Re: Early versions of Tesla's coil

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

Original poster: "Jolyon Vater Cox by way of Terry Fritz <teslalist-at-qwest-dot-net>" <jolyon-at-vatercox.freeserve.co.uk>


----- Original Message -----
From: "Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
To: <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
Sent: Sunday, July 06, 2003 11:54 PM
Subject: Re: Early versions of Tesla's coil


 > Original poster: "RMC by way of Terry Fritz <teslalist-at-qwest-dot-net>"
<RMC-at-richardcraven.plus-dot-com>
 >

  The spark gap is a large relay contact
 > arrangement - two facing W pads and a cam-shaped bakelite lever that
presses
 > a phosphor-bronze element holding one of the faces towards the other.
 >
 > The primary cap is a couple of nF and the mains transformer is a
 > single-ended 2 or 3 kV output at a few mA.  It is a very small coil but is
 > very nice to see working.
 >
I am intigued  by mention of the W-pad relay contacts plus high voltage
transformer in the vacuum leak testers - only, with the 2-3kV transformer I
would have presumed that a straightforward spark-gap (albeit a narrow one!)
would  be all that was be needed, yet relay contacts and a lever are also
described.
Do they function as an electro-mechanical switch like a relay or buzzer
contact
or are they part of a normal static spark gap with the lever simply being
used to adjust the gap setting?

Jolyon

 > Cheers
 >
 > RMC, England
 >
 >
 >