[Antennas] Tesla antenna?

[Bob Wilder]

At 06:59 AM 2/8/2003 -0500, Haines Brown wrote:

***Snip***

>I grew up in Manhattan, which still ran on DC thanks to Edison. When
>TV came in, we had to get an alternator to convert the DC to AC. I
>don't recall when Manhattan went over to AC, but my vague sense is
>that it was around the end of WWII. Anyone know for sure?

I hope you meant this a tongue and cheek...It was about 1922 when the
last of the DC came out of NYC for general use...There was some DC still 
being used
in the city up to WW2 on the trolly system.

>When I was a young, a friend and I built a hugh tesla coil using one
>of those cardboard tubes for storing rugs around which to turn the
>secondary, an old x-ray transformer, and a heavy copper tubing primary
>that we tried to make watercooled (can't remember if we succeeded). We
>tested it by creating big arcs and calling up someone in another town
>to see they could hear our signal. The towns were Windsor and West
>Hartford Connecticut. Although we perhaps deserve credit for inventing
>broad band communications, it was a good thing the FCC was not much on
>the ball in those days, or we would have gotten into real trouble!

In 1950-51 there was a large Tesla coil built at Oswego State Teachers 
College in the
electrical department of the school of Industrial Arts, by myself and the 
only other
ham who was the instructor in the department.  Once built we would throw 
baseball sized
balls at each other from the corona developed at the ends of the coil.  The 
coil
primary was generated using a rotary spark gap to increase the frequency of 
the voltage.
Was great fun but you sure ached all over when done as it felt like you had 
been
hit by softballs.


Bob Wilder, AF2HD/AFA2HD
6032 Idlemoore Court
Theodore, AL 36582-4117
251-653-5274
http://home.earthlink.net/~bwild
Asst State MARS Director- Alabama
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