Re: Tool Steel's

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: Ed Phillips <evp@xxxxxxxxxxx>


Hi,

Per Zenneck's excellent book ("Wireless Telegraphy", page 16), a 
spark gap between zinc electrodes had a lower equivalent "gap 
resistance" than an identical gap between copper electrodes in a 
simple LC circuit. Zinc (and magnesium!) gaps were therefore 
considered to be less lossy.

However, because of the additional metal vapor in the gap, zinc 
electrodes likely also resulted in poorer quenching (than gaps made 
from copper) when used in coupled LC circuits.

BTW, a scanned copy of Zenneck's 1915 book can be obtained in its 
entirety through the Internet Archive'a Million Book project. The 
DjVu file is about 52 MB:
http://www.archive.org/details/WirelessTelegraphy

Best regards,

Bert"

   Thanks for the link.  I'm lucky enough to have an original in 
mint condition but hadn't read that part as carefully as you did.

Ed