Stoneridge Engineering Home |
Test equipment used by Tesla
Posted by Paul Heimbach on 11/10/2006, 4:15 pm
|
Re: Test equipment used by Tesla
Posted by Bert Hickman on 11/10/2006, 5:54 pm, in reply to "Test equipment used by Tesla" Hi Paul, That's quite and interesting question! Although Tesla's notes and patents provide fairly good descriptions of the equipment he designed and used during various experiments, there is a distinct lack of specific information about the measuring equipment that he may have actually used in his lab. However, we can make some "educated guesses". Frequency and phase relationships (at least from from electromechanical equipment) can be determined given a knowledge of armature and stator pole geometries and the rotational speed. Inductance and capacitance can be measured using an AC source to drive an AC bridge in conjunction with laboratory standard L and C references. AC bridges were well understood and were in common use during the late 1800's. Once L and C were measured, frequency of spark gap LC circuits could then be estimated. I am not aware of any direct phase or field strength measurements made by Tesla. Some of the history of equipment and techniques for measuring L and C via AC bridges (at low and acoustic frequencies) are discussed in the book, "Alternating Current Bridge Methods: For the Measurement of Inductance, Capacitance, and Effective Resistance at Low and Acoustic Frequencies", by B. Hague, Isaac Pitman and Sons, (many editions available). Bert
|
Re: Test equipment used by Tesla
Posted by Paul Heimbach on 11/10/2006, 6:35 pm, in reply to "Re: Test equipment used by Tesla" Thank you for the information. There is a lack of any information in this area on the internet....at least as far as my searches go. I guess we have all been spoiled by the availability of a wide variety of sophisticated test and measuring equipment. It is amazing what Tesla, Edison and others accomplished with just a few rudimentary tools. Makes you wonder if they had a better fundamental understanding of the underlying principles since they had to deduce the results. Paul --Previous Message--
|