Eds design

[Shanti]

All of the proposed ideas for energy tubes that I have seen from the free energy community require a vacuum. The only real CSET's in existence that I know of couldn't support a vacuum.

What about the story, that the real CSETs were made out of glass and always transported separately in a suitcase (with a gun in it)? Who said this?
If it would be true, it could very well be, that these glass-CSETs had a vacuum.

And how strong the vacuum would have to be depends on the Electric field in the tube: The kinetic acceleration potential between collisions with "air"-molecules has to be higher than the ionisation potential of the molecule. Like that you could get an electron avalanche effect.
When I got some time, I will calculate it...

Addition:
OK, I now calculated it roughly:
* 1st ionization potential of Nitrogen 14eV (2nd 29.6eV). Air is mainly nitrogen and oxygen, BTW oxygen has almost the same ionization potentials, so I will calculate only with nitrogen.
* Lets assume a Voltage of 5kV and a Grid spacing of 1cm.
* How many collisions possible in this grid space, so that electrons get accelerated enough to cause ionization. -> 357 (1st ionization potenital) or 114.7 (for 1st and 2nd).
* What distance will an electron need for this accelleration: 28um (1st) or 87um (1st and 2nd)
* What pressure would be needed, so that the mean flight path would allow this? About 3mbar (1st) or 1mbar (2nd). Sure this still counts to the "Grobvakuum" (german, don't know this in english), but from a construction point of view this is already a vacuum.

Again: This is just a rough calculation. There would be quite some other points needed to be calculated. But anyway it should about tell in which size the vacuum would have to be for this size of tube at this voltage.

[Shanti]

Ah, just recognized, that I made an error. The Mean Free Path calculated were for gas molecules in air, before colliding with each other.
The Mean Free Path for Electrons is bigger. Unfortunately I couldn't find a table indicating the MFP of electrons in air in respect to pressure. But in one scientific paper I found the MFP for electrons at least in air at ambient pressure. This is 10e-5m=10um.
Well as we saw before, 28um would be needed at least for functioning. So if one would decrease the spacing to 3mm or increase the voltage to 15kv it should work even at ambient pressure!
But stop! One thing we didn't used yet. Namely, that the condenser built by the central anode and the grid cathodes is asymmetric. This actually means, that the electric field increases strongly toward the center. So it would be very probable that it still will work even with 5kV at 1cm spacing...
So this secondary electron avalanche effect could happen even at ambient pressure, and at about the indicated measures and voltages. I think this is quite interesting.
On the other hand, the needed vacuum for increasing the distance to 30um would be so easy attainable, that most surely even a custom vacuum cleaner would suffice to get to this vacuum level.

[Spokane1]

Dear Shanti,

The story about the glass CSET's and the gun came from Dr. Peter Lindemann in a conversation over lunch about 4 years ago. I haven't pressed him for the details since. Apparently Peter lived in the LA area in the early 70's and had contact with many people in the Free energy Community at the time. This included Bruce De Palma, Ed Skilling, and the editors at the Borderlands. I have no doubt that he heard this story from someone in his circle of friends. Even Peter doesn't put a whole lot of stock into this story since there has been no additional verification of it since. Therefore he didn't mention it in his book - but I still think its a great story.

For the sake of speculation, if this story is true as quoted, then we can draw some conclusions from what history we do know.

1. Mr. Gray didn't develop or build these devices himself. They were probably fabricated from a design that came from Marvin Cole.

2. Mr. Gray certainly didn't have the experience or technical skills to understand the advanced processes you are proposing [i.e. electron avalanch, MPF, eV, e.t.c.] He obviously knew these devices were important and guarded them accordingly.

3. Mr. Gray certainly may have had some knowledge as to how they were built and a general idea of their internal construction.

4. When Mr. Cole died that was the end of the supply. Perhaps the detailed plans and specifications were lost as well if this information was ever documented.

5. Perhaps this was the component that was failing in the EMA4-E2 motor? If so that explains why the motor wasn't demonstrated from mid 1973 to July 1974 when it was confiscated by the LA DA. We don't know if these proposed tubes were in the EMA4-E2 when it was run through the metal shredder. I suspect they were if they existed.

6. Mr. Gray and his hired Engineer (and several technicians after that) were unable to reproduce what ever "Magic" these tubes might have had.

7. What we have in the patents (written up 13 years later) are a collection of partial memories of a fantastic device as recalled by a nontechnical person with no knowledge of classical high energy particle physics.

8. If these CSET's were made of glass then I would assume they also were intended to operate in a partial vacuum or some other controlled atmosphere.

9. I would assume that the services of a custom Neon Shop would have been contracted to do this work. I'm sure that the LA area could have provided just such specialized services back then when Neon Signs were still affordable.

If you can come up with a working theory on how such a device might produce some energy amplification then more power to you. The field is still wide open. Be sure to check out Gary Magratten's work. No sense "reinventing the wheel" if someone else has already done a lot of work in this area.

Spokane1

[Shanti]

Thank you really very much!
It's really priceless to have someone here, who has such a profound knowledge on this topic!

About Gary: I just read some of his theory here: http://www.angelfire.com/ak5/energy21/grayreproduction2.htm

But some of this doesn't really make sense. Why should the photon impact on the copper plates generate negative voltage?
If the photon energy is high enough surely photo effect would take place, but this would knock out electrons, and therefore electrons would be knocked out of the copper. Surely then voltage would be developed, current would flow. But not as explained from Gary. He draws and explains, that the electrons would then wander out of the grid through the cable. This doesn't make sense...

[Spokane1]

Dear Shanti,

I certainly agree with your first run analysis. Gary kindly sent me a 32 page report on this subject. It looks like he took a lot of time to put this manuscript together. There was suppose to be a second report that detailed the hardware that that made application of the many equations he had listed. So far I haven't seen the second report yet. But when I do I shall study them side by side. It is very hard for me to understand theory without working hardward to demonstrate the principles involved. That is why I had such a hard time with Calculus III. (Took it over three times)

If you are interested in my unsolicited opinion I believe that our present classical understanding of particle physics will not point to the kind of breakthrough we are looking for. For example, did classical particle theory point to the existence of "charge clusters" as explored by Ken Shoulder's or super conducting "charge cluster micro tubes" as discovered by Mark Golds? I doubt it, not even close. These advancements were experimentally observed - then a theory was developed to explain (partially) what might be going on. I maintain that this will be the case as we search for a hardware setup that will emulate Dr. Tesla's or Marvin Cole's work.

This is why I collect as much historical information as I can. There is another researcher a Mr. Tad Johnson who explored a Gray CSET design in 2004 using a Marx generator to excite it. He claimed he was getting more heat from his load resistor than what his 12 KV switching power supply could deliver (12 watts). He then had a falling out with his lover at the time and to my knowledge he hasn't gone back to working to that project since. I don't know if he found some sort of error in his initial measurements or had hit upon something important and is keeping all his follow up research proprietary. I believe that Patrick Kelly has a copy of Tad's 2004 work on his web site.

Spokane1