Re: without wires?

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

Original poster: "Ed Phillips" <evp-at-pacbell-dot-net> 

"Tesla Intended to use coils high up, such as on a large hill or very
high
above sea level. He found the higher he went the lower the voltage
needed to
break down the air. He found at the right voltage and height he could
get
the air to conduct better than any wire or cable. The "surface area" of
air
is of course many many times that of what any wire could be. The
receiver
needed only to be a long antenna simple to "touch" this electrical path
and
in doing this the reciver would pull some current from the transmitter.
It
is the same as a 1:1 ratio transformer, but with "a lot" of air as the
core.
Tesla latter moved onto conduction via the earth.

Chris"

	Unfortunately his belief that the conductivity of air at low pressure
would be as good as that of copper was erroneous; it's many orders of
magnitude lower at even the optimum pressure.  He apparently got led
into this fallacy by his experiments where he passed current through a
partially evacuated glass tube, but had no way of measuring the voltage
drop.

	A good way to guess at conduction in gas at low pressures is to look at
conventional sign tubes.  At a current of 60 ma the voltage drop is of
the order of hundreds of volts per foot, so the resistance is around
1000 ohms per foot or greater.  As for the greater area of the ionized
air, that's true but you'd have to figure a way to connect to it.

	The biggest problem with his "transmission line" scheme is the capacity
of it to ground.  He visualized, in effect, a conducting layer over the
entire surface of the earth at a height of maybe 25 miles, which is of
course too low.  Here's the problem.  The capacitance to ground of that
layer would be so high that enormous currents would be required to
maintain the voltage he planned to use, and the power lost in the
circuit resistance would likewise be enormous.  Furthermore, to achieve
his high voltage at the transmitting end and his resonant reception at
the receiving end extremely high circuit  would be required and again
the losses make that impossible.  Final problem is that the height of
that layer varies with time so that the inductance of the necessary
coils would have to be variable.

	I'm sure Terry's tired of this subject but go to one of the free energy
lists and the conversation goes on and on, as it has since the internet
was started.

Ed