Talk:Electrostatic generator

Untitled
I tried to improve the organization, by placing the Van de Graaff generator as a "modern generator", because the original idea used electronic excitation instead of friction of influence (although it can be built in those ways too). 146.164.26.90 13:21, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

There is a lot of information, but the article needs better organization. For examples, The note about the Van de Graaff generator should be on a particular section about modern electrostatic generators, as the original idea is not of a friction generator, although it can be built in that way. Lorente generator is a friction machine. The works of Felici should be added. Pseudoscience references should be removed. 146.164.26.90 12:55, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

(a) Reddi, you invest large amounts of your time, to add all these patent links. But is it a good idea? Do you know of any general discussion of this topic?

(b) Speaking of electrostatic generators as great classroom experiments, do you, or does anybody else, remember the two-dripping-bottles-spark-generator? I unfortunately don't even remember the name.

Pjacobi 08:31, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

(a) patent links? yes (atleast till the subarticles can be made to move them too ... and ... it good to know the history of the devices (patents give one record of historical lineage [not to mention the details of operation of certian devices] ...)) ... discussion? No ... i'll look around though if you want. (b)Lord kelvin had a water system that dripped IIRC. I'll come back if I find the name of it. Sincerely, JDR 16:25, 6 December 2005 (UTC) (PS., the thing is "Kelvin's Thunderstorm; Lord Kelvin's water-drop electrostatic generator" ... BTW, this device helped Kelvin develop some of his aether theories and knot theory IIRC.)


 * (a) Yeah, but patents come in wide range of qualities. Wouldn't call every patent illuminating. And even those patents, which are really factually interesting, tend to be written in really incomprehensive article language nowadays.
 * (b) Thanks!
 * Off topic: I really can't make my mind about you. You are very productive contributing to Wikipedia, but at some places you just drive me crazy. Still undecided what to say at RFAr.
 * Pjacobi 17:57, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

20/12/2005 Reddi appears to insist on the entry about the "Testatika" machine, that is a semi-religious device surrounded in mystery and pseudo-science, very different from the other machines, that are completely documented, easily understandable, and reproducible. All the informations about this device are repetitions of the same original text, with imaginary detais added. It was never reproduced or described in a way that makes sense.


 * Anon, read the damn article Testatika. It's a electrostatic machine, REGUARDLESS if it's "free energy", "over-unity", or what not (... these claims, as far as I can find, which the various replications have not confirmed). J. D. Redding 20:37, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Fringe science and devices
These generators have been used, sometimes inappropriately and with some controversy, to support various fringe science investigations. In 1911, George Samuel Piggott received a patent for a compact double machine enclosed within a pressurized box for his experiments concerning radiotelegraphy and "antigravity". Much later (in the 1960s), the Testatika was built by German engineer, Paul Suisse Bauman, and promoted by a Swiss community, the Methernithans. Testatika is an electromagnetic generator based on the 1889 Pidgeon electrostatic machine, said to produce "free energy" available directly from the environment and which cannot be depleted (so it is available in effectively unlimited quantity). 204.56.7.1 21:30, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Clarification and more elaboration is needed by someone well versed in the subject to explain the Related recent machines. I removed the inline request for non-deletion as well as corrected some grammatical mistakes.

Plasma Globe
Why is there a picture of a plasma globe on this article? The caption beneath it says '...a "plasma globe", that does not use static electricity)'. As pretty as they are, surely they are not relevant here since don't use static electricity? Kate (talk) 15:00, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
 * My vote as well that it is irrelevant to the subject of the article. Not everything that produces or uses high voltages is an electrostatic generator. The photo has been removed. Piperh (talk) 19:20, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

No cosmic virtues but the force of gravity
The article as it reads is unfair on Guericke. The sentence "It ... was not intended to produce electricity (rather cosmic virtues)" in particular is funny but conveys the wrong impression. Guericke explicitly says his globe produced "electric attraction". Guericke may have believed that gravity and electricity were the same or related, since previously he compared the force produced by his globe to that of gravity. The text of Guericke was in Latin and in Latin the word virtus has a different meaning than in the English word virtue. In Latin it means power or force. Guericke refers to the virtus conservativa, which he says produces what we call our sense of weight (gravitas). So it was his term for the power of gravity. That term, the force of gravity, had not been invented before and there was no better word for it but that was clearly what he meant by virtus conservativa. He says that it operates between the sun and planets and attracts bodies to the earth. That is a very different picture from saying that Guericke believed his globe produced "cosmic virtues". The meaning that phrase conveys in English is completely wrong. In a different place in that book, Guericke explicitly said that "the attraction of the sulphur globe, mentioned in the earlier chapter, is the same as electric attraction" after referring to Gilbert's work on electricity, which was the only previous major work on the subject. The relevant passages are translated into English in Heathcote's article, quoted as a reference. That sentence about the globe's purpose being that of producing cosmic virtues should be deleted or appropriately edited. Skamnelis (talk) 15:37, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 14:19, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Use for communication?
Why is it that the early machines like Hawksbees could not be used for communication over distance in the manner of the telegraph? Wires could be connected; that is how they charged the Leyden jar. So why not a really long wire? Perhaps a note could be added about this. Thanks LastDodo (talk) 16:02, 21 February 2020 (UTC)
 * I can't put my fingers on a reference right now but I suspect the problem is that these early electrostatic machines could source only a very small current. If you had a long wire, say between towns, most of the machine's capacity would be used up in charging and discharging the capacitance between the wire and the earth, and it would make signalling un-usably slow, apart from the problem of leakage current. "Electrostatic" telegraphs were demonstrated but they had short ranges, not suited for inter-city communication. We have a little more at Electrical telegraph. --Wtshymanski (talk) 17:41, 21 February 2020 (UTC)


 * The problem is that they use the wrong impedance, meaning the ratio of voltage to current (or voltage to charge, for electrostatic machines).
 * These machines produce a high voltage, and even quite a large energy, but they use very little charge, meaning they cannot sustain much current flow down a wire. A long wire would act as a capacitor (as does a Leyden jar), for which the relationship between capacity, charge and voltage is: $$C = Q / V$$ or $$V = Q / C$$ Such an 'electrostatic telegraph' could operate by a machine producing a flow of charge into the wire, then using a device such as an electroscope to detect the voltage at the far end of the wire. However the greater the capacity of the cable, the smaller the voltage on the cable, per unit of charge. The result: you put the charge in at one end, but the output isn't big enough to work the detector. Andy Dingley (talk) 18:53, 21 February 2020 (UTC)


 * This very problem manifested itself in under sea telegraph cables, most notably in the cables that linked the UK to the USA (actually Ireland to Newfoundland). The sheer length of the cable made the capacitance between the cable core and the sea water enormous. In addition, the core size meant it had a large series inductance. Dots were sent by applying a positive voltage to the sending end of the cable and dashes by a negative voltage. The inductance (but mainly the capacitance) ensured that from the receiving end a current slowly started to flow out of the end and when the voltage was removed, the current slowly decayed. Lord Thompson figured that once the current had been detected there was nothing to be gained by keeping the voltage applied. It was for this very application that he invented the mirror galvanometer which enabled the time to detect the dot or dash to kept as short as possible.


 * As an irrelevant (at least for this discussion) but interesting aside Lord Thompson, the chief engineer and Doctor Whitehouse, the chief electrician had very different ideas on how the cable should be worked. Thompson had realised the detection of the tiny current was all that was required, but Whitehouse believed that the voltage applied to the sending end should be as large as possible (like several thousand volts). Since the two men were at opposite ends of the cable and could only communicate via the cable, the differing approaches meant that little communication actually took place. Whitehouse's doctorate was in medicine and any electrical knowledge that he had was self taught. One of the things that he failed to teach himself was the effect of high voltages on insulation not designed to withstand it. Whitehouse eventually destroyed the cable after about a month of erratic operation (though there were issues with the fact that the cable was made in two halves by two different manufacturers who managed to make the two halves mirror images of each other). RFenergy (talk) 15:33, 22 February 2020 (UTC)


 * Thank you for the comprehensive reply. As I understand you the answer is 'with Hawksbee machines you would not be able to detect anything at the other end of the wire'. I wonder, though, how long would an (18th century) wire have to be in order that you could not detect anything with an (18th century) detector? I am surprised nobody at the time tried this - or perhaps they did? LastDodo (talk) 16:29, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion
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Article issues

 * There are fourteen entries in the "External links". Three seems to be an acceptable number and of course, everyone has their favorite to add for four. The problem is that none is needed for article promotion.


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