Re: 7.1Hz, how the heck did Tesla succeed?

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: "Malcolm Watts" <m.j.watts@xxxxxxxxxxxx>

Hi Bill,

On 11 Jul 2005, at 14:21, Tesla list wrote:

> 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.)

I'd interpret what is effectively a wide bandwidth as low Q or am I
missing something?

  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.

To me the real question is "did he?". There is scant evidence that he
did other than anecdote.

> 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.

Why should it wander?

> 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.

A big problem I see with transmission schemes proposed by Tesla and
others is that you would really want to supress lightning to avoid
periodic shorting and loss of power in the system and the global
frequency of lightning is a lot higher than 7-odd Hz (more like 100Hz
IIR).
      I thought the Corums were supposed to have had some kind of
scheme happening several years ago. Personally I am not as optimistic
as some. Somebody please prove me wrong.

Malcolm