Over what distance might this device be able to interfere with car radios?
I've been reading recently about a mysterious and possibly hokey medical device of the 1930s. It was a variable-frequency radio emitter, invented by a Dr. <PERSON>, which was supposed to kill various types of bacteria and viruses by emitting the resonant frequency of that particular species, like a wine glass being broken by the right musical note.
(N.B. This gadget is not to be confused with various "Rife machines" currently being sold in New Age circles, many of which seem to have been built by people with a shaky grasp of physics and bear very little resemblance to the original ones.)
According to rifevideos.com, a site which claims to have collected a lot of old records about this, Dr. 275
<PERSON> mentioned in a 1957 interview that the devices would interfere with car radios for quite some distance (source):
You know we had an idea when we had our Clinic in La Jolla, of course that was battery and motor generator operated that set, you know, and boy it would sure raise the devil with all the radios so we had a couple of cars that was equipped with car radios and we sent them out and we would take the switch of that thing, and had a code you know like an S.O.S., and one of them went up north, and one of them went south from La Jolla.
Before we started in we wanted to see how far we were going to disturb things with it you know, and incidentally we had it in a steel room, a steel lined vault about this size at the old <PERSON>’s home. It was the vault in the library of the <PERSON>’s home where they kept their valuable manuscripts and books in all steel lined and a door on it like a safe.
We had the thing inside of that too, but it didn’t make much difference, but we started in, and one car lost the pick up on top of Torry Pines, and the other one half way through Mission Beach picked it up, and then they could go a hundred feet and lose and then they would have to pick it up again.
The output of the devices was from 50 watts to 500 watts depending on the model, and the power consumption was from 400 watts to 1,000 watts.
The frequencies used ranged from 100,000 to 1,700,000 Hertz.
Wondering if this story is credible. Would the device be powerful enough to be picked up that far away?
Historical information about this whole thing is somewhat unreliable and hard to come by, and knowing whether the radio interference anecdote is credible or not would shed some light on whether or not rifevideos.com is a reliable source/whether Dr. <PERSON> was a reliable source/whether any such experiment ever even happened. Besides, it's interesting.
Could such a device have interfered with local radio reception to the extent the quotation claimed? 489