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Re: very long sparks



To Dr. Gudenas, et. al.,

This (thread) reminds me of a personal experience I had in 1978.
I visited Dr. Hershal West at the BPA (Bonniville Power
Authority,) in Vancouver Washington (state.)  They had a
5 MV Mark Impusle generator (an outdoor all climate unit,)
capable of over 100j -at- 5 MV output.  I saw a photograph
in Dr. West's office, of a (maverick) discharge from the top
toroid electorde (on top of the generator, which was about
25 meters high,) connecting to a patch of ground (far outside
of the high voltage proving grounds of the faciltiy.)  The
acutal arc length of this spark was about 50 meters. Dr.  Hershal
West told me of the conditions under which this spark was
created.  The machine was made by Amiel-Hafely (England)
and was being used to test various high voltage transmission line
configurations, that were being developed for the Pacific North-West
Intertie, amoung other applications.

I have also seen the reports of the French high voltage lab 
machinery, as reported in the IEEE Power and Apparatus
Systems (APS) journals, since the early 1980's.  Truely 
impressive.  But as noted below, all of these machines are "single 
pulse" high energy disruptive discharge devices; a far cry from a 
high power Tesla Coil, with a (continuous) rate of power delivery (at 
its oscillatory freequency and pulse repititon rate.)

Best regards,
Bill Wysock.


> Date:          Sat, 08 Jan 2000 12:33:40 -0700
> To:            tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
> Subject:       Re: very long sparks
> From:          Tesla List <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>

> Original Poster: "Dr. John W. Gudenas" <jgudenas-at-admin.aurora.edu> 
> 
> Mark
> Brazelyan and Raizer have produced an excellent book which
> I expect will take me quite a while to fully comprehend. This work
> is devoted to its title "Spark Discharge". That particular picture is
> quite incidental to the text, except to indicate that existing research
> facilities can produce long sparks with surprising results.
> ( Get the book ) Twin towers built by GE at the 1939 Worlds
> Fair produced 5mev each for a potential difference of 10mev
> and delighted spectators with around 50' arcs. It is not proper
> to equate the behavior of Marx or Fitch circuits with TC behavior.
> 
> The reference list in the back of Brazelyn is alone worth the price
> of the book. No mystery, no doctored photo, just science.
> My thanks to Bert Hickman for suggesting this work for my library.
> If you want to understand spark discharge, this book is a must
> have, however if your calculus is bad, the old professor suggests
> that you brush up and get sparking before purchasing! (An expensive
> book if it makes no sense)
> Cheers
> John W. G.
> 
> John W. Gudenas, Ph.D.                       Aurora University
> Department Chair of Computational And Natural Sciences
> 347 S. Gladstone,  Aurora, IL 60506    Tel# 630-844-5539
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tesla List <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
> To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
> Date: Saturday, January 08, 2000 6:24 AM
> Subject: Re: very long sparks
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