Rectification, was re: "Gas burner" corona from STSG driver

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

Original poster: "Jim Lux by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <jimlux-at-earthlink-dot-net>

> The "old-time" X-Ray equipment did indeed use a large induction coil
> (Rhumkorff or "spark" coil), whose output voltage consists of a large
> short spike of one polarity followed by a longer and much lower-voltage
> output of the opposite polarity.  As a kid (about 1934, I think) I broke


One should also bear in mind that energizing a xray tube with HV AC would
generate fine quality xrays (albeit of varying energy).  The fact that the
anode and cathode are differently structured and one is heated, the other
not, essentially makes the tube a diode.  Microwave ovens do this as well,
using the magnetron tube  (a diode, electrically) as one of the  diodes on a
half wave voltage doubler.

With one electrode hot and the other cold, you'll definitely get
unidirectional (on the average) current flow.  The hot electrode will emit
copious electrons, the cold one wont.

The 1 MV resonance transformers used for high energy Xrays (Charlton, et.
al.) didn't use any rectifiers, but made use of this property.