Quote:
Originally Posted by rambo1152
The book I used in the mid 1960s to build a Wimshurst machine must have been old, because I constructed a condenser out of interleaved foil and paper squares, and it didn't occur to me that I might have been able to buy one instead.
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The voltage stress on the condensers for a Wimshurst machine would be hundreds of thousand of volts. The classic condensers were a pair of leyden jars. I made my own from two jam jars, lined with engineers brass shim as one electrode a tight fitting outer sheath of the same as the other.
Operating the machine without the Leyden jars produced a steady stream of gossamer like 6" sparks between the discharge spheres. With the jars in circuit, the force needed to wind the handle was markedly increased and it took about 10 sec or so turning the handle before a sudden "crack" occurred as a big, fat, 6" spark discharged. The dielectric properties of jam jar glass were not too good as sparks also could be seen jumping through the glass itself, between the shim electrodes!