RE: Variable Capacitance and Inductance

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "David Thomson by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <dave-at-volantis-dot-org>

Hi Malcolm,

>The quote from Tesla contains excellent examples of limited knowledge
and/or misinterpretation of results.

Richard Hull agrees with Tesla, why shouldn't you?  In Hull's notes on CSN
for November 14 he writes, "Tesla would later say in a published newspaper
article (January 30, 1901 New York Sun [same article I posted]) that his
Colorado experiments had shown that some of the assumptions of the
scientists of his day about the ideas concerning elevated capacities were
flawed.  His CSL studies had shown a definite difference between computed
and measured values of free standing capacitive surfaces."

And if you read the CSN, you will see that the measurements of capacity
changed from day to day even when using the same measurement methods.
Richard Hull notes these daily changes, too, as in his comment of Tesla's
November 7 entry.

As far as questioning the accuracy of Tesla's work, he spent an entire month
of 16 hour days studying this.  It would be arrogant to assume Tesla did not
understand such things as the capacitance of wire lengths (see CSN page 288)
or would have overlooked the humidity in the air.  Although Tesla mentions
the effect on resonance of moisture at sea and in harbors, all his
experiments were conducted in the dry autumn air of Colorado at an elevation
of nearly 1 mile above sea level.

Dave