mdlbear: blue fractal bear with text "since 2002" (Default)
mdlbear ([personal profile] mdlbear) wrote in [personal profile] kengr 2020-08-04 12:21 am (UTC)

And of course there were spark-gap transmitters as well. Other amusing items:

  • mechanical rectifiers: basically a DPDT switch driven by a 3600RM motor.
  • flywheel "capacitor" (for experiments involving sending enormous currents through a 1-turn copper coil -- you get a really high magnetic field for a few milliseconds before the coil either melts or explodes. Or both) The one I heard about was a 16-ton concrete flywheel; I don't remember the RPMs, but it took several days to spin up and stopped in a quarter of a turn.
  • magnetic-core logic. That's another that will stand up to pretty serious doses of radiation, but I don't think it would handle EMP very well.

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