Re: Tesla Receiver Coil

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: William Beaty <billb@xxxxxxxxxx>

On Sun, 27 Nov 2005, Tesla list wrote:
>      "In one blinding flash" - or nagging years-long desire for
> vindication? At least he channeled his energies into something constructive!

I've had such flashes.  But first you have to be working on the problem
for a time, get frustrated, then give up for awhile.  Then the solution
just appears (while waking up in the morning, while showering, or during a
long walk.)  I recently found an Issac Asimov essay on this process.  He
accuses the scientific community of dishonesty, since many advancements
and discoveries come from these sudden inexplicable solutions, but then
afterwards in their publications the authors change things around so it
looks like they conciously solved the problem piece by piece.   But I know
the feeling.  When a whole complicated solution just appears in your
head... it feels like YOU didn't do the work; instead it was just handed
to you complete.  So YOU can't take credit!  To sooth your guilt at taking
credit, you are tempted to alter history and convince yourself that YOU
did all the hard work piece by piece.  (After all, nobody can see inside
your head and discover that you're lying.)


>      Did Tesla *really* invent the power transformer?

No.

I saw some book which had the story.  "Empires of Light," maybe?
Westinghouse was using a transformer from a purchased (non-Tesla) patent,
where the transformer windings were made of copper rods soldered together
into square spirals around a core which was a ring-shaped wad of thin iron
wire.  But it took forever to manufacture these, and the solder joints
would crack.  Someone (not Tesla, maybe Stanley) figured out the stamped
E-shape cores technique.

I note that Tesla's patents show those original tranformers, the ones
where the core is actually a donut, a hoop-coil of iron wire, with the
primary/secondary hand-wound around the donut-core.


> If so, this is
> an oft-overlooked contribution of his, of at least equal importance
> as the induction motor was.


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William J. Beaty                            SCIENCE HOBBYIST website
billb at amasci com                         http://amasci.com
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