textfiles/science/referenc

Ok, I have been compiling all the sources of Tesla coil info I have:
(updated Jan 10, 1995)

Sources for Books and Computer Programs on Theory and Design:

Tesla Book Company
P.O. Box 121873
Chula Vista, CA 91912
800-398-2056

Lots of titles+IBM compatible software mixed with a bunch of fringe science 
stuff. I list some of the serious titles below...

International Tesla Society, Inc.
P.O. Box 5636
Colorado Springs, CO 80931
719-475-0918 voice
719-475-0582 fax

Lots of overlap with the Tesla Book Co.. I bought my books from here 
originally. They also have a museum and a yearly conference dealing with 
all subjects dealing with Tesla. Sell video tapes from the International 
Tesla Symposium. Of note: look for tapes from the Corum brothers and From 
Bill Wystock these are the real thing, not the "fringe" stuff. Also look 
for new books/tapes on the TESLA MAGNIFIER. This this the 3 coil version of 
the tesla coil (primary, secondary(resonant or nonresonant), magnifier (
resonant)) which tesla experimented with at Colorado Springs. It is 
more efficent than an ordinary 2 coil system because priamry-secondary 
coupling can be much tighter.

Lindsay's Technical Books
Lindsay Publications, INC
PO Box 538, Bradley IL 60915
815-935-5353

Really cool catalog on all sorts of bizzare techie stuff-you should get a 
catalog just for the entertainment value! Anyway, much of the Tesla stuff 
is reprints or compilations of old material which is not generally 
availible at most libraries. Interesting stuff but perhaps not as useful as 
the newer books. They now have the books by Robert Iannini and Gordon 
McComb (see below). They have Tesla Coil design software by Walt Noon 
(I haven't personally seen it although Rickard Quick says he helped Walt 
develop it) and a couple of small books on building coils. Also, you can 
get Tesla's "Lectures, Patents, and Researches"...

Recent update here:
Lindsay now has the "Tesla Coil Builder's Guide to the Colorado Springs 
Notes" by Richard Hull of the Tesla Coil Builders of Richmond(Va) (TCBOR).
For those unfamiliar with the CSN, they were Telsa's notes of expreiments 
done during his stay at Colorado Springs. HE developed many of his ideas on 
MAGNIFIER design there. The CSN are not particularly useful to the hobbiest 
so Hull wrote some notes which clarify many points of detail. He back up 
many of his statements with results of impressive work done by the TCBOR. 
Many of the TCBOR's are shown in excellent photographs of thier standard 
coil and many different magnifier designs. A MUST HAVE book! About $20.

John H. Couture
10823 New Salem Point
San Diego, CA 92126

Computer Design Program and Manuals for tesla coils. I don't have the 
program, so I can't comment on it. More on the book below.

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Other Sources of Information:

Tesla Coil Builder's Association
Harry Goldman
3 Amy Lane
Queensbury, NY 12804
518-792-1003

TCBA publishes a newsletter 4x a year @$24/year. 
Information on theory, design, and construction of tesla coils.
Also has trade/sale section for those hard to find parts: high voltage 
transformers and capacitors. There are ocasional updates from Tesla Coil 
Builders Clubs like the one in Virginia (TCBOR) which is doing some 
fantastic work on Tesla's "extra" coil/ magnifier system.
*************************************************************************

Books and Articles generally available:

*BUILD YOUR OWN LASER, PHASER, ION RAY GUN & Other working Space age 
Projects by Robert E. Iannini

Sounds goofy, but there a lot of interesting and workable designs here.
One chapter on a neon sign transformer based tesla coil. ~250,000volts.
Also includes other high voltage projects like a Cockroft-Walton type 
voltage multipier and high energy capacitor systems for exploding wires and 
the like. 

In case you don't recognize the author, he's the same guy who 
runs INFORMATION UNLIMITED. They advertise in Radio Electronics/
Electronics Now and have kits for many of the projects given in this book.
My latest address for Information Unlimited is:
	Dept RES14,
	Box 716,
	Amherst, NH 03031
	Ph#:603-673-4730
	FAX:603-672-5406


*GADGETEER's GOLDMINE by Gordon McComb.

Similar to above. Lots of parts sources listed. Also has a chapter on 
building your own PLASMA GLOBE and one on Van De Graff generators and other 
high voltage projects. Includes many sources for parts- but the list is 
somewhat outdated.

*RADIO ELECTRONICS- SEPTEMBER 1991

Issue has a construction project for a soild state tesla coil by Duane A. 
Bylund. ~ 100,000volt system. This system illustrates the direct drive type 
of Tesla coil ( like Tesla's extra coil system). He also used to supply 
kits.
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*INTERNET-freebies
Check out anon ftp to ftp.ee.ualberta.ca (circuit cookbook directory)
There is a nice small book by Harry Suomalainen called TESLA COIL THEORY 
AND APPLICATIONS - it's in POSTSCRIPT. It covers standard spark gap driven 
coils as well as direct drive soild state coil systems.
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You will also want to check out the internet (ftp) site at:
 >ftp.funet.fi 
go to the directory pub/sci/electronics/tesla
There is some general literature as well as GIF's of Coils and some 
programs for computing tesla coil parameters (Have not tried them).
This place is rather busy and allow only 80 anon ftps, so I suggest trying
at 5:00-7:00pm EDT.
This apparently has a few tesla coil desing programs plus (more imporatntly 
in my opinion) text files of Richard Quick's Experiments and designs. There 
is also a huge (~1Mb) text file of the last few years of discussion of 
tesla coil desing and theory from the tesla@grendel list mentioned below.
So you didn't have to miss anything good!!! Definitly worth reading but 
long!

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There are at least two discussion groups running for tesla related stuff:
>usa-tesla@usa.net (send an email to get on the distribution list)

>tesla@grendel.objinc.com (send email to get on list) Run by Chip Atkinson
	By far, this list has the most detailed technical discussions I 
	have seen. These people are constantly sharing information on real 
	designs. They have many tips on obtaining parts or fabricating some 
	elements from scratch. It's a vey busy list, so you'd better have 
	plenty of disk space or a good printer! Richard Quick is probably 
	the most experienced builder on the list - He'll send (so far) a 
	2hr video of his work for $10 and PPD high quality tape. I'm 
	getting one.
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On the World Wide Web:

Try http://www.eskimo.com/~billb
 and select Tesla Coil Info

There are pointers to GIF's, programs, and other goodies. He's also got 
some other odd ball science stuff in here too.

I have been informed that Matt Cavic will also have some interesting info 
in his home page: ( sorry Matt, but you ain't got much yet)

http:/www.inlink.com/users/asimov/home.html

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*A SOLID-STATE LOW-VOLTAGE TESLA COIL DEMONSTRATOR by Donald G. Bruns,
American Journal of Physics. #60 (9), Sept. 1992, pg 797

Good on basic theory especially on resonant coupling effects. Suggests some 
low voltage experiments - useful before you invest big $$$ in a full scale 
system! Only problem with this treatment is that he treats the secondary coil 
as a "lumped" circuit. That is, he models the seconday as a small capacitor 
in series with the secondary inductance. This model is not realistic 
because it does not treat the tesla secondary coil as a transmission line 
or normal mode helical antenna. (More below in Kraus & Jackson)
Very useful to read if you want to know more about critical coupling 
between tuned resonant circuits. Lists quite a few references.

* ANTENNNAS by J. D. Kraus 

This book has very little in it which will actually help you build a tesla 
coil but gives a great expostion on all types of antennas including helical 
antennas. A tesla coil can be thought of as a poorly radiating helical 
antenna (Kraus calls it normal mode). This cannot be correctly modeled by a 
simple "lumped" circuit model since helical resonators have more than one 
resonant frequency.

* REFERENCE DATA FOR RADIO ENGINEERS, 4th ed 1956 pp 682-686
* WIDE FREQUENCY RANGE TUNED HELICAL ANTENNAS AND CIRCUITS, by
	A.G. Kandoian and W. Sichak, IRE Convention Record (1953)
	[only large librarys are likely to ahev this one]

Have a couple of formulas for computing the resonant frequency of normal 
mode helical antennas. The formulas do not account for capacitve loading 
from discharge electrodes or the from the discharge itself so they can only 
be used as a practical starting point.

* FIELD THEORY OF TRAVELLING WAVE TUBES, by J.D. JACKSON
	Proc IRE 36 No 7, p 853 JUly 1948

Yes, its the same Jackson who has tortured so many physics grad students 
with his EM book! This work predates the above paper -it is rather 
involeved but I include it for completeness. It shows how to set up 
equations for analyzing the helical antenna problem in the context of 
travelling wave tubes.

*********************************************************************
One final harping:
There are many old and not-so-old books on computing inductances for coils.
Among the authors are:
F.W. Grover
Herbert B. Dwight

In their treatments for single layer coils they always introduce the 
concept of the coil self-capacitance. Presumably you would take the self-
capacitance in parallel to the inductance of the coil to compute its 
resonant frequency. Although their formulas are suspect on theoretical 
grounds (see above lumped circuit approx), they can be used to approximate 
resonant frequencies -- but only to within an order of magnitude! Depending 
on the physical dimensions of the coil lenght, dia, winding pitch their 
self capacitance can vary widely. In turn, computed resonant frequencies 
will not usually reflect the correct dependencies on these parameters.

However, these books are very helpful for computing Primary Coil 
inducatnces for pancake as well as solinoidal forms. They also give 
information on skin effect losses as well as the less well known 
"proximity" effect losses which most people seem to ignore in thier designs

**********************************************************************
Books available from Tesla Book Co. and Intl. Tesla Soc.

*Modern Tesla Coil Theory -Duane A. Bylund 
Coupled RLC theory-transmission line theory-capacitive discharge coils-
transistor and tube driven coils-excellent book (highly recomend)
Covers spark gap driven coils, direct drive solid state coils, and has a 
section on the use of grounding center-poises. 


*Modern Resonance Transformer Design Theory -D.C. Cox
simple theory-some practical info


*Tesla Coil Design Manual - J.H. Couture
lots on design curves bases on compiled experimental data- construction 
tips- weak on theory- rather inefficient desings compared to the Quick and 
Hull desings


*Vacuum Tube Tesla Coils -J.F. Corum, K.L. Corum
lots of references to literature-explains tesla coil in terms of 
transmission line theory-also refers to Tesla's experiments at Colorado 
Springs. Also contains the formula for computing resonant frequencies of 
the helical antenna. (Highly recommend) Has a large section, of course, on 
vacuum tube driven coils - their design and theory.

> These guys also have a computer design program for IBM type computers 
called the TC TUTOR. I don't own a copy, but based on their book, I would 
guess that these guys know better than most what's phyically important in 
coil design


*Tesla Coil Secrets - R.A. Ford
reprints from old articles-very cheap and interesting-probably not good to 
base you new design on some of these old projects though....
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If you have something to add to this list, send it along. I'm thinking of
writing up a sort of TESLA FAQ since there always seems to be interest.

-Ed