bold and brash claims of one inventor that he could design a ‘Death Ray’ sparked a sensation. Military authorities, investors and the press alike clamoured to see whether he was a genius or a grifter. Eugene Byrne explores the life of a man who was both

Croydon Aerodome, pictured in 1926. Two years earlier, Matthews’ threat to sell his ‘Death Ray’ to a French party had sparked a dash to this airfield by investors determined to stop him. (Photo by Getty Images)

Published: October 15, 2024 at 5:26 PM

Save

The 11am flight to Paris from Croydon Aerodrome on Tuesday 27 May 1924 made national headlines. True, it was an ordinary scheduled service – but one of the passengers was far from ordinary. The following morning, readers up and down the country learned of a desperate chase to prevent inventor Harry Grindell Matthews from leaving Britain, taking with him the secrets of his purported ‘Death Ray’.

Ad

According to these newspaper accounts, this thrilling episode involved a high-speed chase in a hired car by shareholders armed with an injunction, who sped to the airfield – arriving just in time to watch the plane lift off and soar away. In truth, it was more Keystone Kops than Bulldog Drummond.

Matthews’ shareholders weren’t the only interested parties: the British government did not want any foreign power getting its hands on a potentially war-winning weapon. But the authorities were far from certain that Matthews had made anything of the sort. Indeed, the Air Ministry released a frank and surprisingly detailed statement explaining that its officials had found a demonstration of the device unconvincing.

Was the inventor a genius ahead of his time? Or merely a shameless grifter? Actually, he was both.

Introduction to inventing

Harry Grindell Matthews was born at Winterbourne, Gloucestershire in 1880, one of at least five children of farmer Daniel Matthews and his wife Jane (née Grindell). His father died when Harry was three, but the family appears to have been left comfortably off. His education included a spell at the Merchant Venturers’ Technical College in Bristol, where he completed the course in record time. Matthews then took an apprenticeship with a firm of electrical engineers.

He volunteered to fight in the Boer War, during which he was reportedly wounded twice. For some years before the First World War he lived in Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex. There, while taking on mundane electrical jobs, he worked on his inventions with the support of a wealthy local eccentric, Gilbert Sackville, 8th Earl De La Warr. These included ‘wireless torpedoes’ and wireless telephony – transmission of speech by radio.

In 1911, he staged a demonstration of that latter invention, communicating from the ground with the pilot of an aircraft flying two miles away. The Admiralty requested a presentation, and Matthews agreed – but stipulated that no ‘experts’ be present. On the day, he found Admiralty men taking apart his equipment and making notes. Matthews stormed out, taking his ‘aerophone’ with him.

It would be tempting to conclude that Matthews feared being exposed as a fraud, but he was probably trying to protect his intellectual property – because the aerophone worked. Soon afterwards, a south Wales newspaper, the Western Mail, successfully used the invention to link their Newport and Cardiff offices.

The Admiralty requested a presentation of wireless telephony, and Matthews agreed – but stipulated that no ‘experts’ be present. On the day, he found Admiralty men taking apart his equipment and making notes. Matthews stormed out, taking his ‘aerophone’ with him

The Admiralty decided to stick with the established system of wireless telegraphy, using dots and dashes to send messages in Morse code, which was clearer and less prone to communication errors. However, clarity and accuracy may not have been the only reasons for that decision: it later emerged that various government ministers held shares in the Marconi company, which was threatened by Matthews’ development.

Even so, his ideas were gaining traction. During the First World War, Matthews successfully demonstrated a remote-controlled boat to Admiralty officials on a pond in Richmond Park. He was paid £25,000 for his invention – a huge sum at the time, and a clear indication of official confidence in him.

Talking pictures and Death Rays

In 1921, Matthews demonstrated a ‘talking picture’ – a short movie of explorer Ernest Shackleton speaking about his Antarctic expedition – with a narrow strip between the picture frames and the sprocket holes at the edge of the film ensuring perfect synchronism of image and sound. It was a brilliant innovation, but film industry bosses were sceptical, insisting that ‘talkies’ would never catch on. In any case, no cinema had the equipment to show such a film.

It was with his next device that Matthews really seems to have overreached himself: the weapon that the press quickly dubbed the “Death Ray”. By 1923, when he announced his new design, it was accepted wisdom that any future war would inevitably involve aerial bombing on a massive scale. So Matthews’ claim to have devised a ray that could make aircraft fall from the sky provoked a sensation.

“I am confident,” he said, “that if I have facilities for developing it, I can stop aeroplanes in flight. Indeed, I believe the ray is sufficiently powerful to… explode powder magazines and destroy anything on which it rests.”

In 1924, Matthews demonstrated a prototype to newspaper reporters, who were impressed, then to government officials, who were not – in part, perhaps, because he offered only the vaguest explanation of how it functioned. Irked by this lack of confidence in his work, Matthews claimed that he’d received an offer from France to buy the ray. And, despite the efforts of an Air Ministry official to renegotiate, and his investors’ dash to the airport, he flew to Paris to start talks.

In the event, he failed to make a deal in France, and was soon back in Britain – but still refused to allow a proper examination of his device. Instead, he made a 25-minute (silent) film promoting his ‘Death Ray’, which was widely screened in Britain and the US.

The press remained firmly on his side. In a full-page article in the ultra-patriotic magazine John Bull, he told readers that his invention was “not a death ray, but a ray of hope” that could end wars and might also, he mused, be able to cure cancer.

Crossing the Atlantic, Matthews found US scientists as unimpressed with his invention as their British counterparts. One professor even offered to stand in front of the ray to prove that it didn’t work. Needless to say, no deal was forthcoming, and talk of the ‘Death Ray’ soon ebbed away. Remaining in the US, Matthews began working for the film studio Warner Brothers, helping them develop ‘talking pictures’ – movies with sound.

The sky's the limit

It wasn’t until some years later that Matthews unveiled his next invention in Britain. On the evening of 24 December 1930, astonished crowds watched as pictures from his ‘sky projector’ appeared over Hampstead Heath. An image of an angel was so convincing that some people reportedly fell to their knees, believing that the Second Coming was nigh.

Yet the dramatic impact of that creation wasn’t enough to stave off his creditors. The following year, Matthews was declared bankrupt, with court proceedings revealing that much of the money lent or invested by various backers had been spent on stays in hotels and high-end rented homes. Despite this setback, Matthews somehow found new sponsors.

Relocating to a remote spot north of Swansea, he built a large bungalow with six bedrooms, a laboratory and his own private airstrip, all guarded by an electrified fence with steel gates. There he continued working on new inventions. At the outbreak of the Second World War, he was working on a rocket plane powered by liquid hydrogen. He also offered ‘aerial mines’ and a device for detecting submarines; as before, though, officials were sceptical.

Astonished crowds watched as pictures from his ‘sky projector’ appeared over Hampstead Heath. An image of an angel was so convincing that some people reportedly fell to their knees, believing that the Second Coming was nigh

Harry Grindell Matthews died of a heart attack at his Welsh home on 11 September 1941, aged 61. Just seven people – including the local police constable – attended the funeral. What are we to make of him? In the debit column, we have to include his love of fine living, leading him to squander his backers’ money, as well as his poor treatment of many of those around him.

He deserted his first wife, Kate Williams, shortly after their marriage in 1904; it took her years to track him down to Bexhill – where he was living with another woman – and divorce him. His second marriage, to an American woman, also didn’t last. Finally, in 1938, he became the fifth husband of the hugely wealthy opera singer Ganna Walska; that, too, didn’t last.

Matthews’ ‘Death Ray’ was his invention that attracted the most attention. He may have believed honestly that he could build it, given enough time and money, but his claims for it and his surrounding activities were unquestionably suspicious.

Nearly all of his other inventions were successful, though, and his work was the stuff of science fiction. Look at Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon and other interwar visions of the future, and you can see Harry’s ideas embedded in them. Liquid hydrogen has been used as rocket propellant in US, European and Japanese space launches. And the signal beamed into the night sky to summon Batman to save Gotham? That’s Harry Matthews’ sky projector.

Ad

This article was first published in the October 2024 issue of BBC History Magazine

Authors

Eugene Byrne

Ad

Ad

Loading...

Ad

Loading...