Re: Carnegie Science Center

• To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
• Subject: Re: Carnegie Science Center
• From: Richard Hull <hullr-at-whitlock-dot-com>
• Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1996 10:12:26 -0800

Tesla List wrote:
> 
> >From loren-at-pixar-dot-comWed Oct 30 22:00:13 1996
> Date: Wed, 30 Oct 96 17:09 PST
> From: Loren Carpenter <loren-at-pixar-dot-com>
> To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
> Subject: Carnegie Science Center
> 
> Anyone of you experienced coilers ever get to Pittsburgh?
> 
> On the 4th floor of the Carnegie Science Center they have a ~10'
> coil built in 1911 by a student at Carnegie Tech (now CMU).
> 
> I was there last week & hung around till they fired it up.
> 
> It was pathetically out of tune.
> 
> The "discharger" was a ~8-10" brass ball with 2 4-6" spikes on
> the opposite sides.  All it could do was throw 2-3' purple streamers.
> It's inside a big steel cage, and 8' arcs would be perfectly safe.
> 
> It really needs some expert help.
> 
> I know the director of the planetarium (Martin Ratcliffe), and if
> you tell him I sent you, it might help get you access.
> 
>       Loren Carpenter     |      Imagination is the true ground of being.
>       loren-at-pixar-dot-com     |


This was the old Kauffman coil and has resided in Pittsburgh since the 
30's.  Its big and inefficient by today's standards, but deserves to 
stand as a monument to early coiling history.  It was written up 
extensively in an early issue of TCBA NEWS.  Believe it or not, it has 
been completely revamped with a modern spark gap and high energy 
hippotronics discharge capacitors!

Richard Hull

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