[Antennas] Tesla antenna?

Sat, 8 Feb 2003 10:05:16 -0600

West Hartford, CT? Seems to me I heard of some other radio experimenters
there.
Dave W9LYA
What wrought doG hath?
On Sat, 8 Feb 2003 06:59:55 -0500 Haines Brown <[email protected]>
writes:
> I regret that I don't recall anything about Tesla's antenna for
> transatlantic transmission, but my sense is that it involved hugh
> towers with a wire strung between them. Being a developer of high
> frequency resonant circuits, I can't imagine he would have merely 
> put
> up a long wire.
>> I grew up in Manhattan, which still ran on DC thanks to Edison. 
> When
> TV came in, we had to get an alternator to convert the DC to AC. I
> don't recall when Manhattan went over to AC, but my vague sense is
> that it was around the end of WWII. Anyone know for sure?
>> In order to promote his DC (generated by burning coal on a ship 
> tied
> up to a dock in Manhattan?), Edison went on a road show, 
> travelleling
> from town to town, connecting stray dogs to Tesla's AC. When the 
> dog
> fried dramatically, Edison could say, see, Tesla's approach is much
> too dangerous!
>> This created such an impression that the US adopted the electric 
> chair
> as its means of execution. Of course, Edison was right that 
> 60-cycle
> AC was really bad for you, but the Westinghouse approach (AC 
> generated
> at Niagara Falls with the help of Tesla) prevailed for obvious 
> reasons.
>> Tesla was not the only one brought over by Edison and exploited for
> their inventive genius. I've heard it said that most of Edison's
> inventions were actually developed by others and that Edison is more 
> a
> prototype capitalist entrepreneur than inventor.
>> When I was a young, a friend and I built a hugh tesla coil using 
> one
> of those cardboard tubes for storing rugs around which to turn the
> secondary, an old x-ray transformer, and a heavy copper tubing 
> primary
> that we tried to make watercooled (can't remember if we succeeded). 
> We
> tested it by creating big arcs and calling up someone in another 
> town
> to see they could hear our signal. The towns were Windsor and West
> Hartford Connecticut. Although we perhaps deserve credit for 
> inventing
> d band communications, it was a good thing the FCC was not much on
> the ball in those days, or we would have gotten into real trouble!
>> Incidentally, there are some biographies of Tesla that make for 
> some
> good reading.
>> Haines Brown KB1GRM
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