Tesla "Death Ray" not really a ray?

gregory.hilson_at_gmail.com
Date: 01/28/05 

Date: 28 Jan 2005 07:58:52 -0800

Hello all,
I recently finished a biogrpahy of Nikola Tesla by Mary Cheney
(Tesla: Man Out of Time). It's chronological and has some references
to his inventions and hypotheses but in minute detail.
The description of the "Death Ray" got me thinking. There is a quote
about stopping 10,000 enemy planes from entering within hundreds of
miles of a city's borders.
Since his research was heavily into fields, maybe it wasn't a death
ray afterall but instead a force field? Whether it repelled or had so
much energy it disintegrated things on contact who knows, but such a
device could fall under the same description. It would be like a field
shell instead of a filled field sphere.
Thoughts on this line of thinking? In short: Taking an electric
field and allowing it to be repulsive or filled at it's outermost edges
with highly-charged particles and/or an atoms thickness?