Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 63.djvu/212

208 insulating oil. But whatever advantage may accrue from using oil as the dielectric in which the spark discharge takes place, when carrying out simple laboratory experiments on Hertzian waves, there is no advantage in the case of wireless telegraphy. The Rhigi discharger was, therefore, soon discarded. If discharges having large quantity are passed through oil, it is rapidly decomposed or charred, and ceases to retain the special insulating and self-restoring character which is necessary in the medium in which an oscillating spark is formed. The conditions when the discharges of large condensers are passed between spark balls are entirely different from those when the quantity of the spark, or to put it in more exact language, the current passing, is very small. In the case of Hertzian experiments, it is necessary, as shown by Hertz, to maintain a high state of polish on the spark balls when they are employed for the production of short waves of small energy, but when we are dealing with large quantities of energy at each discharge, those methods which succeed for laboratory experiments are perfectly impracticable. The conditions necessary to be fulfilled by a discharger for use in Hertzian wave telegraphy are that the surfaces shall maintain a constant condition and not be fused or eaten away by the spark, and, next, that the medium in which the discharge takes place shall not be decomposed by the passage of the spark, but shall maintain the property of giving way suddenly when a certain critical pressure is reached, and passing instantly from a condition in which it is a very perfect insulator to one in which it is a very good conductor; and, thirdly, that on the cessation of the discharge, the medium shall immediately restore itself to its original condition.

When using the ordinary ten-inch induction coil, and when the capacity charged by it does not exceed a small faction of a microfarad, it is quite sufficient to employ brass or steel balls separated by a certain distance in air, at the ordinary pressure, as the arrangement of the discharger. When, however, we come to deal with the discharges of very large condensers, at high electromotive forces, then it is necessary to have special arrangements to prevent the destruction of the surfaces between which the spark passes, or their continual alteration, and many devices have been invented for this purpose. The author has devised an arrangement which fulfils the above conditions very perfectly for use in large power stations, but the details of this can not be made public at the present time.