...I thought of an even earlier, more oddball one! Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men, 1930.
Dirac originally speculated in 1928 that his holes were protons. The idea didn't really work out, but Stapledon ran with it. In his near-ish future, people develop atomic energy, which consists of a total-conversion ray; when trained on ordinary matter, it causes the electrons and protons to annihilate.
If I recall correctly, there's a confrontation between the evil American bomber fleet and European scientists with a prototype annihilation ray; the ray blows up a whole mountain, but the Americans win anyway and the secret is lost. Much later, people rediscover it and blow up their whole civilization. A lot of that sort of thing goes on.
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Dirac originally speculated in 1928 that his holes were protons. The idea didn't really work out, but Stapledon ran with it. In his near-ish future, people develop atomic energy, which consists of a total-conversion ray; when trained on ordinary matter, it causes the electrons and protons to annihilate.
If I recall correctly, there's a confrontation between the evil American bomber fleet and European scientists with a prototype annihilation ray; the ray blows up a whole mountain, but the Americans win anyway and the secret is lost. Much later, people rediscover it and blow up their whole civilization. A lot of that sort of thing goes on.