Nikola Tesla Books
CHAPTER TEN 'What is so special about Tesla's design?" I asked. 'Well, let's 's say that a normal transformer would simply break down if you tried to operate it at such a high voltage. Sparks would begin to break out between the coils, the insulation would disintegrate, the whole thing just couldn't work at really high voltages. You see, the voltage differences between each of the turns in the coil would be so high that the transformer would just keep discharging.' 'How did Tesla get over that?' I asked. 'He used an extremely clever design. Tesla took account of everything, the shape and geometry of the coil, the thickness of the wire, the exact space between each loop of the coil. He was able to distribute the high voltage swings exactly how he wanted them. He arranged so that the biggest swing in the voltage would occur right at the top of the coil and not between the wires in the coil. Do you remember that in one of his designs he had a ball on top of the tower? Well, the whole thing makes use of resonance effects so that the biggest voltage swings occur right on the ball and he completely avoids discharges and insulation breakdown.' 'So this means that Tesla's design would have to be followed exactly,' I added. 'Yes, that's what Tim Richardson found. I don't think the transmitter would work otherwise. But let me give you an example from my own work. You see, when lightning strikes a power line you get a surge of high voltage and this runs along the transmission line until it hits a transformer or a circuit-breaker. Now, when a high-voltage surge reaches a transformer the result is a blow-out. You get a power failure followed by expensive repairs. Of course, electrical engineers build safety devices but people have also tried to design transformers which could withstand a sudden surge without breaking down altogether. The idea is to design the geometry of the coils in the transformer so that the biggest swings in voltage occur only in the outer layer. The design is pretty complicated and the whole thing has to be done on a computer. There are a lot of equations to be solved.' 'I see; does the whole thing work?" 'Yes. If you get the distance between the coils right and your geometry correct, then such a transformer can stand up to a power surge. But this was exactly what Tesla did in the 1890s. He built a transformer which 90
