Re: Hi Power Discharge "Disruptive"

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "Ed Phillips" <evp-at-pacbell-dot-net> 

"When Tesla was doing his Colorado Springs work in 1899, oscilloscopes
more
or less did not exist. They would not become off-the-shelf items until
radar
became widespread in the 1930s. He mentions in the notes that he would
have
to get round to setting up a "rotating mirror" sometime to view the
oscillations, but it seems that he never did."

	Surprisingly enough, there were quite a few gadgets for visualizing
electrical waveforms in use at that time, although the first CRT
oscilloscope type device was several years away (1908 as I recall).  I
have an interesting book on the subject titled "Waveforms: A History of
Early Oscillography" by V.J. Phillips.  A bit pricey (32 bucks) but
available from Amazon and others.  Really interesting reading and shows
that guys back in those days weren't entirely blind to what they were
dealing with.  Tesla may well have been aware of some of this apparatus
but certainly doesn't appear to have mentioned it.

Ed