[CW] Spark Paper from Bob Schrader, W6BNB (SK)

[D.J.J. Ring, Jr.]

Beautiful, Don.

I searched for such and could find nothing.

Since arc's are CW transmitters maybe you could post whatever you found if
it was already in ASCII format (cut and paste).,

Gotta keep our history alive.

73

DR


On Wed, Apr 27, 2016 at 5:13 PM, Donald Chester <k4kyv at charter.net> wrote:

> I did some further reading, and indeed the gas was hydrogen.  It had to be
> nearly pure, with little oxygen content.  Rather than pumping in hydrogen
> from an external gas  cylinder, something that probably would have been
> extremely dangerous, the hydrogen was generated by the arc heating up a
> hydrocarbon vapour, like alcohol or kerosene inside the chamber. When an
> arc was first ignited, there could easily be some oxygen in the chamber,
> and there was often a start-up explosion so that wasn’t something
> unexpected.  The chamber had to be designed to withstand this explosion,
> just as in the case of the cylinders of an internal combustion engine.
>
>
>
> Don k4kyv
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> I think the atmosphere was regular air in the arc transmitter dome, I
> remember cartoons of Sparks trying to ignite or "strike" the arc and having
> the dome glass blow open and splatter carbon all over the place.
>
> All I have - somewhere - are pictures in books, no real first hand info
> for me!
>
>
>
> Maybe someone else can update this.
>
>
>
> That must be a typo.  He had to have meant nitrogen.  If the atmosphere
> inside that enclosed dome were hydrogen, unless it were absolutely 100%
> pure with zero oxygen content, this would have made an effective improvised
> explosive device (IED).
>
>
> Don k4kyv
>
>
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> =30=
>
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