I was looking for the reference to The Garin Death Ray book in comments, didn't found, so here it is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Garin_Death_Ray https://

I was looking for the reference to The Garin Death Ray book in comments, didn't found, so here it is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Garin_Death_Ray https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Garin_Death_Ray The writer Aleksey Tolstoy came up with the idea of the laser-like machine that melts the rock in 1920s (maybe also influenced by H.G.Walls), when his science fiction book was first published. In this book a genial engineer Garin creates a beam that can be used both in mining (he wants to get the gold from the mantle, so uses American VC funding to set up a mining operation in Pacific) and as a weapon (he also wants to rule the world, so he uses his machine to destroy German and American competitors).