Re: uses for a Tesla Coil?

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

Original poster: "Gary Peterson by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <glpeterson-at-tfcbooks-dot-com>


----- Original Message -----
From: "Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
To: <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
Sent: Friday, May 24, 2002 7:09 PM
Subject: Re: uses for a Tesla Coil?

Tesla's IEE lecture "Experiments with Alternate Currents of High Potential
and High Frequency," London, February 1892 has a few interesting Tesla coil
demos.  It's posted online at http://www.tfcbooks-dot-com/writings/experime.htm.


> > I have used a TC very successfully for powering an old-fashioned "soft"
> > (gas filled) X-ray tube.  Somewhere I have a reprint of a 1917 magazine
> > article on X-ray tubes which includes a drawing of a double-anode tube
> > intended specifically for excitation with a Tesla coil.  As for other
> > applications, the only one I can think of is for high-voltage breakdown
> > testing.

How did you protect yourself ?  I understand X rays can cause health
problems.

> I found the X-ray tube description.  It's on page 308 of the September,
> 1917 issue of Gernsbach's "THE ELECTRICAL EXPERIMENTER".  Mentions that
> while most commercial systems use "high-voltage transformers"
> (presumably power line fed), but the use of "high-frequency machines
> made for physician's use" is more convenient for the small office.
> Those machines were usually Tesla coils, . . .
>
> As a final note, Tesla wrote on the use of high frequencies for medical
> work, and the Proceedings of the IEEE recently reprinted an article of
> his on that subject.  Can't that issue right now, but recall if as being
> quite interesting and practical, at least insofar as the apparatus was
> concerned.

The Classic Paper "High Frequency Oscillators for Electrotherapeutic and
Other Purposes" is in PROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE, VOL. 87, NO. 7, JULY 1999,
pp. 1277-1292 and the book LECTURE, PATENTS AND ARTICLES.  (See also
http://www.tfcbooks-dot-com/mall/tesla.htm#374-HFO.)

Gary