Re: Magnifier Primary Capacitors - EQUIDRIVE vs. STANDARD

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

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

Tesla list wrote:
 >
 > Original poster: "Jim Lux" <jimlux-at-earthlink-dot-net>
 >
 >  > Original poster: Terry Fritz <teslalist-at-twfpowerelectronics-dot-com>
 >  >
 >  > At 09:23 AM 1/17/2004, Ed Phillips wrote:
 >  > >....
 >  > >         I seem to remember that Tesla was one of the first 
presidents of
 > the
 >  > >AIEE.  Does anyone remember?
 >  > >
 >  > >Ed
 >  >
 >  > He is the "only" one I do remember ;-)))
 >  >
 >  > http://www.davearcher-dot-com/Credentials.html
 >  >
 >  > But "only" a vice president in fact.  And I bet 90% of the EE's out there
 >  > don't know who the current present president if IEEE is ;-)))
 >
 > The list is at:
 > http://www.ieee-dot-org/organizations/history_center/president_intro.html
 >
 > Nobody since Feerst was trying to shake things up seems to have captured the
 > imagination and fun!
 >
 > It's gotten to be a fairly diverse organization, so the names tend not to
 > ring a bell, but in the early days, the AIEE had some real notables:
 > A.G. Bell
 > C.P. Steinmetz (there's a HV guy for you!)
 >
 > The IRE was more "scientific" than "practical" and RF oriented, so you have
 > notables like Irving Langmuir, Lee DeForest (for you VTTC folk), Jansky,
 > Terman, Beverage

	This may be straying from the Tesla topic a bit, but for those of you
who don't know Feerst was an outsider who got himself elected president
and, as a result, the voting rules were changed to make sure something
like that didn't happen again and that only members of the
"establishment" would be elected in the future!  Reminds me a bit of a
recent national election!!!

	Actually, the IRE was a very practical outfit, particularly back in the
beginning (1914-1924) when most of the working members were hams
(Armstrong comes to mind immediately) and contributed both to the IRE
Proceedings and to QST magazine.  Some of the technical articles in QST
were excellent and still worth reading.  I used to have access to a
complete set of the IRE Proceedings from Vol 1, #1 and was fascinated by
some of the stuff which was in the old ones.  There is quit a bit of
stuff on spark transmitters which would apply equally well to Tesla
coils and, in fact, I remember one picture which showed a combination
ham spark transmitter and a TC!

	One difference between the ham spark transmitters and TC's is that the
hams were required (at least to be legal) to transmit on frequencies
about 1500 kHz, although a few had special licenses to transmit on 800
kHz.  For a power output a relatively large primary capacitor, charged
to as high a voltage as was feasible, was the way to go.  [The law gave
a maximum input of 1 kw but some guys ran a lot more, depending
primarily on their pocket books].  Problem was that to hit 1500 kHz
ended up requiring single-turn primary inductors, which were a pain to
say the least.  Some systems operated from 25 kV transformers and used
capacitors of the order of 0.007 ufd to 0.01 ufd.  Sound familiar?

Ed