Moreover, even if I use the mass-produced arguement, Electro sold around 20,000 death rays a year during the early 1950’s, four times the total production of the Illudium Q-36.
Pardon me, Govenor, but I believe that the situation is even more unbalanced than your figures indicate. Although some older sources, such as the classic by Wood (1959), indicate a production run of 4857 units for the Illudium Q-36, more recent scholarship (e.g., Servo, Hodgson & Robot, 1988) has revealed that this is overstated. The Illudium Corporation was a small outfit and built all its pieces on a one-off basis. Production records show no more than 512 Q-36’s were built by Illudium.
The other documented units in existance seem to be copies created by Shimura Imports Ltd. in the late 50’s and early 60’s. The principal investigator for Shimura, Takashi Shimura, somehow obtained the original Illudium plans (under desperate circumstances) and had them mass-produced. This also accounts, I feel, for the perception of poor quality.
On the other hand, I feel that the Shimura recreations are collectible in their own right, as long as they are clearly labelled.
Actually, I have a scalar weapon in my bathroom. Every time I stand on it and see the little number it points to, it wounds me grievously.
What about circa 212 BC-style death rays?
On a more serious note: If I were reliably informed that there existed some sort of “ray gun” called a scalar weapon, I would presume that it fired a stream of scalar particles. The simplest sort of scalar particle to produce are the various mesons, but they would offer no advantage I know of over other charged particles such as electrons or protons (which are much more easily produced). The most interesting thing about meson beams is that some of them show a very weak tendancy to violate CP symmetry, but this is of interest only to a physicist, and of no use in blowing stuff up.
Another scalar particle is the hypothetical Higgs boson, which is believed to have significance in determining the masses of other fundamental particles. A beam of Higgs particles might have some interesting effects on normal matter, but I don’t know enough particle physics to say what those effects might be. Perhaps Karen could help us out, if she reads this? Regardless, though, we can’t yet produce Higgs particles, despite the best efforts of Fermilab, CERN, and other particle physics labs across the world. Even once we do get the technology to produce them (we’re probably between a year and a decade away, or so), though, it’s expected to take a huge particle accelerator many kilometers across, and with the energy consumption of a small city, to prodce barely-detectable quantities of them. So we’re not talking something that would be very practical as a weapon.
Finally, a even more hypothetical particle called the inflaton might be a scalar, and I can say with high confidence that if they exist, a stream of them would be very destructive. However, as yet we havve very little clue what the inflaton might even be, much less how to create them, and there haven’t been any inflatons in the Universe for approximately 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% of the lifespan of the Universe. I therefore speak with some confidence when I say that current conditions would not allow for the creation of inflatons, whatever they are.
I haven’t had a chance to read the entire thread yet, so I apologize in advance if anybody else has said this, but it strikes me that these so-called “scalar” weapons are basically just 1920’s style death rays.
Barry
:smack:
I can’t believe I could make such a mistake!
I must have been thinking of Edison’s PR campaign to sell the public on his vastly inferior DC death ray.
Michael forgive my grammar last night. All this sci/fi stuff kinda brought out the Yoda in me.
AND to you Mr. Skybum that was some excellent verse, makes me crave green eggs and ham it does (sorry Yoda)
again S/B my hats off to ya…oops crackle, zaaap! poof <small cloud of smoke> damn, t-keela just kinda disappeared
Ah, 1920’s style “Death Rays”… I owned some stock in those back in the day when my fortune from Amalgamated Spats & Co. allowed me to invest in such far-flung schemes and flights of fancy free…
On a less surreal note, this thread has me suppressing laughter at work more than when I was watching my Family Guy DVD earlier, in which Stewie uses a…
gasp!
1920s style “Death Ray”!
Geez, what an inflatoned ego, talking about all these highfalutin’ particles and whatnot. Your particles are nothing to a good old 1920s style death ray.
I just found out there are some sites that a death ray maybe purchased!
One of 'em:
www.death-ray.com
Thanks for correcting me. I got my information from Golden’s “Illudium Q-36 and Q-37” essay (1989), which got its’ total from McNamara’s book “Death Rays of the 1950’s” (1973), which, in turn, used Wood’s “A Study of the Illudium Corporation” (1959) and Hague’s “Illudium Declares Bankruptcy” article in the March 1955 issue of “Death Rays Today”. Apparently, in Servo’s article “A New Look at the Illudium Q-36” (1988; you seem to have confused it with Servo, Hodgson, Robot, & Nelson’s "Post-War Deathrays: A Study of Deathrays From 1947 to 1964, useful as the best source on Bowman deathrays), he determined that while the parts for 4857 Illudium Q-36 deathray were made, only 512 were actually assembled.
(BTW, Dr. Carlin’s report, the only one that rates the Illudium Q-36 as above terrible, although he still found it mediocre, is the only one that couldn’t have been tainted by copies, as Shimura didn’t start replicating Illudium Q-36’s until 1957, a years after the Carlin report was published.)
Hague’s news report was, of course, three years premature. As you noted yourself. Although there were rumors of bankruptcy filings, Illudium got a last-minute reprieve as an “undisclosed investor” (widely understood to be the CIA) put up the funds to rescue Illudium in 1955. In 1958, of course, no such reprieve was forthcoming. As such, the production figures in that article have been discredited.
Wood’s study is, I think, still the best sketch of the history of Illudium Corp. But it is also the source of the confusion you mentioned, re: parts versus complete units. Interestingly enough, Servo traces some of the parts to Shimura. He makes the case that some of the parts were sold with the Q-36 plans, and were used for testing, prototypes, pre-production units, early production and the like.
I also think that we are both perhaps getting some of our references confused. The problem is that Servo has had so many different combinations of collaborators and that he was so prolific through the 80’s and 90’s. Sadly, he ceased regular publishing in 1999. But you are correct about the 1988 “A New Look…” article. OTOH, he did include some of this information in Servo, Hodgson, Robot, & Nelson in 1993, when Nelson joined the research team. The Servo, Hodgson & Robot article I mis-identified was “Optimizing NGL Propanizer Operations in the Illudium Q-series”, which really doesn’t bear on this subject.
And I didn’t think about the timing of the Shimura units and Carlin’s report, but you are obviously correct. The Consumer Reports article only tested Shimura units.
Actually, Hague’s report was at the correct time. In it, he mentions that it “may be forced to shut down”, not that it already has been. In addition, the people who put up the funds were MI-5, not the CIA, who were mainly users of Electro and German-made deathrays.
[QUOTE]
Wood’s study is, I think, still the best sketch of the history of Illudium Corp. But it is also the source of the confusion you mentioned, re: parts versus complete units. Interestingly enough, Servo traces some of the parts to Shimura. He makes the case that some of the parts were sold with the Q-36 plans, and were used for testing, prototypes, pre-production units, early production and the like.
[QUOTE]
There are two major problems with Wood’s study. One was that, at 23 pages, it’s somewhat short, and the other is that he died of lung cancer in 1963 at the age of 39, without apparently leaving any further notes on Illudium.
Actually, Servo is still active as a lecturer, and as professor of Advanced Sciences at Cornell, but he’s been spending the last 4 years of his writing time trying to write a complete history of death rays. It’s time for a new one, as there have been only 2 complete histories, both with problems: Morteson’s work in 1958 is very complete, but misses anything that happened after 1955, while Marshall’s work of 1987 is a little more up-to-date, but misses some very important material (he never mentions Bowman or Rochester, and only indirectly deals with some important figures).
I accidentially submitted too soon, here are some more remarks:
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Nelson was always part of the research team, but he didn’t get authorial credits until 1993. However, traces of his writing have been found in pre-1993 works, especially those credited to the group as a whole.
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The Hammerstein Tests also seem to have accidentially used Shimura Illudiums.
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Part of my problem is that, for quite a bit of this, I’m not using the sources directly, but, rather, as they have been used by more accessible authors. For example, I’ve been reading a lot of Golden, who has been publishing articles on death rays since 1979. The problem is, these articles are meant to be part of a complete history, so Golden never has published corrected articles, and, at the rate that Golden’s History is going, might never do so.
Did anyone see Orgazmo? The Orgazmorator was kind of like a 1920s style death ray except that it would get you off instead of distintegrating you.
I understand Franklin Mint is bringing out a full set of collectable miniature 1920s style death rays: 1:100 scale, perfect craftmanship and accurate down to the minutest detail.
Prof. Servo’s expertise in the problems relating to excitons in magnetic systems has him rumoured to be accepting the Taniyama-Weinstein Chair of Theoretical Physics at Bailiol, Oxford. (This has yet to be substantiated.) Let us hope that this does not substantially delay publication of his much-anticipated history.
I haven’t looked closely into the Illudium models (my areas of interest have been more into the 1920’s style death rays; the 1950’s style, despite the decorative but non-functional tail fins, have never appealed to me).
Did the Q-36 actually have both a flux capacitor and an oscillation overthruster? That seems rather redundant, but the basic philosophy of Marvin Design has always been “Overkill is meaningless when Death Rays are on the line.”
Has anybody else read Dr. Cambot’s study of death rays? It’s not so much a history of death rays (though it does cover that as well), but more of technical description of how they function and has suggestions (which sadly, never seem to have been put into practice) of how they could be vastly improved. I’ve looked at it, but much of the math is written using numbers so high that only a dog can understand them.
Well, That’s what I get for going by the credits in Mad Science Citation Index. ::shrug::
I never met any of Servo’s team myself. Well, that’s not exactly true. Forrester attended my talk on “the Role of Seven-League Boots in a Caring Society” at the World Domination Con in '98. She did a great talk on Sudden Opponent Death Syndrome
Oh, and DrFidelius. I suggest you read the Carlin report Governor Quinn references about the Q-36. Inclusion of multiple terminators is one of the problems with the design.
The principal researcher in the Consumer Reports tests put it best: