Royal Rife's historical work with the Universal Microscope and his Frequency Generators has been vastly misunderstood and misrepresented. Here's the results of our research up to now...

A History of Rife's Instruments and Royal Rife's Machines and Rife Frequency Generators

Updated on April 30th 2006

This article from it’s first writing has been an evolving document according to the new information received. When new information has been obtained we have tried to correct errors irregardless of the fact it may change everything that has been previously believed as correct. This article was last updated on 6/30/04. Now more important information has come to light, therefore this article dated 12/15/05 takes precedence over all previous dates. The new information about super-regeneration has caused an almost complete rewriting of this article and changes almost everything we have previously believed about how Rife instruments worked. Super-regeneration up to the writing of this updated article has been overlooked. The following questions will be discussed. When did Rife start using audio frequencies and how were they used in super-regeneration? What frequencies were Dr. Rife’s accurate RF M.O.R.s? Were all of Rife’s instruments super-regeneration instruments (Rife Ray #3, #4 and the Beam Rays Inc.)? The understanding of super-regeneration will challenge the dates, arrived at through speculation, of some of the instruments that have been built and may bring about a change in how instruments are built in the future. When new information is obtained this article will be updated.

In this article we will examine the way Dr. Rife’s instruments worked. We will look at the evidence by quoting the sources such as Dr. Rife, John Crane, John Marsh, Dr. Couche, Dr. Lara, Dr. Stafford and Bertrand L. Comperet, Rife’s attorney in the 1939 Beam Ray Corporation trial, and later John Crane’s attorney for Life Labs’ trial in 1961. Hopefully anyone who reads this article will have a better understanding about Dr. Rife and the methods he used. Our goal is to try to give people information so that they can make a more informed decision. We have tried to explain in laymen’s terms so that anyone can understand. We hope this will be helpful.

What is a ray tube and how does it work?

Dr. Rife used a phanotron ray tube with his instruments. A ray tube was made out of glass, quartz or Pyrex and was filled with a noble gas or a mixture of noble gases. Dr. Rife used different mixtures of gases but finally ended up using helium. He stated:

Rife : “We have experimented with various inert gases and we found that helium stood up by the bombardment better than any of the other gases. That’s why we use it. We don’t care about the color or anything of that sort. It stood up better over many more hours of bombardment than the argon and the crypton and those different gases that we tried.” (John Marsh collection - Gonin and Siner papers pages 25 & 26. www.rife.org)

The ray tube was connected to the instrument by two wires. These wires were connected to two round metal bars that went into the glass tube and they had round disks connected to their ends. One disk was straight and the other one was on a 45 degree angle. This gave it a directional effect towards the patient. Dr. Rife stated that the ray tube was “a partial directional antenna”. Because the scientific technology behind ray tubes had already been perfected, Rife worked with that technology and only had to make some adjustments for it to work the way he wanted it to. Bertrand L. Comperet, Rife’s attorney, stated in an interview:

Comperet : “Now, the original instrument had a tube, like an X-ray tube. That was the way in which Rife developed it. You see, all the X-ray work necessarily was done with a beam projected from a tube. So, Rife worked on the same basis.” (Comperet interview papers - 1970’s)

There are limitations to ray tubes that need to be understood which have to do with the laws of physics. This is a simple explanation but should suffice since we are trying to stay in layman's terms and make it easy to understand. Ray tubes when properly tuned are very efficient. About 95% of the energy that you put into a ray tube comes out but only if the impedance is matched properly. Dr. Rife’s instruments put out about 50 to 60 watts. This means about 50 watts came out of the ray tube. You have to divide the 50 watts that come out of the ray tube by four for every foot that you move away from the ray tube because of the laws of physics on signal loss. So at one foot away from the ray tube you only have 12.5 watts. At two feet you only have 3.125 watts and at 3 feet you only have about .78 of a watt. The laws of physics are important to understand because Rife and the doctors that used his equipment put the ray tube within a few inches of the patient’s body. Dr. Couche said that he would sometimes touch the body of the patient in the area that needed to be treated. Dr. Robert P. Stafford said when we asked him, that when he treated cancer patients he would put the ray tube within a few inches of the body and treat a 6 inch square area. He would move the ray tube up and down and back and forth so that the whole 6 inch area was treated. He said that he did this because of the way the phanotron ray tube worked. The design of a phanotron ray tube makes it partially directional and concentrates its energy or power into a small area. With the power loss from the ray tube it is easy to understand why Dr. Stafford, Dr. Couch, Dr. Rife and the other doctors used the ray tube right next to the body.

We built both the 1939 Beam Ray instrument (this instrument is not a 1939 Beam Ray instrument as has been believed but is actually a 1940’s Vern Thompson machine and will be examined later on in this article) and the 1950’s AZ-58 ray tube instruments. The AZ-58 (a 1950’s Rife instrument made by Life Labs) was built from schematics that are on Stan Truman’s site, www.rife.org, under AZ-58 research information. This instrument is almost the same as the 1940’s instrument built by Vern Thompson. We built the 1940’s instrument made by Vern Thompson from schematics found at http://www.scoon.co.uk/Electrotherapy/Rife/BeamRay/index.htm. The 1940’s instrument uses sine wave audio frequencies and the AZ-58 uses square wave audio frequencies. We tested the AZ-58 and the 1940’s Vern Thompson instrument for penetration and found that at about 32 inches from the body full penetration of the carrier frequency emitted from the ray tube was lost. John Crane listed the AZ-58 as outputting 50 watts out of the ray tube but we tested it and found it only puts out 8 watts. The 1940’s Vern Thompson instrument only puts out about 8 watts also. The audio frequency broadcast out of the ray tube from both these machines could only resonate a crystal designed to test resonance through about two inches of tissue. From the tests made, it takes a carrier frequency of at least 0.125 watts to penetrate all the way through the body. It could take an output of 50 watts from a ray tube to resonate a crystal through 14 inches of tissue. These tests showed that it takes more power to penetrate all the way through the body when modulating an audio frequency on a carrier frequency than when a single un-modulated carrier frequency is used. The tests were done using the AZ-58 and the 1940’s Thompson machines using a phanotron ray tube outputting 8 watts. Another interesting thing worth noting is when we turned the ray tube more than 45 degrees either to the right or the left of center we could not resonate the crystal. Another test showed we could not resonate the crystal at all on the backside of the ray tube proving what Rife said: “The ray tube is a partially directional antenna.”

We are not trying to upset or offend any manufacturers of ray tube instruments but the laws of physics must be understood no matter how much we may dislike it. With this said, many ray tube instruments built today recommend that you stay from 3 to 6 feet away from the ray tube. These instruments put out about 125 to 250 watts into the ray tube. With 125 watts you only get 31.25 watts to the body at one foot. If one sits 3 to 6 feet away from the ray tube then, according to the laws of physics, there may not be enough power to fully penetrate the body since it may take 35 to 40 watts to fully resonate a crystal through the body using a phanotron tube. Since Dr. Rife always tested his instruments for penetration, and used the phanotron ray tube right next to the body, I believe he understood these limitations. Some use a long cylinder type ray tube that stands straight up or lays down sideways. These output in 360 degrees with no directional effect and are called omni-directional ray tubes. This means that the 125 watts that come out of the ray tube are spread out in 360 degrees. With the energy spread out in 360 degrees at a distance of 3 to 6 feet away, one can see that by the laws of physics the power penetrating the body is minimal. We are not questioning the effectiveness of ray tubes, just the distance in relation to the power loss. We are not doubting that there may be physiologic effects from ray tubes at a great distance (50 to 100 feet) but the real question is can the frequency fully penetrate the body and resonate the organism killing it at that distance?  

What power levels did Dr. Rife use?

According to the documents we have Dr. Rife’s #4 instrument and the instrument built by Beam Ray Corporation of the 1930’s put about 50 watts out of the ray tube. The AZ-58 Life Labs instrument of the 1950’s and the Vern Thompson 1940’s instrument only output about 8 watts. Because some of Dr. Rife’s information about instrument power levels is confusing, most have believed Dr. Rife’s instruments put out 400 to 600 watts to the ray tube but new information shows this is not correct. The problem has been that the people who wrote down this information were incorrectly giving the power usage of Rife’s instruments as the output power. Dr. Rife’s instruments used 400 to 600 watts but they only output about 50 to 60 watts out of the ray tube. In the paper “Development of the Rife Ray and use in devitalizing of pathogenic micro-organisms” it states: “The frequencies were generated by a tube oscillator with many stages of amplification, the final stage being a 50 watt output tube.” It appears from the documents that Dr. Rife’s instruments did not output any more power than about 50 watts out of the ray tube. When Dr. Rife, Crane and Marsh were working on sea water conversion which used frequencies in that process, they boosted the output power in the instrument. Concerning that instrument and some 1930’s Beam Ray instruments that Dr. Yale had increased the power level on, Dr. Rife said the following:

RIFE : “Now this outfit here - the way we have it boosted up here now with an extreme lot of power behind the actual output that is coming out of the thing...I wouldn’t want to use this - or I wouldn’t want to use this instrument here the way it is souped up there for this salt water proposition to treat a patient with.”

GONIN : “No.”

RIFE : “You can get beyond the limit.”

GONIN : “Yes, quite.”

CRANE : “That’s what Dr. Yale did. You see, he stepped it up and up and up…”

RIFE : “When Verne Thompson used to go down there and take care of Yale’s machines - when he began stepping them up and so...where you get up into that extreme power…oh yes, that is not good. With the power that is in these [50 to 60 watts of power coming out of the ray tube], there is absolutely no harm because I had my microscope here - I had my tube [ray tube] right here in front of it - oh, about 11 or 12 inches away from the slide in the microscope and here I was with this thing all around like that and that tube going here and my specimens and the microscope year after year tuning that thing and it never harmed me any.” (John Marsh collection - Gonin papers pages 2 & 3. www.rife.org)

Dr. Yale’s 1936-39 Beam Rays Corporation instruments were putting out a lot more power than Dr. Rife felt was safe. If Yale’s instruments were changed to put out the maximum power that the main output tube could produce then they may have been putting out around 100 watts out of the ray tube. It may be that Dr. Rife was just over cautious but his statement should be considered when one starts using power levels of 100 to 300 watts. These power levels are probably not necessary if a phanotron ray tube is used.

Is it necessary to use a ray tube to put out the frequencies?

We really shouldn’t care if an instrument uses a ray tube or a pad as long as it will kill the microorganism we desire. In the strictest sense of the word just because a ray tube is used doesn’t mean it’s Rife. By the time you read this whole article you will find out that no one is doing exactly what Rife did. But does this mean that these instruments don’t work? Those building pad instruments are not using ray tubes and most are not using Rife’s original frequencies. Those that are building ray tube instruments are also not using Rife’s original frequencies. We have quite a paradox. This is the problem we face. If we were to build a ray tube instrument that worked exactly the way Dr. Rife’s did and use frequencies from 87000 hertz to 17 megahertz then we would be violating FCC regulations and the instruments would be illegal. These ray tube instruments would have to be used with a faraday cage which is a conducting cage used to stop electromagnetic fields. We can build a pad instrument that will use all the frequencies Dr. Rife used but then we are not using a ray tube. When we consider the legal problems we face today with building instruments, the only instrument we can legally build that would not require a faraday cage is a pad instrument. This type of instrument could produce all of Dr. Rife’s frequencies. Therefore we should look at this method carefully and not reject it out of personal bias. As we already said, it really shouldn’t matter if an instrument uses pads or a ray tube so long as it works. With this in mind let’s look at the reasons why pad instruments were first built. John Crane and John Marsh had really good reasons why they built pad instruments. After nearly 50 years of use there is enough evidence that a pad instrument works just as well as a ray tube instrument. In some cases, because of the electrical stimulation like a tens instrument, they may work even better than a ray tube on some conditions. We will now take a look at some of the reasons that prompted Crane and Marsh to use pads:

Rife : “But the principle of this thing is basically built on a coordinative vibration. Just like one tuning fork pitched to the C. Another one here—you strike this one and this one vibrates.”

Dr. Lara : “What kind of vibration is it? Electromagnetic vibration?”

Rife : “We won’t say magnetic, we will say electronic frequency vibration. The same as put out on a broadcasting station for the radio. The same thing you know, only it’s transmitted into a tube. And the tube acts as a partial directional antenna you see.” (John Marsh Rife CDs - CD 6 track 2)

In the John Marsh papers describing his trip to Ohio we read a statement made by Dr. Rife:

Rife : “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 Ellen Scripp’s home. It was the vault in the library of the Scripp’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 ways 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. Old Henry [Henry Siner] the boy that was with us out there, one of the lab boys, boy he went up in the air. He says, “By God” he says “look, we’re going to fix them up right. At two o’clock we’ll hook this up to a big radio station, a big transmitting station, and at two o’clock next week we’ll broadcast for tuberculosis, and at half past three the week after we will broadcast for cancer, and everybody at the radio will pick it up”. See, boy I said Henry that really is an idea.” (John Marsh collection - Trip to Ohio papers page 7. www.rife.org)

It is apparent from what we have read that Dr. Rife believed it was the frequency that was devitalizing the organism and the method of application really didn’t matter. He understood that the frequencies could be broadcast by a radio station if it had enough power. Metal antennas are equal to or more efficient than a ray tube. When John Crane and John Marsh, Dr. Rife’s two business partners in the 1950’s, came to understand this, they eliminated the ray tube and used pads or hand cylinders to apply the frequencies. The pads and hand cylinders work just like an antenna except you do not want too much power so that they are safe to use. The body also becomes an antenna when you hold the hand cylinders or use the pads and this is why pad instruments work. Comperet stated this in his interview:

Comperet : “Now, Crane said “Well now look, Rife himself admits that no matter how much tube and ray ,and so on, you have, you can’t get any results unless you’ve got the right frequency. Therefore the real clue to the thing is the frequency and not the means by which you deliver it.” Comperet also said: “Well, Crane originally was, with more modern techniques, duplicating the Rife machine, tube and all for early experiments. And, as I say, he came to the conclusion that you just weren’t getting anything additional by the use of the tube. If you didn’t get the frequency, you could run the rest of it indefinitely and nothing happened. So, what Crane did, he got an audio frequency generator. Now, you could make them up yourself by an awful lot of work, or you could buy a Heathkit audio frequency generator and get all the same results with a lot less time and effort. So he was using these Heathkit generators. Now, instead of a beam projected from a tube, a ray, he simply had two wires. I think they were aluminum knobs on the end of them, which would be used. They would be put on the body in such a position that the natural flow of the current from one to the other would go through the diseased area, and he got astonishing results.” (Comperet interview papers - 1970’s)

These pads or hand cylinders act just like an antenna when in contact with the body, but only if you have an RF carrier frequency. Without an RF carrier frequency the audio frequencies will only go through the connective tissue and not the cell. There are exceptions to this and they have to do with the wave form of the frequency. If a square wave audio frequency is used then the higher harmonics produced from this wave form can penetrate the cell. How much power from these harmonics penetrates the cell is not known. But this may explain why instruments that do not use an RF carrier frequency work. All of Rife’s original frequencies except two were in the (RF) broadcast band of frequencies and we will cover these frequencies and the audio frequencies along with the importance of a carrier frequency later in this article.

Some have thought that it was the light from the ray tube that made it work. But the evidence doesn’t seem to support that either…

In The Next Part You'll Learn Even More About Ray Tubes and Why So Many Folks Involved With Rife Are So Confused About Power Output...

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