TESLA - HV fence protecting his property? His lab burned down? / High Voltage / Forums

Forums

4hv.org :: Forums :: High Voltage

« Previous topic | Next topic »

TESLA - HV fence protecting his property? His lab burned down?

previous 1 2 3 next

Move Thread

LAN_403

Coronafix

Thu Mar 22 2007, 11:42PM

Registered Member #160 Joined: Mon Feb 13 2006, 02:07AM
Location: Melbourne, Australia
Posts: 938

Tesla did produce x-rays in his Houston street lab, and there are "shadowgraphs" of his hand and his foot inside his boot. This was actually before Roentgen released his discovery to the world. Tesla sent congratulations to Roentgen along with a "shadowgraph", who wrote back very interested and asking his method of producing them.
Tesla also warned of the dangers of x-rays before anyone else was aware of the side effects.
Welcome aboard Bill, love your work.

Steve Conner

Fri Mar 23 2007, 12:24AM

Registered Member #30 Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 10:52AM
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Posts: 6706

Yes, Tesla produced X-rays, and pretty well, too. He is known to have invented a single electrode X-ray tube. But, as I said above, there is no evidence that he ever was able to use ionization from X-rays (or ultraviolet light for that matter) to direct discharges.

Coronafix

Fri Mar 23 2007, 12:52AM

Registered Member #160 Joined: Mon Feb 13 2006, 02:07AM
Location: Melbourne, Australia
Posts: 938

Steve Conner wrote ...

Yes, Tesla produced X-rays, and pretty well, too. He is known to have invented a single electrode X-ray tube. But, as I said above, there is no evidence that he ever was able to use ionization from X-rays (or ultraviolet light for that matter) to direct discharges.

There is not even any mention of him doing so let alone evidence.
Someone who did think about using UV to "Broacast energy" was Tom Hettinger.
I remember seeing the whole article somewhere once but I can't seem to find it now,
so this will have to do.

Fri Mar 23 2007, 04:00PM

Banned on April 7, 2007
Registered Member #277 Joined: Fri Mar 03 2006, 10:15AM
Location: Florida
Posts: 157

I know Bill Beaty, he's consulted for me on my high voltage ion antenna project and is widely considered by many as an extremely credible source of information especially when it comes to leading edge science or technology. He's good at filtering through and/or differentiating psuedo-science BS and getting to the heart of a subject, he said in his post it is pure speculation. Besides, its already proven that sky energy can be intercepted even without the use of Xray tubes or tesla coils, to power fuel cells making hydrogen and operate small loads such as small motors, etc. I have very high respect for a number of members here, but if I was pressed to select a credible top science guru, in my opinion, it would be Bill. So I humbly recommend that rather than too quickly dismissing his comments, we should listen carefully and at least consider his thought-provoking input. My 2 cents. Btw, hello again Bill

Steve Conner

Fri Mar 23 2007, 04:16PM

Registered Member #30 Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 10:52AM
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Posts: 6706

Good grief. Saying that Bill Beatty is good at filtering through pseudoscience is like saying that you can rely on the Pope to give you the straight dope on birth control. Having said that, I think Bill is a great guy and I like his site. But it's all just a bit too crazy for the hardline stance that 4hv likes to present to the world.

On an attempt to bring things back on topic: We can now more or less direct discharges in the way that Tesla always wanted to, by ionizing the air with laser beams.

bill beaty

Sat Mar 24 2007, 02:10AM

Banned on April 8th, 2007.
Registered Member #597 Joined: Thu Mar 22 2007, 03:33AM
Location: Seattle, WA
Posts: 16

> This is going to open up a can of worms here, but I really don't think they could have managed to make suitable x-ray tubes in the 1890's.

Huh? Roentgen did his work before 1900. Look at the date of his initial discovery. That should make you suspect an error.

> My reason being that the best pumps they had at this time were Topler pumps, a mercury vacuum pump which used displacement to achieve the vacuum.

Ah, you're missing a key fact about these early Crookes-style x-ray tubes.

> Then Gettering is the second-fold problem. A vacuum device is a very complicated device requiring carefully controlled contamination in the envelope, and I just don't really see that happening in the 1890's.

You should not be saying "it can't work." Instead you should be asking "how did Roentgen and Tesla manage to accomplish it?"

Here's the key fact: The pressure would drop during Crooke's tube operation at extreme high voltage, and these earl tubes stopped putting out x-rays if pressure fell too low. Their electrodes relied on gas molecule impact in order to generate electrons (since the surface field was far too low for field-emission.) They required a soft vacuum. They pumped themselves down spontaneously, now known to be an ion pumping effect where high voltage causes the gas to combine chemically with the electrode surfaces. Today you can even buy commercial ion pumps based on this effect. This pump-down failure was a serious flaw in the early medical x-ray devices. To cure this problem, these tubes would include a side-arm which contained a gas generator. One type was a small piece of coal which would outgas a trace of adsorbed air when heated. Other types automatically created gas via a spark when the vacuum became to hard and the supply voltage slowly increased. If you've seen antique 1910 x-ray tubes having those weird side-arms containing pellets of unidentified material and extra electrode connections... now you know. Those are the pressure regulators. All this changed when Coolidge introduced the hot-filament version years later.

> Crooke's tubes, yea okay fine, those are low power devices, but high power, I dunno, I think they would probably overheat very quickly if not explode.

Yes, that was the main problem Tesla was working on, as mentioned in his 1892 lecture about high power failure of single-electrode tubes. His proposed solutions under test are shown in CSN page 29. As Tesla mentions there, immersing the tube in an oil bath is one *inconvenient* solution. He was experimenting with partial electrostatic shielding.

My earlier "Mad Scientist Rant" was pure speculation, as I said. And I speculate that Tesla solved the problem and managed to run his "sensitive brush tube" on the Colorado Springs coil. Then I pile speculation on speculation: that the x-ray guided, many-kilowatt discharge extends over impressive distances, and that something unexpected happens when it's aimed upwards. I hope it was obvious that this is brainstorming: free association, followed by brutal idea-triage. Heh. I'm here for the triage. Outsiders are better at finding flaws.

>I haven't read anything about low pressure mercury vapor rectifiers in Tesla's notes either

Not merc rectifiers, but a rectifier effect patented by Tesla and based on switched x-ray beams in air. An x-ray tube driven by AC puts out pulsed x-rays during each half-cycle. During each pulse, the x-rays make the air weakly conductive. If such a tube is connected between two high-volt AC electrodes, then the electric current in the air is only flowing during one half cycle (when the x-ray beam is active.) The result is a direct current in air. Maybe it can charge a capacitor? Ah, but this is depicted in Tesla's 1901 "radiant energy" patent. One electrode is a TC main terminal, and the other is a metal plate connected to a capacitor. The x-ray emitter is naturally pulsed at the Tesla coil frequency. Not a very high-current rectifier, but power is proportional to voltage, and voltage was very high. BTW, "radiant energy" was one of Tesla's names for x-rays.

bill beaty

Sat Mar 24 2007, 04:10AM

Banned on April 8th, 2007.
Registered Member #597 Joined: Thu Mar 22 2007, 03:33AM
Location: Seattle, WA
Posts: 16

> Yes, Tesla produced X-rays, and pretty well, too.

Should we start a separate thread about Tesla and x-ray effects?

> He is known to have invented a single electrode X-ray tube. But, as I said above, there is no evidence that he ever was able to use ionization from X-rays (or ultraviolet light for that matter) to direct discharges.

The evidence might very well be described in his 1892 lecture, in his section describing effects involving the "sensitive brush" vacuum bulb.

Now the following is partly some wild speculation, so you'll probably hate it. :)

Myself and the whole Tesla-coiler community assume that Tesla's 1892 lecture is describing something similar to a modern plasma globe such as those sold at Spencer's Gifts. Plasma streams wiggle around within the bulb. For some reason they're sensitive to a magnet. But something is screwy here. Tesla describes the initial plasma streamers, but then he next describes the wide fuzzy discharge and the phosphorescence of glass, effects which appear only at very low pressure and ones associated with x-ray production. He also describes what is now recognized as the ion-pumping process, where the falling pressure causes slow changes as the tube is operated over long periods. As pressure slowly falls, the plasma streamers go away, replaced by high-vaccum effects and glass phosphorescence.

But next some sort of "sensitive brush" makes its appearance. Impossible. If the pressure is as low as Tesla's description implies, he's operating the tube at a pressure well below that which produces plasma filaments. Now look closely at his final diagram, figure 16. The lines radiating from the central sphere pass through the glass envelope and out into the air. Perhaps this was a mistake, and Tesla didn't mean to depict the plasma streamers passing out into surrounding space. Or maybe he meant to depict the light from the plasma?

But if his crude drawing is accurate; if a glowing "sensitive brush" extends out into the air, then modern hindsight gives a rational explanation: an electron beam extends between the central glass sphere and the outer glass bulb, the bulb's glass surface is producing Bremstralung x-rays, and the discharge from the tesla coil is following the x-ray beam.

To me this suggests that someone needs to build one of these "sensitive brush" tubes, produce the various changes which Tesla describes, and see if it's merely a conventional "plasma globe."

Here's an interesting piece of art from the June 1919 issue of Electrical Experimenter magazine:

And here's a piece of artwork from an 1899 article on Tesla.

Behind Tesla there appears to be an oil-insulated Tesla coil with some sort of spotlight mounted on top. I suspect that this is a later, high power version of his "sensitive brush" tube. And here's a much later piece of Tesla art:

Do you detect a theme? Tesla sure was enamored of spotlights. If spotlights is what they are.

...

Mon Mar 26 2007, 11:09PM

Registered Member #56 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:02AM
Location: Southern Califorina, USA
Posts: 2445

I am not even going to get involved in this argument, but I think i speak for many of us when I say that 4hv generally stays away from anything that doesn't have a firm foundation in a widely accepted field. Sure, that will prevent us from making the next billion dollar invention, but that is they way we would rather live our lives.

So, if you want to speculate as to the secret history of Tesla, you will probably get a much better response if you take it somewhere else (powerlabs and amazing1 come to mind)

Michael W.

Tue Mar 27 2007, 12:15AM

Registered Member #50 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 04:07AM
Location: Vernon, B.C, Canada
Posts: 324

Both of which no longer have forums...

Eric

Tue Mar 27 2007, 01:26AM

Registered Member #69 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 07:42AM
Location:
Posts: 116

... wrote ...

So, if you want to speculate as to the secret history of Tesla, you will probably get a much better response if you take it somewhere else (powerlabs and amazing1 come to mind)

I don't see why that is necessary. There is a chatting board just for this type of thread. There's no crime in (informed) speculation. Just as long as it's not about 'unphysical' BS like free energy, magnetic monopoles, etc.

I think it'd be great if someone would test the xray tube on a TC idea to see if it really will change the shape, direction of discharge.

previous 1 2 3 next

Moderator(s): Chris Russell, Noelle, Alex, Tesladownunder, Dave Marshall, Dave Billington, Bjørn, Steve Conner, Wolfram, Kizmo, Mads Barnkob