Re: Ancient Rectifiers

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

Original poster: "B2 by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>" <bensonbd-at-erols-dot-com>

Hi Matt,
    I saw a pair on a plasma experiment at the University of Maryland,
Molecular Physics building, about 20 years ago.  They were about 24" tall.
They were mounted next to a 14.4 kV, 10 kVA pig.  They converted the output
of the pig to DC full boar at 1 Ampere.  The filament transformers looked
like dream flybacks.  Can't recall the filament current.  These things were
used to charge a humongous capacitor bank (100s of kiloJoules?) used for
discharging into a Bitter-Furth coil in a plasma experiment.  Never have I
seen a more impressive tube!  (The Bitter-Furth coil was quite interesting
also.).

Cheers,

Barry

> Does anyone have knowledge of/remember/ever seen large rectifier tubes 
> (~12in. high) with screw bases like a lightbulb? I know they are rated >100 
> kV with 6.3 v / 6 amp filaments. Two are VR-17C, one is a VR-6-CFR and
one is 
> a Machlett ML-46-E.