Re: TESLA - HV fence protecting his property? His lab burned down?
Steve Conner, Fri Feb 23 2007, 05:09PM

There is no mention of either an electric fence or a fire destroying Tesla's lab in the Colorado Springs Notes. He was never run out of town that we know of either. He did manage to burn down another lab in Houston Street in New York, I think.

Re: TESLA - HV fence protecting his property? His lab burned down?
Hazmatt_(The Underdog), Fri Feb 23 2007, 07:52PM

Now I wasn't able to read the whole book because I was browsing the library, but I came across a book that I think was "Man out of Time". And the fire I know he started was at the generation plant. He was over-drawing a generator during an experiment and caused one of the generators to 'melt down'.
If you want to get more information I would suggest checking out the book.

Re: TESLA - HV fence protecting his property? His lab burned down?
ragnar, Sat Feb 24 2007, 01:35AM

Err, was it a matter of 'overdrawing' or instead high frequency currents breaking down the insulation within the generator..?

I've never, until now in this thread, heard of Tesla and electric fences in the same context.... though it really wouldn't surprise me!

Unlike Einstein, methinks Tesla was no pacifist (at least, not towards the end of his life?)

Re: TESLA - HV fence protecting his property? His lab burned down?
Steve Conner, Sat Feb 24 2007, 11:54AM


from "The Problem Of Increasing Human Energy" Besides, Tesla's weapons were so impractical that they would put an end to war pretty quickly, once you tried using them and got beaten. Even so, though, there's nothing to stop you being both a pacifist and a designer of apocalyptic super-weapons. Read about Einstein's involvement with the atom bomb, or Alfred Nobel's stable high explosives.

BTW, to the best of our knowledge, that generator was destroyed by high frequency kickbacks.

Re: TESLA - HV fence protecting his property? His lab burned down?
bill beaty, Thu Mar 22 2007, 05:08AM

> And the fire I know he started was at the generation plant. He was over-drawing a generator during an experiment and caused one of the generators to 'melt down'.

Generators on fire? I had an odd thought. See below. Pure speculation of course. Very cool if it's true...

In Colorado, Tesla had been using big x-ray tubes to convert his TC's discharges into a long narrow "rays" of lightning. The x-rays ionize the air, straightening out the discharge and probably making it silent, dim, and much longer. If aimed at a distant tesla coil of the same frequency, it acts like a power line. Nobody knows what distance it might work across. Yards? Miles? With electron-runaway effect kicking in at above 1MV, it might have been miles. Which was probably Tesla's reason for moving out into isolated farmlands.

It occurred to me to wonder, what would happen if he aimed his "power line" experimental generator upwards? The conductive path might intercept energy from the natural sky voltage. Well, since the x-ray tube is automatically a rectifier, and it only puts out x-rays on each half cycle, it would turn the conductive beam on and off at the frequency of the tesla coil. Which would both act like a huge vertical antenna, but also chop any received DC. It would convert the naturally occuring "vertical sky current" into AC pulses like a Thyratron oscillator (a gigantic NE-2 oscillator. Sort of.) Which would then *drive* the tesla coil secondary, feeding in a low current but at very high voltage. And the secondary would keep that x-ray tube running. The tesla coil becomes and energy source by chopping the sky-voltage at high frequency and then applying it to a resonant tank circuit. And if the received energy was great enough, the tesla coil would start running by itself, even if the primary circuit was shut down. The tesla coil voltage might rise to a different value, since it's not being run by a power plant anymore. The main power switch has no effect. To stop it, the secondary coil's ground would have to be disconnected. It might even pump far more RF back into the power lines than it otherwise would, arcing across the big power switches, burning out any filters, and obviously might run for many minutes before finally being stopped (perhaps with a hatchet.)

I knew about Tesla's xray powerline experiment. Burning generators at the power company? The above idea assembled itself in my head, all at once. Holy crap. But if Tesla had this happen, had discovered that large Tesla coils could be an energy source, he'd have written it down, right? Carefully explained it? Or just kept it safe in his head for the rest of his life? What would YOU have done?

Tesla laboratory fires, indeed!






TESLA W/POSSIBLE TC-MOUNTED XRAY TUBE IN THE BACKGROUND

Re: TESLA - HV fence protecting his property? His lab burned down?
ragnar, Thu Mar 22 2007, 07:55AM

Where did the electricity go? CIA has SILENCED TESLA, maybe POSSIBLE CONNECTION to AREA 51... heiroglyphics, egyptian contribution...? Xray powerlines... earth's crust!

Energy from... natural sky voltage **gasp**

Get outta here! If I were a moderator, I'd probably be busy kicking* your arse. Unless you fully explain the following statements, I'm going to go ahead and tar and feather it anyway.

#1 ...Tesla had been using big x-ray tubes...
#2 ...The x-rays ionize the air, straightening out the discharge and probably making it silent, dim, and much longer...
#3 ...If aimed at a distant tesla coil of the same frequency, it acts like a power line...
#4 ...Nobody knows what distance it might work across...
#5 ...With electron-runaway effect kicking in...
#6 ...The conductive path might intercept energy from the natural sky voltage...
#7 ...it would turn the conductive beam on and off at the frequency of the tesla coil... (referring specifically to 'the conductive beam', here.
#8 ...act like a huge vertical antenna, but also chop any received DC...
#9 ...would then *drive* the tesla coil secondary...
#10 ...And the secondary would keep that x-ray tube running...
#11 ...The tesla coil becomes and energy source...
#12 ...by chopping the sky-voltage at high frequency and then applying it to a resonant tank circuit...
#13 ...the tesla coil would start running by itself...
#14 ...The tesla coil voltage might rise to a different value, since it's not being run by a power plant anymore...
#15 ...To stop it, the secondary coil's ground would have to be disconnected...
#16 ...I knew about Tesla's xray powerline experiment...
#17 ...Burning generators at the power company... (referring specifically to what ACTUALLY caused the generators to fail, not being overcurrent)

That will do.

*banning

Re: TESLA - HV fence protecting his property? His lab burned down?
Hazmatt_(The Underdog), Thu Mar 22 2007, 09:23AM

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. 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. Edison had similar problems achieving a high vacuum for his experiments with light bulbs. 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.
I have a book on the subject by Fred Rosebury, and you can check that out if you can find it (its been out of print for some time now).
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.

I haven't read anything about low pressure mercury vapor rectifiers in Tesla's notes either, although he was playing with a lot of evacuated high frequency discharge lamps, so I'm not really how far this goes.

Vapor rectifier...possibly
High power x-ray tubes, I think that's probably a bit on the far-fetched side.

Re: TESLA - HV fence protecting his property? His lab burned down?
Tom540, Thu Mar 22 2007, 04:16PM

Plasma,
Christ relax lol. He's new to the forum, go easy on him. That paragraph lost me about 1/3 the way down though and does sound a a tad looney.

Re: TESLA - HV fence protecting his property? His lab burned down?
Steve Conner, Thu Mar 22 2007, 05:29PM

Yeah, blackplasma, this isn't just any old tin foil hat freak, it's Bill Beatty! He practically invented the tin foil hat. Be nice to him.

Bill: As a moderator I have to warn you that 4hv.org is a nest of hardline skeptics. We see ourselves as crusaders against free energy and conspiracy theories. And as far as we know, the X-ray and ultraviolet stuff is all complete BS. I've personally read the Colorado Springs Notes several times, and there is no mention of any experiments with X-ray or UV directed discharges. To get an idea of how mean and joyless we are, you might like to read our wiki on pseudoscience and free energy

BTW, I don't buy the one about the "Other Secret Colorado Springs Notes"

Re: TESLA - HV fence protecting his property? His lab burned down?
Coronafix, Thu Mar 22 2007, 11:42PM

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.

Re: TESLA - HV fence protecting his property? His lab burned down?
Steve Conner, Fri Mar 23 2007, 12:24AM

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.

Re: TESLA - HV fence protecting his property? His lab burned down?
Coronafix, Fri Mar 23 2007, 12:52AM


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.

Re: TESLA - HV fence protecting his property? His lab burned down?
CM, Fri Mar 23 2007, 04:00PM

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 CM

Re: TESLA - HV fence protecting his property? His lab burned down?
Steve Conner, Fri Mar 23 2007, 04:16PM

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.

Re: TESLA - HV fence protecting his property? His lab burned down?
bill beaty, Sat Mar 24 2007, 02:10AM

> 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.

Re: TESLA - HV fence protecting his property? His lab burned down?
bill beaty, Sat Mar 24 2007, 04:10AM

> 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.

Re: TESLA - HV fence protecting his property? His lab burned down?
..., Mon Mar 26 2007, 11:09PM

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)

Re: TESLA - HV fence protecting his property? His lab burned down?
Michael W., Tue Mar 27 2007, 12:15AM

Both of which no longer have forums...

Re: TESLA - HV fence protecting his property? His lab burned down?
Eric, Tue Mar 27 2007, 01:26AM


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.

Re: TESLA - HV fence protecting his property? His lab burned down?
ragnar, Tue Mar 27 2007, 07:00AM

I'm still waiting for clarification on what the hell the 'natural sky voltage is' -- phrases like that turn people completely off a thread.

Please would someone 'in the know' elaborate?

Re: TESLA - HV fence protecting his property? His lab burned down?
Coronafix, Tue Mar 27 2007, 08:52AM

I'd say he means the potential difference between the earth and the ionosphere, or anywhere "up higher".

Re: TESLA - HV fence protecting his property? His lab burned down?
CM, Tue Mar 27 2007, 01:31PM

Goldsphere, exacty correct. Natural Sky Voltage is a well established and documented effect. Put a suitable large conductor up in the air about 100 feet or more and it will be measureably effected by several forms of energy, 1) ions continuously produced by a number of natural sources, 2) triboelectric effect, 3) distant lightning pulses, 4) solar flares (a bit more complex to explain) and other forms of energy. Estimates vary from document to document, but general rule of thumb is 100-300 volts per meter above ground level, but the conductor must be high up in the air. As we speak, I continue a several year experiment with 3500 feet of custom-alloy conductor in the air at 130 feet altitude, believe me, you don't want to touch the antenna output even during fair weather days or nights, the hv discharge will knock you on you arss. In my early research, I seem to remember reading that Tesla patented or mentioned collecting electrical potential via raising a simple conductor in the air. Tesla history buffs may be able to comment on that better than I. CM

Re: TESLA - HV fence protecting his property? His lab burned down?
bill beaty, Wed Mar 28 2007, 05:57AM

Sorry, I hadn't before encountered the ban on "double posting." If ten people ask questions and then go silent, is a gigantic single message the accepted response? And what problem is this rule supposed to cure?

"Natural Sky Voltage" is the Earth's vertical e-field, the Earth/Ionosphere cavity voltage, also called the "clear weather voltage." It's been recognized since the time of Franklin. If it was possible to make a solid electrical connection to the ionosphere, the estimated output is at least hundreds of megawatts. Not infinite, more like a nuke plant's worth or two. The ionospheric capacitor is kept charged by thunderstorms worldwide, with a time constant of a few seconds. Here is a physicist who managed to extract about a twentith of a horsepower by using a thin wire antenna lifted by a small weather balloon, then using it to power corona-motors: staff.washington.edu/wbeaty/emotpopsci.pdf (Grab it quick, I can't keep it on my staff page that long.)

Simple vertical high-volt antennas in theory can collect far more than a few watts DC, especially if they employ "plasma contactors" at the top (such as radioactive sources, wads of sharp needles, etc.) That way the entire antenna charges up to the same potential present in air at the antenna tip. Of course the behavior of an xray-ionized vertical path acting as a DC HV antenna is unknown.

Other stuff:

"Tesla had been using big x-ray tubes..."
See page 29 of Colorado Springs Notes. Other hobbyists involved with Tesla history think that these were prelim designs, and his final 1-electrode tube design employed a massive aluminum hemisphere-electrode with a flat polished front (see fig 4 in Tesla's "radiant energy" patent.) This does make sense, since a massive electrode spreads surface heat uniformly if run at high power. Modern 2-electrode x-ray tubes use that same trick, but with a copper block.

"If aimed at a distant tesla coil of the same frequency, it acts like a power line..."
We don't discuss it much, but one of Tesla's main inventions was the stepup/stepdown pair. Put some transformers on either end of a power line, and you can make the wire thinner. If you employ a really high step-up, the wire can be like a filament. Even higher stepup and you can use an air hose at low pressure (which appears in a Tesla patents.) Tesla's original wireless concepts are quite obviously based on the next step: with astronomically high step-up, the power line can be replaced by a low-value capacitor; a pair of widely separated electrode spheres for example. Tesla's patent 645576 is exactly this, and not a radio transmitter/receiver. In other words... the original purpose of a Tesla Coil is not to make lightning bolts. Instead it's supposed to be one of a pair tuned to the same frequency, with some sort of power transmission line between them (including thin wire, glowing air columns, or just empty space filled with displacement current.) Dump kilowatts into one TC primary, then connect kilowatts worth of motors and light bulbs to the other TC primary. Each watt flowing between the two coils is a megavolt at a microamp.

Another bit: look up "electron runaway" effect. With power supplies at or above 1MV, electrons are relativistic, and if a fast electron strikes an atom, it releases more fast electrons. Additionally, fast electrons have much smaller collision cross-section with air molecules, so the air acts far more transparent than it does with under-1MeV electrons (giving meters-long electron trajectories at one atmosphere, rather than cm-long trajectories.) With strong e-fields in air, these fast electrons can accelerate to much higher energies than any "normal" electrons which keep hitting air molecules and having to start over. Once an avalanche discharge contains fast electrons, it can grow disproportionally long. It's even longer because new fast-electrons are being created at the far end. This suggests that if we smoothly raise the operating voltage of a huge TC, then at some point the discharge will suddenly change character as the "electron runaway" physics becomes significant, with electrons suddenly penetrating far longer through air. It might affect the plasma streamers, but it certainly would affect the corona glow. Anyone building some equipment which produces air discharges up above 10MV might stumble upon this stuff, and I spectulate that Tesla may have done so. It *might* explain the multi-layer glow discharge seen in Tesla's illustrations of large HV electrodes in air. And if Tesla was already workind on long columnar glow discharges using x-rays, then when his equipment was run significantly above 1MV, the length of such glow-discharges would expand far more than the rise in voltage should produce. How much longer? It's scary to speculate. Imagine a military project where a modern linear accelerator is powered with a huge Tesla coil. How far could a beta-particle beam extend through air? Miles? But Tesla was apparently doing just this task at Colorado Springs, but seeing it as glow discharge, rather than as "linear particle accelerator" which of course wasn't invented yet.

But if he actually worked with such things, he didn't write it down.

When looking at the Colorado Springs Notes, I see something resembling my own inventor notebook: it's a strange legal object intended to hold up in court. It's for documenting invention priority. It's very definitely not just a private diary or a notebook of inventions, and the owner makes careful decisions about what goes in. It's sort of like grandstanding; writing for the benefit of some future jury in a possible patent battle. And like patents themselves, it's expected *not* to be secret. If Tesla wanted to keep trade secrets, even conceal little trivial things, then he would do the normal thing and very carefully AVOID recording it in the inventor's notebook. Secrecy of course has consequences, and if another inventor independantly was working on anything that Tesla was excluding those notebooks, then in any future court case the other guy would probably win. (Which may have been what happened with the discovery of x-rays: if Tesla intentionally kept no records, then he had no legally-acceptable documentation to show that he had priority over Roentgen.)

Actually, I sometimes wondered why Tesla wrote anything down ever, since he had a photographic memory. But in the case of the inventor's notebook, the purpose of writing is obvious: protecting his backside. If he lacked records of the invention development process to present to the court, he'd almost certainly lose any patent priority battle. So... there's probably no "secret CS notes," and the CS notes wouldn't exist in the first place if Tesla wasn't carefully declaring priority for those inventions. As Tesla said after a break-in at his NY city apartment, he has nothing the idea-theives can take, since his most valuable inventions are stored only in his head.

About accidentally powering a Tesla coil secondary using the sky-voltage and glow discharge... I made a crude model using a 470K resistor and a chain of NE-2s to model the x-ray ionized air column, and a grounded parallel-resonant LC circuit to model the TC secondary: 25mH toroid, 0.02uF, 7KHz. It needs a 0.002 capacitor to ground as air-column capacitance connected to the link between 470K and neon. Sure enough you can get it to oscillate by applying 130V DC. But it pulses at weird frequencies. And sometimes it won't self-start, but needs a voltage spike to start the oscillation. Very unpredictable behavior, almost biological. It tends to fire the NE-2s, then ring for four or more cycles while the capacitve part discharges and the voltage across the NE-2s rises again. When oscillation starts, the neons go almost dark. I managed to get pure 7Vpp sine waves out of it. Sort of like a neon relaxion oscillator, but acting as a sine wave source.

Re: TESLA - HV fence protecting his property? His lab burned down?
Hazmatt_(The Underdog), Wed Mar 28 2007, 07:13AM

One of the major reasons we don't see any X-ray related inferences in the CSN is because the majority of the text (maybe 95% of it) is not from Tesla, but from his assistant.

I checked out the CSN today to go over what you're talking about to make sure that I could find no inferences to directed energy, because I had remembered seeing nothing of that in the CSN the first 4 times I poured through it, and I still have yet to see any hint of directed energy experiments.

As far as I can tell, page 29 has the one occurence of the discharge tubes that produce "powerful rays". Other citations refer to tuning and identification of a tuned system via discharge tube or Giessler tube, or lamp, but nothing out of the ordinary.

I respectfully have a huge 'bug up my A**' about your claims, as thoughtful and credible they may be, I remain a skeptic. I would side with you unambigously, but I think the inferences and conclusions you're reacing are based on too much information for the given time. I just haven't seen enough to support the claim.

I wouldn't mind reading Tesla's lectures though, if you're able to post them or direct a link somewhere.

Matt

Re: TESLA - HV fence protecting his property? His lab burned down?
Steve Conner, Wed Mar 28 2007, 09:40AM

OK, here goes.

The rule against double posting is to prevent bumping, because we don't like bumping.

My main objection to this whole line of discussion is that particles that cause ionisation, even when launched with very high energy, tend not to go far in air: see this picture. Sure, these are probably protons or deuterons, not electrons, but would electrons really go that much further? X-ray photons might travel far, but would they ionize enough to direct a discharge? I don't believe so (did you ever smell ozone or NOx when getting a medical or dental X-ray?) but that is just a personal opinion which would be testable by experiment, so I encourage further discussion of it.

By the same token, Bill's "crude model" of Tesla's alleged experiment is all well and good, except there is no evidence that the X-rays could ionize enough air to make a column of it conduct. I personally think they couldn't, so a better model of the "ionized" air column would be a piece of dry string.

Tesla's wireless power system was debunked to my satisfaction by Paul Nicholson: He argues very convincingly that Tesla was wrong and it could never work with useful efficiency over a useful distance. It would be kilowatts in, picowatts out, the same efficiency as we observe with ordinary radio transmitters and receivers.

If the CSN was a legal document, or written by Tesla's assistant, how come it contains pages of lyrical waxings about the quality of the moonlight in Colorado?

Re: TESLA - HV fence protecting his property? His lab burned down?
Dr. Shark, Wed Mar 28 2007, 05:23PM

Wow, of all the free-energy types and other whackos that have joined the board recently Bill is the only one that I am genuinely happy to have around. Welcome to the board, Bill!

I can very well imagine x-rays ionizing the air, since it is pretty well know that UV does it. Ever smelled a powerfull laser flashtube after going off? Oh, and what about the easily verified claim that Marx-Generators syncronize their firing by ionizing the gaps with UV?
also backs this up, but it might not be considered a reliable source here, in this nest of skeptics...

Anyway, the real question is, how would Tesla have collimated the output of an x-ray tube? AFAIK this is totally impossible. And why the f*** would anyone in his right mind use a spark as an energy transmission line, I can hardly imagine anything lossier...

Re: TESLA - HV fence protecting his property? His lab burned down?
ragnar, Wed Mar 28 2007, 09:44PM

My apologies, Bill -- I shall kindly remove my slipper from your arse. Thanks for your explanation

Re: TESLA - HV fence protecting his property? His lab burned down?
Bjørn, Thu Mar 29 2007, 12:03AM

I think we have gotten as far as we can on the topic, if anyone can dig up photographs of a HV fence or the burning lab we can reopen the thread.