Carl Burgess

Carl Burgess was a fictional character featured in episode fifteen of Tales of Tomorrow entitled "The Dune Roller". He was played by actor Nelson Olmsted.

Biography
Carl Burgess was a physicist who worked alongside biologist Sam Thorne and their older colleague Cap Zanser on Lightning Island on Lake Michigan in the 1950s. He was married to a woman named Jean and had a daughter named Sally.

In 1952, Carl and Sam were analyzing samples of a strange luminescent rock found on the shore of the lake. While Sam discovered that the rock samples were actually growing in size, Carl determined that they could also give off waves of intense heat under certain conditions. He tested his theory by tapping one of the rocks repeatedly with an instrument until it began to glow. The two men put their samples away when it came time for dinner, but when they returned to the lab, Carl found that one of the growing rocks had rolled off the table and burned a hole through the laboratory door. It was Carl who postulated the theory that the rocks were actually fragments of an ancient meteorite which, for reasons unknown, had suddenly begun to reconstitute itself.

Carl's theories proved to be true, but the knowledge came at a high cost. His partner Cap Zanser, while traveling along the shore of the lake, encountered the growing meteorite (also referred to as a "dune roller") and was killed by the electric radiation that it produced. Sam later took some dynamite down to the shore and detonated it, hoping that it would destroy the meteorite, but it remained intact and continued to grow.

Notes & Trivia

 * Actor Nelson Olmsted also played a scientist in the "To Serve Man" episode of The Twilight Zone.