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Re: museum capacitors?



In a message dated 12/19/98 4:14:07 AM Pacific Standard Time, tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
writes:
                -  snip   -
<< 
 The Carnegie coil was built by George Kauffman in 1903.  The power factor
 caps will not work properly with this coil --- they are not designed for
 pulse duty applications.  Also, having seen this coil, it has a very small
 topload which makes it operate as a transmission line -- always bad for the
 caps, and most important, tlhe coeff. of coupling is way too high which
 causes reflected energy that will blow the type of cap you are using.  
 
 If you are seriously interested in solving these problems contact me
 off-line and I can provide caps that will not blow out and will not require
 replacement.
 
 DR.RESONANCE-at-next-wave-dot-net
  >>

A couple of months ago, while on vacation, I visited the museum of science in
Boston.  They have a couple of large Tesla coils and a huge Van de Graff
generator.  Unfortunately, we were not able to stay for a demonstration.   I
really did not even think about them powering anything up but they apparently
do it a couple of times each day.  Next time, I will call ahead for the
demonstration schedule.  Going from memory here so don't write this down -
both Tesla coils were about the same size which I would guess at 24" to 36" in
diameter and about 6.0 feet of winding length.  What surprised me is the small
toroids on them.  Both were just barely larger than the diameter of the coils.
It sounds like many of the museum coils around the country could befefit from
some modern day Tesla coil design and tuning techniques.

Ed Sonderman