Re: Is It A Farnsworth... or a Hirsch (redux)
Posted: Thu Dec 24, 2020 11:59 am
No argument here on the historical data. It is what it is.
With that said though, I think there are other aspects to the story. Thanks to Jonathan Moulton (Philo's grandson), Phil Savernick for hosting and Paul Schatzkin for fanning the embers, I had the opportunity to examine some pieces of that history.
Having personally examined boxes of pieces of the earliest Farnsworth from the private family collection, up through some of the later, I can say there was an evolution in place. Opening an old box with something totally foreign to me, and experienced Fusor builder, was informative.
The science of how to do controlled laboratory fusion was in its infancy. The first Ivy Mike fusion weapon was only detonated a few years earlier. A laboratory race was also started to create controlled fusion for energy. Just about all of the approaches that you hear about today had their infancy in those years of the 1950s and 1960s. People were trying many approaches to make fusion viable. Much of what was learned was now difficult to do things but equally important, what would not work.
I view the Farnsworth contribution to this. It was his conception of a new idea to throw on the table and see what might come of it. Having held the precursor to even the one in the famous picture of Philo looking into bell jar, it was clear that much thinking was going on in the vacuum of knowledge of the entire world when it came to laboratory fusion. Even today, 50 years later, laboratory fusion is not yet working.
The days of Philo were full of dreaming of the solutions and not stopping to try to achieve those. In his personal notes are visions of what he personally believed a small fusor could do for the populations of the world. He dreamed of fantastical uses of fusion power in everyday life. Things that are the stuff of science fiction that might have been reality had he or others succeeded. Farnsworth did not want a device a mile long. He wanted something that could fit in the trunk of a car and power it or could make it fly with its endless power supply. I really admire his vision and his work in those days.
It is easy for us today so say that he was going down an unproductive route but then again we have 2020 vision in 2020. When I unpacked a piece of copper and some sparkles came off, I realized how little knowledge was available at that time. The sparkles were mica broken off from larger pieces that thinly insulated a multi circle template out of a copper sphere. It was the electrical insulation that was probably only good for a couple thousand volts at best. Or was it simply a capacitor for RF feeding of that inner template. To me it was visionary and left an impact on me. Not because it ever was successful but it gets and A+ from me as a novel approach from everything else out there. This continued in other designs and especially when people with other ideas and knowledge came to the party.
While the Hirsch Meeks design is what some of us have built as fusor, it is the direct result of the inspiration and vision of somebody driven for a SOLUTION. Will the new cube Fusor of HM design crossed with an Einsel lens be the new unit called a Fusor? Only time will tell but the initial seed and vision all started back with those earliest designs.
With that said, most of us would agree that metrology early on would have been appropriate but in the end, would it have really changed any results? I personally spent the majority of my work with various configurations studying the plasma itself before ever putting deuterium in to see if that was a little or a lot better than the previous design. We are making minor adjustments to a lossy system. Farnsworth was not looking minuscule changes. He was looking for the home run. Had he found the fusion sweet spot, gamma, activation, heat and other indicators including illnesses and death would have made it obvious even without proper neutron detection. Real fusion at useful rates is not subtle.
And then we had the funding issue then as we have it now. Progress and inflated reports have always been a problem when you are trying to get funding from the scientifically illiterate pencil pushers.
I just wanted to add this to the record to frame this and what is written in Richard's Attic. Perspective is everything. Hindsight is easy for us but stand in those shoes, with those dreams, and those purse strings and see how you would have aimed for the moon.
With that said though, I think there are other aspects to the story. Thanks to Jonathan Moulton (Philo's grandson), Phil Savernick for hosting and Paul Schatzkin for fanning the embers, I had the opportunity to examine some pieces of that history.
Having personally examined boxes of pieces of the earliest Farnsworth from the private family collection, up through some of the later, I can say there was an evolution in place. Opening an old box with something totally foreign to me, and experienced Fusor builder, was informative.
The science of how to do controlled laboratory fusion was in its infancy. The first Ivy Mike fusion weapon was only detonated a few years earlier. A laboratory race was also started to create controlled fusion for energy. Just about all of the approaches that you hear about today had their infancy in those years of the 1950s and 1960s. People were trying many approaches to make fusion viable. Much of what was learned was now difficult to do things but equally important, what would not work.
I view the Farnsworth contribution to this. It was his conception of a new idea to throw on the table and see what might come of it. Having held the precursor to even the one in the famous picture of Philo looking into bell jar, it was clear that much thinking was going on in the vacuum of knowledge of the entire world when it came to laboratory fusion. Even today, 50 years later, laboratory fusion is not yet working.
The days of Philo were full of dreaming of the solutions and not stopping to try to achieve those. In his personal notes are visions of what he personally believed a small fusor could do for the populations of the world. He dreamed of fantastical uses of fusion power in everyday life. Things that are the stuff of science fiction that might have been reality had he or others succeeded. Farnsworth did not want a device a mile long. He wanted something that could fit in the trunk of a car and power it or could make it fly with its endless power supply. I really admire his vision and his work in those days.
It is easy for us today so say that he was going down an unproductive route but then again we have 2020 vision in 2020. When I unpacked a piece of copper and some sparkles came off, I realized how little knowledge was available at that time. The sparkles were mica broken off from larger pieces that thinly insulated a multi circle template out of a copper sphere. It was the electrical insulation that was probably only good for a couple thousand volts at best. Or was it simply a capacitor for RF feeding of that inner template. To me it was visionary and left an impact on me. Not because it ever was successful but it gets and A+ from me as a novel approach from everything else out there. This continued in other designs and especially when people with other ideas and knowledge came to the party.
While the Hirsch Meeks design is what some of us have built as fusor, it is the direct result of the inspiration and vision of somebody driven for a SOLUTION. Will the new cube Fusor of HM design crossed with an Einsel lens be the new unit called a Fusor? Only time will tell but the initial seed and vision all started back with those earliest designs.
With that said, most of us would agree that metrology early on would have been appropriate but in the end, would it have really changed any results? I personally spent the majority of my work with various configurations studying the plasma itself before ever putting deuterium in to see if that was a little or a lot better than the previous design. We are making minor adjustments to a lossy system. Farnsworth was not looking minuscule changes. He was looking for the home run. Had he found the fusion sweet spot, gamma, activation, heat and other indicators including illnesses and death would have made it obvious even without proper neutron detection. Real fusion at useful rates is not subtle.
And then we had the funding issue then as we have it now. Progress and inflated reports have always been a problem when you are trying to get funding from the scientifically illiterate pencil pushers.
I just wanted to add this to the record to frame this and what is written in Richard's Attic. Perspective is everything. Hindsight is easy for us but stand in those shoes, with those dreams, and those purse strings and see how you would have aimed for the moon.