7.1Hz, how the heck did Tesla succeed?

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: William Beaty <billb@xxxxxxxxxx>



Here's an idea for a dangerous outdoor experiment.

I think Mike <induction@xxxxxxxxxxx> mentioned that Golka tried rectifying
his big coil, then sending out ~7Hz DC pulses, but wasn't able to detect
any large Earth resonance.  As I understand it, the Q value of the Earth
resonance is controversial, and Sutton/Spaniol claim that published values
are wrong because they're the Q of the instruments used to measure the
resonance (while the actual Q is higher but unknown.)  In order to see a
resonance signal start building up, you'd have to hit the frequency
exactly.  Also, Sutton/Spaniol note that the resonance frequency changes
from moment to moment, causing a misperception that the Q is low when in
fact it's high (but the peak moves around randomly which screws up the
measurements.)  Unless Golka set up some sort of gigantic "Hartley
oscillator" with feedback sensors, where the Earth was the tank circuit
and his equipment was the "transistor," he'd have no hope of hitting the
moving resonance.  The equipment would have to have to be intimately
coupled with the Earth, where the Earth was one component of an
oscillator, rather than the Earth just being a cavity driven by pulses
from a signal generator.

But this brings up a big issue.  If Tesla accomplished it, HOW DID HE DO
IT?  The Earth's resonant overtones supposedly die away above 10KHz, so
high-freq Tesla coils won't work.  Maybe Tesla built a huge 2KHz coil?
Driven by a multipole generator?  I don't recall the Colorado Springs
frequencies offhand.

Or could he even have made a 60Hz extra coil?  With such low frequencies a
non-resonant air-core transformer could easily be driven by mechanical AC
generators, and only the "extra coil" would need to be resonant.  But the
wandering Earth-resonance frequency would still be a problem.

I just noticed another possibility.  Tesla had patents for vacuum tubes
attached to the top of his coils.  Suppose Tesla was rectifying the output
of his big coils.  This *might* be possible by mounting a bank of
ultraviolet lamps or X-ray tubes at the top of the coil.  On the positive
half cycle the X-ray tube turns on and ionizes the nearby air, making it
conductive.  On the negative half-cycle it turns off, and if the frequency
was low enough, then the ionized air-conductivity would shut off before
the next pulse.  It would be like a gigantic mercury vapor rectifier, but
with controlled artifical gas-asymmetry rather than the natural asymmetry
provided by gas-immersed metal electrodes.

If Tesla's big coils were pulsed-DC emitters, it would be a simple matter
to periodically disable the UV/xray lamp banks using lower frequency
control pulses, then regardless of the Extra coil freq, modulate the
system to put out HV pulsed DC at any freq desired; 2KHz or 60Hz or 7.1Hz.
Mount a "feedback coil" sensor a few miles away which senses the sky
fields and controls the ionization lamps, and you've created that "Hartley
Oscillator" where the Tesla Coil and ionizers act as a giant "transistor,"
and the Earth cavity is the "tank circuit."

Total speculation, obviously.   But not banned in theory!   :)

I know that a few people own dental x-ray tubes.  I don't have a big
outdoor TC myself, or an open field.  It's like amateur rocketry: observe
the test from 100 ft away behind an earth berm!  Does anyone dare to
experiment with this stuff?  Has anyone ever tried mounting an x-ray
emitter at the top of a big TC?

Just observing what happens when a big TC is operated *near* an operating
X-ray tube would be interesting.  I mean, drive the x-ray tube with it's
usual line-opeated DCHV supply, rather than relying on the intense
e-fields of the TC itself to provide the tube drive.



(((((((((((((((((( ( (  (   (    (O)    )   )  ) ) )))))))))))))))))))
William J. Beaty                            SCIENCE HOBBYIST website
billb at amasci com                         http://amasci.com
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Seattle, WA  206-789-0775    unusual phenomena, tesla coils, weird sci