Excerpt: ...from the dynamos are commonly of stout copper insulated with air like telegraph wires, or cables coated with india-rubber or gutta-percha, and buried underground or suspended overhead. The branch and lamp conductors or "leads" are finer wires of copper, insulated with india-rubber or silk. The current of an installation or section of one is made and broken at will by means of a "switch" or key turned by hand. It is simply a series of metal contacts insulated from each other and connected to the conductors, with ...
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Excerpt: ...from the dynamos are commonly of stout copper insulated with air like telegraph wires, or cables coated with india-rubber or gutta-percha, and buried underground or suspended overhead. The branch and lamp conductors or "leads" are finer wires of copper, insulated with india-rubber or silk. The current of an installation or section of one is made and broken at will by means of a "switch" or key turned by hand. It is simply a series of metal contacts insulated from each other and connected to the conductors, with a sliding contact connected to the dynamo which travels over them. To guard against an excess of current on the lamps, "cut-outs," or safety-fuses, are inserted between the switch and the conductors, or at other leading points in the circuit. They are usually made of short slips of metal foil or wire, which melt or deflagrate when the current is too strong, and thus interrupt the circuit. There is some prospect of the luminosity excited in a vacuum tube by the alternating currents from a dynamo or an induction coil becoming an illuminant. Crookes has obtained exquisitely beautiful glows by the phosphorescence of gems and other minerals in a vacuum bulb like that shown in figure 69, where A and B are the metal electrodes on the outside of the glass. A heap of diamonds from various countries emit red, orange, yellow, green, and blue rays. Ruby, sapphire, and emerald give a deep red, crimson, or lilac phosphorescence, and sulphate of zinc a magnificent green glow. Tesla has also shown that vacuum bulbs can be lit inside without any outside connection with the current, by means of an apparatus like that shown in figure 70, where D is an alternating dynamo, C a condenser, P S the primary and secondary coils of a sparking transformer, T T two metal sheets or plates, and SB the exhausted bulbs. The alternating or see-saw current in this case charges the condenser and excites the primary coil P, while the induced current in the secondary coil 5...
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