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Re: An old Tesla coil system

In a message dated 7/18/99 3:59:18 AM US Eastern Standard Time, 
tesla-at-pupman-dot-com writes:

<< Original Poster: "Antonio Carlos M. de Queiroz" <acmq-at-compuland-dot-com.br> 
 
 Hi:
 
 My university received a donation of some old medical devices,
 that include a medium-size Tesla coil system. In the near
 future I probably will try to restore the system to working
 conditions. The system was in use (I think) in the 1930's.
 
 The material include:
 a Tesla transformer:
 http://www.coe.ufrj.br/~acmq/tesla/teslatr.jpg
 A big induction coil:
 http://www.coe.ufrj.br/~acmq/tesla/indcoil.jpg
 A rotary mercury switch for the coil:
 http://www.coe.ufrj.br/~acmq/tesla/rotarysw.jpg
 A control panel:
 http://www.coe.ufrj.br/~acmq/tesla/iccontrol.jpg
 
 There are also banks of capacitors (square glass plates
 and metal foil embedded in paraffin or something similar),
 and spark gaps (series of point-plate gaps, very worn
 from use), and several devices to be connected to the
 system.
 Next week I will try to get more informations about
 how was the original system assembled.
 I am also restoring a big 8 disks Bonetti electrostatic
 machine, from the same lot.
 
 Antonio Carlos M. de Queiroz
  >>

I also just aquired some early 1900s vintage electronic measuring equipment 
from the University of Notre Dame. Some of the goodies include a 1400 Watt 
Weston wattmeter, several U.S. Navy stamped current transformers, a box of 
gold plated high current diodes marked 477A-BC packaged in matched sets of 4, 
a time lapse photography set-up that has a high power graduated strobe that 
works great for setting up RSGs.  They were moving one of their labs, and 
were going to throw all of this out!  I am lucky to have a friend working 
there that gave me a call at work when he saw all this stuff in a hallway 
marked FREE on it.  Sometimes you're in the right place at the right time. 
(One mans junk........)

Good luck with the restorations, I've found that old bolts tend to break 
easily when tampered with. Could be hydrogen embrittlement?

R. Scott Coppersmith