Re: 1994 article

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: "Bob (R.A.) Jones" <a1accounting@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>


Hi Terry,


> Original poster: Terry Fritz <vardin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> At 06:21 PM 8/6/2005, you wrote:
>
> >On another note, hopefully Terry will let it go as it is just my
> >opinion, but has anyone wondered why there is quite so much
> >pseudoscience associated with Tesla, and where all of this rubbish
> >comes from and why?
>
> Along with the other folks ideas on this, I think a lot of it has to
> do with "frustration" at not being able to really understand a lot of
> Tesla's work for such a long time....
>
> 30 years ago, surprisingly little was known about Tesla coils and how
> they worked.  The information that was available was full of wild BS
> and there was really not "another" explanation available.  Even
> though Tesla coils have been around for say 110 years, the age of
> much of the detailed theory can be counted on one hand and almost all
> of it on two...  I cannot recall how many hundreds of times I have
> heard that Tesla coils cannot be explained by electrical
> engineers...  We all remember the often sited quote "Electrical
> Engineering handbooks state that the design of Tesla coils is
> empirical"... and that was from one of the very best books of the
> era...  Heeeey, were are all those nay sayers "now"!?  >:o))
>

I don't believe its accurate to suggest that 30 years ago little was know
about Tesla coils. It was probably more difficult to find it with out the
help of the internet.

The theory of two coupled tuned circuits has probably been around for more
than 50 years. The impulse excitation was probably mathematically explored
in connection with spark gap transmitters.
The Titanic had a spark gap transmitter and that sank in 1912. It may even
have been understood (in part) for hundreds of years in connection with
sympathetic resonances of organ pipes, strings and tuning forks. When I
briefly worked on traveling wave tubes 35 years ago there were old papers
(say five years old) discussing the propagation in helices i.e. secondary
coils.

Perhaps it would be more accurate to suggest that Tesla coil theory was not
so widely understood 30 years ago as it is to day.

Robert (R. A.) Jones
A1 Accounting, Inc., Fl
407 649 6400