Re: About the skin effect in humans

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

Original poster: "Malcolm Watts" <m.j.watts-at-massey.ac.nz> 

On 22 May 2004, at 19:40, Tesla list wrote:

 > Original poster: "mercurus2000" <mercurus2000-at-cox-dot-net>
 >
 > Well trust me, Tesla himself said how many volts where in his coils.
 > Just look up some info on him, especially biographies and interviews,
 > he explains how he set his stunts up. I mean this is the man himself,
 > I find it somewhat odd that many people here don't seem to know that
 > much about the man that made the devices your building and his great
 > work. If anyone is to know what the effects were, it was Tesla
 > himself. BTW, Many of Tesla's close friends even witnessed Tesla
 > producing small bits of ball lightning and rolling them down his
 > suitcoat arm, and actually lighting the air in his lab itself a glow
 > with spectactors in it, without a light source. There are many secrets
 > alot of engineers don't know that Tesla took to the grave with him,
 > don't underestimate the man's knowledge.:)

It is undeniable that we know a good deal more about Tesla Coils now
than was known a century ago. It is only in the past few years that a
resonator model which explains countless operational observations and
apparent paradoxes (transmission line vs lumped model) has been
developed (see the TSSP website for details). From what details of
his coils and power sources are recorded by Tesla himself we know
that 3MV was beyond his reach.

     Eyewitness accounts are recognized by courts as being dubious,
especially those of non-experts. I don't recall reading anything
about Tesla rolling balls of lightning down his sleeve in any of his
own publications (and I have a few). Some references to the
observations would be most welcome. It might also be worth mentioning
for the umpteenth time that O'Neills' account of 130' sparks or
thereabouts was a complete misinterpretation of what Tesla himself
actually said. For the record, what he said (and this is stated in
the Colorado Springs Notes) was: if one mentally unravelled the loops
and curls in the sparks, the total length from the streamer tips
emanating from *one side of the coil to the tips emanating from the
other* would be about 130'. So, the sparklength in actual fact was
only half that *IF* one mentally straightened out all the kinks. In
our coiling community, the de-facto standard for any claim to
sparklength made here is point-to-point (from discharge point to
streamer tip), i.e. one does not *in all honesty* attempt to imagine
sparks as being straight lines.

      Finally, references to arcane knowledge cut no ice with real
researchers. It is wise to heed the safety advice given in this
forum's archives as such advice is formulated from many hours of
experimental and theoretical observations. It is not so long ago that
notions of being immune to damaging electrical currents thanks to a
complete misunderstanding of the mechanisms of "skin effect" was
quoted as gospel in many publications.

Malcolm
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