Hi!
I have been reading about Nikola Tesla and something caught my eye. After Nikola Tesla died in his hotel room on January 7, 1943, John George Trump, an electrical engineer, was asked by the Alien Property Custodian agency to analyse the works of Tesla that were seized by the FBI.
Dr. Trump found nothing of note and wrote: source 1 & 2 (January 9,1943)
[Tesla's] thoughts and efforts during at least the past 15 years were primarily of a speculative, philosophical, and somewhat promotional character often concerned with the production and wireless transmission of power; but did not include new, sound, workable principles or methods for realizing such results.
Not to belittle Dr. Trump’s work and career before analysing Tesla’s work, but it appears that his career appears to change gear after this date, to the point where, after his death in 1985 his work of the past 3 decades is especially referenced as being impressive.
As his lab director James Melcher said:
"John, over a period of three decades, would be approached by people of all sorts because he could make megavolt beams of ions and electrons – death rays. ... What did he do with it? Cancer research, sterilizing sludge out in Deer Island [a waste disposal facility], all sorts of wondrous things. He didn't touch the weapons stuff."
So at this point, i find it peculiar that Dr. Trump is especially credited for his work from the 1940s onwards, and i can’t help but think it is fair to ask if Dr. John George Trump has perhaps used Nikola Tesla’s work, which he investigated, and presented it as his own, while stating that the work he investigated did not feature anything worth of note.
I would also like to draw attention to the fact that Tesla was thought to have a “death ray”. And James Melcher mentions that Dr. Trump had a death ray.
Another source used nap.edu
Tesla was open about the fact that his proposed Teleforce (what others called the "death ray") was based on a modification of physicist Robert Van de Graaf's high-voltage particle accelerator. John G. Trump worked for Van de Graaf at MIT developing particle accelerators for medical applications well prior to Tesla's death in 1943; their high-voltage X-ray generator was used to treat cancer patients in Boston as early as 1937. Trump then came to prominence during WWII due to his radar work in MIT's Rad Lab; the combination of his subsequent role in the National Defense Research Committee and past research made him one of the best-qualified subject-matter-experts to analyze Tesla's papers.
So it is not likely that Trump took advantage of any of Tesla's work; instead Tesla proposed the death-ray as an application of research that John G. Trump was already connected to. Unlike Van de Graaff and Trump, Tesla was not by the time of his claims conducting any active research. Hence why Trump characterized Tesla's proposals as speculative, with no solidly outlined means to achieve them.
Sources:
John G. Trump National Medal of Science citation: https://www.nationalmedals.org/laureates/john-g-trump
"Invents Peace Ray," New York Sun, July 10, 1934 [Collected Articles of Nikola Tesla, Volume 3]:
Seifer, Marc J. (1998). Wizard: The Life And Times Of Nikola Tesla. Citadel. ISBN 978-0-8065-3556-2.
Trump's work on high-energy X-rays and their medical applications started in the 1930's. The technology involved was very different to most of Tesla's work (AC, radio, etc. - but see below for Tesla's "death rays") - it used electrostatic fields (produced using a Van de Graaff generator) to accelerate electrons into a target to generate high-energy X-rays. Since the X-ray energy is limited by the energy of the individual electrons in the electron beam, you need high-energy electrons to produce high-energy X-rays, and you need a high-voltage source to achieve those high energy electrons with an electrostatic accelerator.
The Van de Graaff generator (developed in the 1920's, by Van de Graaff) was the high voltage source. Large VdG generators can reach about 1,000,000V (so electrons energies of 1MeV are achievable), limited by loss of charge to the surrounding air and the breakdown electric field of air. This lets you scale up the electron energy above those achieved with the electron guns in cathode ray tubes (which were developed in the late 19th century). In the early 1930's, electrostatic linear accelerators were the cutting-edge of particle accelerators in physics research, but that honour passed on to cyclotrons in the mid-1930's.
Electrostatic accelerators, while they had stopped being cutting-edge particle physics research machines, remained common, since there are plenty of uses for high-energy particle beams. This is where Trump's work lies - the medical applications of high-energy X-rays (e.g, for radiotherapy). Also, the use of the high-energy electrons beams directly for uses like sewerage sterilisation.
I would also like to draw attention to the fact that Tesla was thought to have a “death ray”. And James Melcher mentions that Dr. Trump had a death ray.
While high energy X-ray beams and electron beams have been called "death rays", they're not very good death rays in practice (due to short range, and the size, weight, and energy demands of the generators).
Tesla's "death ray" appears to come from the same roots - an electrostatic accelerator. I'm not aware of any detailed technical information published by Tesla, but from press coverage of his "death ray" plans, his beam of electrostatically acclerated charged particles was supposed to be made up of particles heavier than electrons. From his description in the press, the most likely candidate is an ion beam.
So Trump's work and Tesla's "death ray" are connected, but the connection is probably the Van de Graaff generator. Trump was working on this technology for a decade, including making working machines for radiotherapy, before his 3 days with Tesla's notes, and his post-war work (after working in radar research during the war) continued his pre-war work. Trump's early work certainly didn't come from Tesla; early in his career, Trump worked directly with Van de Graaff.