Re: Tube Type Tesla Coils

To: tesla-at-poodle.pupman-dot-com
Subject: Re: Tube Type Tesla Coils
From: Tesla List <tesla-at-stic-dot-net>
Date: Thu, 13 Mar 1997 01:39:27 -0600
Approved: tesla-at-stic-dot-net

>From: "Edward V. Phillips" <ed-at-alumni.caltech.edu>
>Message-Id: <199703100050.QAA01633-at-alumni.caltech.edu>
>To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
>Subject: Re: Tube Type Tesla Coils
>
>Re: "True" Tesla coils
>       You can be sure that Nikola would have used tubes if they
>had been available, at least in some of his experiments.  He
>would probably have gone back to spark gaps.
>Ed Phillips
>
>Ed,

I agree on the gap business.  Nik always considered the power in a
rapidly
discharging capacitor to be the way to get a major job done.  I am
confident
he would use whatever the best thing available was.  It is worth noting
that
55 years after his death and nearly 100 years after his big work in
Colorado
that all the electronic "king's horses" and all the king's men of
physics
still can't make a device which can efficiently switch voltages and
currents
on and off the required hundreds of times per second in truly large
discharge systems and Tesla coils better than an old fashioned air gap. 

There is undoubtedly some little known stuff made by EG&G and Hughes for
SDI
and nuclear bomb use which can cut it to a limited degree, but price
such a
toy and the ole spark gap looks awful good again.


Richard Hull, TCBOR