Hello from Sunny Florida! (Howard Evans)

[Howard Evans]

I am an 80+ year old white male, with allegedly some Cherokee blood from my mother's side of the family. I do not live, nor have I ever lived, on an Indian Reservation. But I am proud to be a Native American, having been born on Sunday, June 25, 1944 in Welch, WV. I am also an engineering school graduate (BEE, '78 University of Dayton), the first in my family to have obtained a college degree.

I am now a "retired" ex-warmonger, after working for the Department of Defense (DoD) and defense contractors for more than sixty years. On April 1, 2013, I became an FCC-licensed amateur radio operator (Extra Class, call sign AC8NS), some forty-six years after my original, non-renewable, amateur radio license expired (Novice Class, call sign KN8UTJ). My first "major" project as a newly licensed "ham" is to experiment with Earth-Moon-Earth (EME) communications using optical wave lengths instead of the usual VHF, UHF, and microwave frequencies that hams have been using for over fifty years for so-called "moon bounce" QSOs. To this end, I have inherited a small, beginners model, Celestron telescope from my deceased brother that I will use to transmit a 532 nm (green) laser beam to the Moon and receive whatever photons make it back from the Moon's regolith surface. VIsit the discussion group at https://optical-eme.groups.io to follow whatever progress (if any) that may be made. This is an open-source effort that hopefully will benefit the entire worldwide amateur radio community.

I became interested in Philo T. Farnsworth in high school. It was while researching Nikola Tesla, who was virtually unmentioned in my high school history classes, that I learned about Tesla Coils. Tesla coils eventually led me to the Farnsworth Fusor, but by then I was enlisted in the Air Force (May 1963 - 1967) and unable to pursue my interest further. Still, I began collecting "stuff" that might be useful for building a Fusor... a large 15,000 vac, center-tapped, neon sign transformer, high-voltage capacitors, high-voltage diodes, etc. What I lacked in the beginning was experience with high-vacuum engineering, so the Fusor project laid dormant until now.

In my last job (since July 1996, before being force-ably retired in December 2014) I operated and maintained a research linear particle accelerator, an early tandem "Tandetron" with 1.7 megavolts acceleration potential. The Materials Laboratory where I worked at UES, Inc. used the accelerator to perform deep ion implants into gallium arsenide semiconductor wafers. Our last project was to implant oxygen ions to create parallel conduction channels in a GaAs photo-conductive, high-voltage (kilovolts), high-current (kiloamperes), fast-switching (picoseconds) semiconductor switch for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. UES won a 2015 R&D 100 award for our improvement to the GaAs PCSS (Photo-Conductive Semiconductor Switch), originally invented at Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) for their Z-Pinch nuclear fusion experiment. As a result of my work at UES I became quite familiar with high-vacuum systems: how to maintain them, how to build them, how to clean them to remove contaminates such as water that prevent achieving ultra-low vacuum pressures.

I think I am finally well-qualified enough to mess around with Farnsworth Fusor reactors. And, in retirement, I finally have enough "spare time" to do so. My only problems now are my age (may die) and money (may go broke) and a workshop in which to pursue my hobbies. My wife sometimes lets me use the dining room table for electronics projects, and she uses our two-car garage for her clay pottery, but I really need to save up for a workshop shed.

I could use the services of a professional glass blower, like Dick Grant, who I knew while attending college. He is probably deceased by now, maybe from years of breathing mercury fumes: he used a mercury vapor diffusion pump to create high vacuums in his glass-blowing lab. Perhaps I could learn glass blowing and use my wife's Skutt kiln to melt the glass stock.

I look forward to building my first Fusor.

[Paul_Schatzkin]

.
Hello Howard, and thank you for that detailed introduction.

Great to have you onboard here.

I think you'll find all you need to know to get started, lots of people willing and able to answer your informed questions (start with the FAQs!), and we all look forward to hearing about your progress.

Thanks,

--PS

[Ryan Ginter]

It's rare for someone to make such a detailed introduction, but it was a very enjoyable read. Welcome to the forum and I wish you the best of luck.

I've been sorely lacking in workspace as well, so I feel your pain. For the time being I've been getting by working on a folding table. Thus far it hasn't prevented me from accomplishing any of my goals, but it can certainly be challenging at times. When the opportunity arises I hope to build a lab of my own.

If cost is a concern you will probably want to go with KF-type vacuum chamber parts, they require no tools and are cheap relative to the other types of flanged components. Be sure to read the FAQs and come to your own conclusion though. The neon sign transformer will work as a demo fusor and can help you gain experience controlling plasma in the vacuum chamber and measuring voltage and current, but it won't be a suitable supply for real fusion work. They are designed to leak magnetic flux at high power to control their output, so they can't maintain the high voltage under load. The power supply is usually the most difficult hurdle to overcome when expenses are limited, again be sure to read the FAQs as much as you can.

The EME communications with visible light is a very interesting idea. I'm sure it's no easy task, the intensity of any light returning would likely require extremely sensitive equipment to detect. I will be keeping up with both of your efforts, again, best of luck!

[Howard Evans]

Paul, thank you for responding. And thank you for creating this web site.

I got started on my life's journey into electronics with my grandfather, Hickey, who was an electrician who worked underground in a coal mine in Maitland, WV prior to retiring to Morristown, TN to pursue crappie fishing (and sometimes bluegill and bass) in Cherokee Lake, a TVA project created so the USA would have enough Alcoa-refined aluminum to build airplanes for WWII. I and my younger brother, Donald (deceased), were living with my father's parents while our mother was being treated for tuberculosis at Fitzsimons Army Hospital in Aurora, CO. Dad was off flying as the radar navigator/bombardier on B-47 jet bombers for the Strategic Air Command (SAC). Grandfather brought some of the things (motors, selenium rectifier stacks, an Edison-cell miner's lamp battery, carbide miner's lamps, etc.) he had acquired from years of working underground in the mines of West (by God!) Virginia. I suppose he regarded these items as some form of retirement compensation rather than outright theft. To me, they were just wonderfully fascinating toys.

Anyhoo, Hickey got me interested in electricity and Thomas Edison. That led Grandmother to take me to the town library to borrow books on the subject. My favorite was "The Boy Electrician" written by Alfred P. Morgan around the turn of the previous century. This led me to construct a crystal radio set and begin reading about electronics. Grandmother had an "All American Five" AM/FM five-tube superheterodyne radio that didn't work on FM. I offered to take a look at it, and repair it if I could. I don't remember exactly what I did, but I got her radio working again. She thought I was some sort of genius. Well, that and five bux will get ya a cuppa coffee now days, but it was enough to launch my electronics career. Next was a one-tube battery-operated kit radio that grandmother gifted me. It just got all better from there.

I recall one day in class we were supposed to be learning about electromagnets. Our homework assignment was to gather together an iron nail (NOT aluminum!), some copper wire, and a couple of really huge dry-cell batteries with screw terminals on one end. Telephone batteries, or maybe ignition batteries (used with Ford automobile ignition coils), I think they were called. They were not only scarce, but also expensive. A lot of the kids in my class were the sons and daughters of local farmers. Copper wire was plentiful on the farm, as were iron nails, but money to purchase a battery that would eventually "run down" and have to be replaced was hard to come by.

I was able to secure some small-gauge insulated hook-up wire, which I wrapped around a nail about the size used to nail up two-by-four studs for building a house. Grandmother found and purchased a 6V "lantern" battery for me to try. Worked great! I took it to school for "show and tell". One farm boy tried to demonstrate his electromagnet, but all it did was heat up the bare copper wire he had wrapped around his iron nail. I guess he didn't understand how electricity worked. We tried to help by offering to rewiind his electromagnet with insulated wire, but I think he was too embarrassed to accept.

I went on to continue studying electronics from books, experimenting where I could with inoperable radios and televisions I found discarded behind radio and television repair shops. My main limitation, other than immaturity, was a lack of electronic test equipment. First budget item was an RCA kit vacuum tube voltmeter (VTVM) purchased with earnings from mowing grass and a receipts from a paper route. I added more instruments as I was able to: an EICO 460K kit oscilloscope, RF signal generator, RF sweep generator (to align TVs), RCL bridge with a "magic eye" null indicator to measure component values, AF signal generator... I was pretty well equipped, and pretty sure I was an "expert" now in electronics, after graduating high school and enlisting in the Air Force.

Boy, was I ever wrong! My advanced electronics classes at Lowry AFB in Denver, CO really opened my eyes to what I was missing. I learned a lot during my four-year hitch about things like magnetic amplifiers, magnetron microwave oscillators, radar, servomechanisms, hydraulics, operational amplifiers, "peanut-sized" miniature electron tubes, and electrically fired, hydraulically operated, 20mm rotary cannons (Gatling Gun derivative).

The Air Force training and experience served me well after I was discharged. I still had a two-year inactive reserve obligation to fulfill before I received my Honorable Discharge, but I was now ineligible to be drafted into the Viet Nam war that was just then getting started. So, I talked my way into an electronics technician job at the University of Dayton Research Institute. After a year, UDRI paid my tuition (I paid for my text books) and allowed me to matriculate for an engineering degree... part-time of course. The technician job was full time, and by then I was married and raising kids. It took me ten years before I had accumulated enough semester-hour credits to graduate in the summer of 1978.

I went on to a successful career working for DoD contractors. I did try my hand at graduate school, but I didn't succeed at that. I didn't sign up for ''engineer in training" as the first step toward a PE license either. None of the DoD contractors I worked for gave a fig whether or not I had a PE license. It was only after "retiring" to Florida that I learned I cannot practice electrical engineering here without a PE license. So instead, I will hire out as a contract consultant. Just 1099 me and I will take care of the SS and Federal income taxes. No income tax here in Florida, but there is usually a yearly hurricane or two.

Years ago, when I was first learning about Farnsworth and the Fusor, it seemed to me that a LOT of the folks pursuing this were, for lack of a better term, "tin-foil hat conspiracy theorists" and not really scientists, or engineers, or even qualified technicians. Sort of like some kids are today, living in their parent's basement and cranking out stuff on their laptops, unconnected with the real world. That's not me, never was, never will be. I did perceive that The Establishment was not sympathetic to Philo. Were it not for the hit TV series Warehouse 13, no one would know about Farnsworth Television. I am not sure anyone who watched even knew who he was, nor his many contributions to electronics.

While I was attending school at UD, I became interested in one of their laboratory electrostatic generating machines. This was not the usual counter-rotating disks Wimhurst apparatus, but something called a Voss Machine. It used a single circular glass plate with six button electrodes evenly spaced and cemented in a circle centered roughly halfway between the center shaft and the outer rim. Brush-type electrodes were used to transfer charges to and from the copper (nickel-plated) buttons. Charge was stored on two Leyden jars. The machine was broken, so I offered to fix it. This I was allowed to do, but when I mentioned the possibility of using electrostatics for anything remotely resembling anything useful, I was mocked and the idea poo-pooed. I was told to study electromagnetics, which is where the money was, and stay away from dead-end electrostatics. Makes me wonder if some similar attitude was responsible for the demise or suppression of Farnswortrh's inventions. Not-Invented-Here is a common way to suppress competitive information.

While at UD, I was also asked by one of my professors if it was possible to "pump" a conductive liquid with electromagnetism instead of mechanically. I didn't know, but I thought not, and said so. The topic was never brought up again. I still don't know, but if this were possible, it would be a new and unique way to propel a ship or boat over or under the water. Tom Clancy wrote a fiction novel about it in "The Hunt for Red October" but I still wonder is it possible to pump a conductive liquid, such as sea water, without any moving parts?

How did you get a moniker like "Perfessor"? Were/are you a teacher?

Yours truly,

Howard B. Evans, Jr. (AC8NS)
4151 Pompano Rd
Venice, FL 34293

(937) 367-5159 [ceil: voice, voice mail, text messages]

[William Turner]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetohydrodynamic_drive

[Howard Evans]

Thanks for the link. The magnetohydrodynamic drive was just an idea when I was asked the question in the 1970s. It appears that it is still just an idea, the Japanese and Tom Clancy not withstanding.

[Richard Hull]

Welcome, You arrive well qualified to start into a fusor project. I have written most of the FAQs in my 25 years on this forum, make use of them for the more difficult questions you may have.

Richard Hull

[Dennis P Brown]

Hello Howard and welcome. As someone who made LWIR detectors (far IR - 20+ microns) we used ion implantation, as well. Then, of course, a complex laser annealing system to activate the impacts (they had essentially zero solubility.)

We build fusors instead of Farnsworth devices but that is obvious from the FAQ's and various threads with fusor builds. Best of luck on your future work and do weigh in on both technical issues and/or discussions you find interesting. It is always fun discussing various topics with the people here - we have very knowledgeable and well inform people on this site. I am always learning new things - what could be better?

[Paul_Schatzkin]

We build fusors instead of Farnsworth devices but that is obvious from the FAQ's and various threads with fusor builds.

Dennis, where are you drawing the line of distinction here?

The way I see it, "all Farnsworth (fusion) devices are fusors, but not all fusors are Farnsworth devices."

Meaning: The whole idea of the fusor (if not IEC itself) began with Farnsworth in 1953 when he bolted out of the seat of his Cadillac sedan somewhere between Indiana and Idaho, punched the air and shouted, "I've got it" – as spelled out in Chapter 18 of The Boy Who Invented Television ("Stars in a Jar"). So everything that Farnsworth build starting in the late 1950s was a 'fusor.'

But then along came Hirsch, who had is own ideas. He and Gene Meeks came up with the IEC demonstration device that we (I use the term loosely) build here at fusor.net. They are fusors, and are arguably built on essentially the same principle that Farnsworth conceived, but they are not "Farnsworth devices" per-se.

I call the devices built here "The Hirsch-Meeks Variation" of the Farnsworth Fusor, and contend that nobody has built a Farnsworth fusor since the mid 1960s.

I might be displaying my technical/historical ignorance here, but that's my story and... you know.

-PS

[Paul_Schatzkin]

.
Howard, a lot of what you're posted here over the last few days has piqued my curiosity, so let me see if I can gather all the thoughts you've triggered in a single post/reply:

I am an 80+ year old white male, with allegedly some Cherokee blood from my mother's side of the family ...an engineering school graduate (BEE, '78 University of Dayton), the first in my family to have obtained a college degree...now a "retired" ex-warmonger, after working for the Department of Defense (DoD) and defense contractors for more than sixty years.

It certainly sounds like you've used all those decades well. It also sounds like we have similar markers along some of our trails (though my bloodline is strictly Ashkenazi on all sides).

I became interested in Philo T. Farnsworth in high school.

Attempting some arithmetic here... if you are (for the sake of argument) 80 years old, then you would have been born in 1944... and in high school ~1960-64. So... how on Earth did Farnsworth show up on your radar? By that time, he had long since faded into obscurity: the last that was heard from him was his appearance on I've Got A Secret in 1957. There were a couple of newspaper articles in the 60s abouty ITT's fusion effort, but that was even more obscure and vanished quickly.

I began collecting "stuff" that might be useful for building a Fusor... a large 15,000 vac, center-tapped, neon sign transformer, high-voltage capacitors, high-voltage diodes, etc. What I lacked in the beginning was experience with high-vacuum engineering, so the Fusor project laid dormant until now.

So... were you thinking of building a fusor even before this site went online (in its first incarnation in 1998)? That's fascinating...

I think I am finally well-qualified enough to mess around with Farnsworth Fusor reactors. And, in retirement, I finally have enough "spare time" to do so. My only problems now are my age (may die) and money (may go broke) and a workshop in which to pursue my hobbies.

This illustrates the need for a focused, intentional, quasi-professional (at least) approach to revisiting the Farnsworth fusor. To that end, I have in the past few weeks established a non-profit organization (The WaterStar Foundation) and obtained 501c3 tax exempt status. The time has come (if not long past?) to raise some real money and get to work. More on that in the weeks ahead. I suspect it will be discussed some at Richard's HEAS next week... you should drop what you're doing and find your way to Richmond.

(sidebar from the thread:)

I've been sorely lacking in workspace as well, so I feel your pain. For the time being I've been getting by working on a folding table. Thus far it hasn't prevented me from accomplishing any of my goals, but it can certainly be challenging at times. When the opportunity arises I hope to build a lab of my own.

Yeah, it's time this whole initiative to ramps up a level or three.

Anyhoo, Hickey got me interested in electricity and Thomas Edison. That led Grandmother to take me to the town library to borrow books on the subject. My favorite was "The Boy Electrician" written by Alfred P. Morgan around the turn of the previous century. This led me to construct a crystal radio set and begin reading about electronics.

I have a similar story, sorta. When I was in the third grade (1959?) my mother was worried I was not reading enough and hauled me off to the Oceanic Public Library in Rumson, NJ and ordered me to pick a book of the shelves. The book I picked was a "Signature Series" biography of Thomas Edison. The following year I portrayed Edison in the 4th grade play and "invented" the light bulb in the Forrestdale School auditorium.

And I'm pretty sure we had a copy of The Boy Electrician around the house, too. Sounds familiar.

What I did not have is the influence of an elder/mentor who could steer my interest in such things in a technical direction. My father was an engineer (in ceramics; our family owned a tile plant in Keyport, NJ), but moved on to the Great Workbench In The Sky in 1958 after succumbing to multiple myeloma (blood/bone marrow cancer). He was 37 at the time, I was all of 7. I often wonder how my life might have been different had he lived; turns out we had a lot of similar interests – he was a writer as well as an engineer.

Point being I never really built anything electronic – unless you consider winding the armature of a slot-car motor "electronic." I did quite a bit of that in junior high school. By the time I got to high school it was all girls and guitars, no more slot car motors.

I won't repeat it all here but the outline of your career out of – in – and out of the Air Force is fascinating. Thanks for typing all that out.

Years ago, when I was first learning about Farnsworth and the Fusor, it seemed to me that a LOT of the folks pursuing this were, for lack of a better term, "tin-foil hat conspiracy theorists" and not really scientists, or engineers, or even qualified technicians.

I would like to hear more about how/what you learned about the 'Farnsworth and the Fusor' before this site went up. To my knowledge there was basically nothing on the subject in general circulation prior to this site starting in 1998.

And just what 'tin-foil conspiracy' theories are you alluding to? Seriously, pray tell.

I did perceive that The Establishment was not sympathetic to Philo.

I think this is an important theme to keep on the table. It reminds me of something Robert Hirsch said to me when I spoke with him back around 2001, which I quoted in the Epilogue to TBWIT:

I think they were probably also uncomfortable with Farnsworth, in the sense that here was an inventor, a farm boy with just dribs and drabs of education, who in fact conceived and developed one of the most significant technological advances of the 20th century, and here he was coming along in fusion? I don’t know whether it was ego or what but there is something strange there...

Suffice it to say for now: "something strange there" defines the whole Farnsworth fusion story.

Were it not for the hit TV series Warehouse 13, no one would know about Farnsworth Television. I am not sure anyone who watched even knew who he was, nor his many contributions to electronics.

I am a broken record on this subject. Video is the most pervasive technology ever devised, and I will fight to the death anybody who dimisses the notion that it began in earnest first in the mind of Philo Farnsworth when he was 14 years old, and then in the real world starting in San Francisco on Sept 7, 1927. That was a pivotal moment in human evolution derived from the same cosmology (Einstein's first 1905 paper) as fusion and the bomb(s), but this society is more focused on blowing shit up. OK, </rant off>.

...when I mentioned the possibility of using electrostatics for anything remotely resembling anything useful, I was mocked and the idea poo-pooed. I was told to study electromagnetics, which is where the money was, and stay away from dead-end electrostatics. Makes me wonder if some similar attitude was responsible for the demise or suppression of Farnswortrh's inventions.

Bingo.

While at UD, I was also asked by one of my professors if it was possible to "pump" a conductive liquid with electromagnetism instead of mechanically. I didn't know, but I thought not, and said so. The topic was never brought up again. I still don't know, but if this were possible, it would be a new and unique way to propel a ship or boat over or under the water. Tom Clancy wrote a fiction novel about it in "The Hunt for Red October" but I still wonder is it possible to pump a conductive liquid, such as sea water, without any moving parts?

Oh boy. Now you have crossed over from Philo T. Farnsworth to T. Townsend Brown, the other obsession of my life. Have you availed yourself yet to The Man Who Mastered Gravity"? I'll spare you the details, but there is a chapter that accounts for the time that Brown spent at the NRL developing just what you describe. I have file filled with letters that he wrote on NRL stationery, but when I submitted a FOIA request for any info about his time at the NRL, the response I got was "never heard of the guy." It's all in the book.

Finally...

How did you get a moniker like "Perfessor"? Were/are you a teacher?

Please, Howard, I must insist that you mispell the moniker correctly: it's "Perfesser." Like Casey Stengel was "the Ole' Perfesser."

How I got that handle is a kinda long story that dates back to when I first got online with a BBS system in 1990. I needed a handle and started with 'Phaedrus' - ever read "Zen And The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance? I was reading it at the time and 'Phaedrus' is a mercurial professor lurking in the margins of the story. I adopted 'Phaedrus' as my online avatar, then added "Professor," eventually dropped "Phaedrus" and finally twisted "Professor" into "Perfesser." I was still using that handle when I started an Internet music business in 1995, which was the first 'home' of what is now fusor.net.

But to answer your question... no, I was never a 'teacher.' It's strictly an Interet persona.

OK... that's one long damn post.

Onward.

--PS

[Richard Hull]

Details on HEAS in the admin forum. I first did fusion in 1999 the first amateur fusioneer with a Hirsch-Meeks variant of the fusor.
Fusor V will be run for about 40-50 people next Friday and Saturday. The perfesser will be there. A photo of fusor V at one of the HEAS gatherings

Richard Hull

[Dennis P Brown]

The fusor ...er, uh, guess I need to be clear ( ), the famous Hirsch-Meeks variant fusor of Richard's that has inspired and launched many a fusor ... . Oops, did it again; I mean Hisch -Meeks fusors by others. If Paul is ok with it, can I just say a H-M fusor? Since I was being sloppy, originally.

[Paul_Schatzkin]

.
H-M Fusor, sure.

Or just… “HMF”

—PS

[Dennis P Brown]

Again upstaged! I like that HMF abbreviation. Of course I didn't think of it.

Paul, I could use more information on that device - any chance you could create a post on that subject? I am rather ignorant on that device's evolution and would appreciate learning about it. Rather essential considering it is the most common variety of the amateur fusor family here.

If there is a FAQ already on this then I really have pulled a std newbie mistake.

[Paul_Schatzkin]

Again upstaged! I like that HMF abbreviation. Of course I didn't think of it.

Well, now I'm really gonna f*ck you up rewriting my earlier draft.

I prefer to all the "HMF" the "HMV" - that's the "Hirsch-Meeks Variation" - for reasons to follow:

Paul, I could use more information on that device - any chance you could create a post on that subject? I am rather ignorant on that device's evolution and would appreciate learning about it. Rather essential considering it is the most common variety of the amateur fusor family here.

If there is a FAQ already on this then I really have pulled a std newbie mistake.

Possibly.

I'm not sure which device you're asking for more information on.. The Actual Farnsworth Fusor (AFF?) or the Hirsch-Meeks Variation (new acronym "HMV)." Both are fusors, but as we've discussed there are significant differences in the approach and design.

So the "HMV" is a variation on the "AFF." "The HMV of the AFF."

Having fun yet?

I raised this question several years ago... have you ever seen the thread that starts here?

viewtopic.php?t=13161

If you have further questions on the subject, they might best be raised and the discussion continue there, with maybe a link back here for reference.

--PS

[edit: I went back and looked at the thread linked above and note that I used the acronym "AFF" for "Actual Farnsworth Fusor" there first, and have corrected this post accordingly.]

[Dennis P Brown]

Going to read through those posts and if I have questions - especially on the HMV, I'll post there. Since I'm curious the process on how the AFF evolved into the device we have - the HMV; which I assume is the basic design we use and call a fusor here (being a bit sloppy calling it a fusor rather then HMV.) Through I will be more careful in the future.

First my apologies to Howard for stepping on his thread. Also, my thanks to Paul for clarifying this issue; is nether trivial nor irrelevant at all. Knowing the proper designation for our more common fusor design here vs others, is useful.

[Paul_Schatzkin]

.
Since we're still on this thread for now...

I'm curious the process on how the AFF evolved into the device we have - the HMV; which I assume is the basic design we use and call a fusor here (being a bit sloppy calling it a fusor rather then HMV.) Through I will be more careful in the future.

Richard might be able to add some additional clarity re: this confusing nomenclature and how/why Hirsch and Meeks came up with their design. There is some discussion of it in my book.

To my understanding, they are are all 'fusors' - the AFF and the HMV.

My understanding is that while the 'concept' of IEC was lurking around at the time, Farnsworth was the first to figure out a way to actually do it, in much the same way that the idea of CRTs for television was around before Farnsworth figured out how to do that. I find the comparisons rather compelling.

What I'm less clear on is whether there are other devices that approach fusion via IEC, and what they are called, or if all IEC devices are, by default, "fusors."

And I don't think Howard will mind.

--PS

[Rich Feldman]

Welcome, Howard!

THere was some follow-up here after you mentioned a professor's question: if it was possible to "pump" a conductive liquid with electromagnetism instead of mechanically.

One response pointed to wikipedia article about MHD drives. A thing still mostly theoretical.

But MHD pumps have been practical for a long time, notably for moving liquid metal coolant in fast breeder reactors. In the 1960's the EBR-II project in USA had a MHD design that was interchangeable with a conventional centrifugal pump. Here's an article about a recent design for Astrid reactor project. https://cea.hal.science/cea-02435101/document
I wonder if electromagnetic pumps are expected to reduce the amount of hands-on maintenance. The sodium in primary loop of a fast breeder reactor becomes annoyingly radioactive.

Now back to you, Howard. We're tired of hearing claims to be the youngest fusioneer. How about the oldest?

[Dennis P Brown]

The MHD idea is very old (I do believe Faraday or Maxwell considered this to see if the Thames could generate a measurable current - no.) A strong field, motion, and a conductive system (any conductive media) allows electricity to be generated; this concept has been considered to extract energy from a fusion plasma via MHD. Of course, the reverse can be done - electrical power (via a field either electric or magnetic) to move a substance which could be a liquid if it can hold ions with a charge. Rather inefficient in the later case but could be 90% efficient in the former case. But the efficiency in either case depends on a very conductive media.

Hence Clancy's idea in the book (sea water drive) and yet why it is not possible in practice.

[Richard Hull]

The Hirsch-Meeks fusor was toy fusor, a demo fusor that did fusion.

It was created to be very small somewhat portable device to show fusion to the AEC. It never had D-T in it and was D-D device. It did very well due to the separate biased halo filament which ionized the gas.

We operate a variant as we have no ionizer filament.

It was a one-off device and was never explored further by the ITT fusion team for obvious reasons.

Thus it is a variant of the Hirsch-Meeks design. Bob Hirsch claims ownership and he let me see and examine it in 1999 in his DC office.

See many images and the history of the entire effort at


viewtopic.php?t=13269

Richard Hull

[Paul_Schatzkin]

.
Yeah, it really is unfortunate this is not a separate thread.

Nevertheless, I will persist...

The Hirsch-Meeks fusor was toy fusor, a demo fusor that did fusion.

...

We operate a variant as we have no ionizer filament.

...

Thus it is a variant of the Hirsch-Meeks design.

So, I stand corrected. What is built from the info on this site (notice I didn't use the word 'we' this time) is not the 'HMV,' its... wait for it...

It's the VHMV.

Carry on.

--PS

[Dennis P Brown]

I started to post on the thread you pointed me towards. The technical naming of our typical fusor's here is starting to getting to be a bit of a longer acronym. So most people here tend to build VHMV of the AFF, or maybe, a VHMVAFF and should add this distinction if or when someone is differentiating between various builds - to be accurate. Guess one could just say we use a variant of a variant (as in a Double 'V') but that would certainly create an unsupported, and obscure but not totally inaccurate, reference designation.

Thanks for the education on both the types and history of fusors here ... I'll skip any acronyms for the fusor in this sentence since my usage here is, for the most part, now clear; and that is solely thanks to this series of posts and reading both yours and Richard's previous posts on this subject.