spacecase0
earth human
here is a discriptiion of a curious device.
I started by building an almost standard whimhurst machine
it is in a frame solid enough to let me set it any direction I want.
I used galvanized steel segments (not sure how the iron changed what it did if it made any changes at all), had no idea back then that they work just fine without segments (they just are not self starting that way). no idea why I did not use copper foil, but likely the hardware store did not have any.
glued them on with clear acrylic paint
the disks are about 16 inches across , the segments (if viewed as a disk) are about 15 inches across on the outside and 6 inches on the inside. I think there are 48 segments with about 1/8 inch gaps between them (likely to small of a gap).
I had 3 arrangements to spin the disks. spinning at the same speed (same belt), spinning each disk with its own motor and motors wired in parallel (so they are close to the same speed), and just like the previous one, but motors wired in series (disks not that close in speed). motors are the ones used to run the powerful remote control cars, so it can spin the disks quite fast. and I built a custom (8V 30A) variable voltage power supply for them with a simple amp meter on it.
when I first set it up I wired the brushes just like a whimhurst machine. (each disk is half one polarity and half the other)
but for whatever reason (long forgotten), I wanted one disk one polarity, and the other disk the other polarity. so I took the theory of how it worked and changed the arrangement to work that way.
now it did give me the one polarity on each disk that I wanted, only it flipped polarity about every 1.5 seconds.
and it did odd things near it.
the magnetic fields near the segments when running were very strong, like enough to wipe out the magnet in a compass
but I could tell that the magnetic field in the segments changed all the time as it ran. and seemingly it did slightly different things because of that
it really messed with things like volt meters, the displays went all nuts, displays like that use timing to function, they do not have wires for each spot that can be activated. they have something like 9 wires on one side, they write a character, then use another set of wires to to tell what spot to write that to. so, change the character and tell it where it goes.
that system was useless in this field.
a watch is small enough that it did not have this issue, and digital watches ticked off time accurately over long amounts of time, but total random in about a 1.5 second window, so I tried a mechanical watch and got the same thing.
so I mapped out this odd field. quite a few detectors could see it, but the magnetic permeability tester was the clearest one
it was like 2 torrids that were crushed into a sphere (whatever that is called), size depended on if it was running and how long. field persisted after it was turned off, but it was smaller. usually 4 foot to about 15 foot across.
and if you physically moved the device you got 2 of the fields, one stayed at the location and one followed the device.
and if the fields were split, they would be linked. leave one at home with the cordless phone base in range, and take the other field with you with the cordless handset and you could seemingly go as far as you want to and still make calls crystal clear. this strikes me as quite marketable if you could figure out how to power the field from each side
it is a bit odd to be in an empty room and watch a compass spin in circles, walk out and it reads normal, go back in and it spins. not sure if the field faded or moved, but the area had no magnetic field hours later, and was gone entirely in a few days.
this 1.5 second toggle also affected gravity (only when it was on and running). I set up electric and magnetic shielding just to be sure that they were not changing anything in my setup. it was a small effect, but very measurable.
so I had got the effect I wanted, just an alternating version of it...
at some point I figured that I should just force the voltage one direction, and that should get the field to stay one direction,
so I built a 300KV (+/-150KV) power supply. and the device had no issue with the direct current bias I had given it, and it continued to flip with that DC bias on it.
and then I lost my place to live, so no follow up tests on that device for a long time.
it also made copper wire have no resistance. this test was on multimeter leads.
once exposed, took about 5 years to fade back to normal resistance
another odd thing,
when turning it off the amp meter on the power supply did not go to zero instantly when power was removed, it slowly dropped as the disks spun down. so I unplugged a wire on the power, DC current should not flow with only one wire, yet it did, up to 15A of DC current with just one wire connected. not sure what that means
also tried a large magnetic field in line with the spinning shafts, I still have that coil, only I had a transformer that let me push it to 500V, could not leave it on that long like that, but it is a huge magnetic field, could have erased the neighbors VHS tapes from my house. but no effect at all from adding the magnetic field. the resistance in this wire stayed low for 20 years, it only went back to normal when I put real power through it again, so it is not like it can make useful superconductors out of copper.
it also effected people in side this field quite a bit, and often not in a good way. strikes me as very similar to how the MAGVID was described.
I kept this device as it was for 20 years, until now no one wanted to see it or even want it described, and the few that saw it running in the first place wanted no part of it again. it now has been reworked it for other tests.
over the years I have taken elements of this device and tried to reproduce it with no luck. (including something almost like the MAGVID idea) there are lots of variables going with this device, remove one and it appears to not work anymore.
so that is the curious device.
it clearly needs some work to figure out just why it was doing what it was doing.
I started by building an almost standard whimhurst machine
it is in a frame solid enough to let me set it any direction I want.
I used galvanized steel segments (not sure how the iron changed what it did if it made any changes at all), had no idea back then that they work just fine without segments (they just are not self starting that way). no idea why I did not use copper foil, but likely the hardware store did not have any.
glued them on with clear acrylic paint
the disks are about 16 inches across , the segments (if viewed as a disk) are about 15 inches across on the outside and 6 inches on the inside. I think there are 48 segments with about 1/8 inch gaps between them (likely to small of a gap).
I had 3 arrangements to spin the disks. spinning at the same speed (same belt), spinning each disk with its own motor and motors wired in parallel (so they are close to the same speed), and just like the previous one, but motors wired in series (disks not that close in speed). motors are the ones used to run the powerful remote control cars, so it can spin the disks quite fast. and I built a custom (8V 30A) variable voltage power supply for them with a simple amp meter on it.
when I first set it up I wired the brushes just like a whimhurst machine. (each disk is half one polarity and half the other)
but for whatever reason (long forgotten), I wanted one disk one polarity, and the other disk the other polarity. so I took the theory of how it worked and changed the arrangement to work that way.
now it did give me the one polarity on each disk that I wanted, only it flipped polarity about every 1.5 seconds.
and it did odd things near it.
the magnetic fields near the segments when running were very strong, like enough to wipe out the magnet in a compass
but I could tell that the magnetic field in the segments changed all the time as it ran. and seemingly it did slightly different things because of that
it really messed with things like volt meters, the displays went all nuts, displays like that use timing to function, they do not have wires for each spot that can be activated. they have something like 9 wires on one side, they write a character, then use another set of wires to to tell what spot to write that to. so, change the character and tell it where it goes.
that system was useless in this field.
a watch is small enough that it did not have this issue, and digital watches ticked off time accurately over long amounts of time, but total random in about a 1.5 second window, so I tried a mechanical watch and got the same thing.
so I mapped out this odd field. quite a few detectors could see it, but the magnetic permeability tester was the clearest one
it was like 2 torrids that were crushed into a sphere (whatever that is called), size depended on if it was running and how long. field persisted after it was turned off, but it was smaller. usually 4 foot to about 15 foot across.
and if you physically moved the device you got 2 of the fields, one stayed at the location and one followed the device.
and if the fields were split, they would be linked. leave one at home with the cordless phone base in range, and take the other field with you with the cordless handset and you could seemingly go as far as you want to and still make calls crystal clear. this strikes me as quite marketable if you could figure out how to power the field from each side
it is a bit odd to be in an empty room and watch a compass spin in circles, walk out and it reads normal, go back in and it spins. not sure if the field faded or moved, but the area had no magnetic field hours later, and was gone entirely in a few days.
this 1.5 second toggle also affected gravity (only when it was on and running). I set up electric and magnetic shielding just to be sure that they were not changing anything in my setup. it was a small effect, but very measurable.
so I had got the effect I wanted, just an alternating version of it...
at some point I figured that I should just force the voltage one direction, and that should get the field to stay one direction,
so I built a 300KV (+/-150KV) power supply. and the device had no issue with the direct current bias I had given it, and it continued to flip with that DC bias on it.
and then I lost my place to live, so no follow up tests on that device for a long time.
it also made copper wire have no resistance. this test was on multimeter leads.
once exposed, took about 5 years to fade back to normal resistance
another odd thing,
when turning it off the amp meter on the power supply did not go to zero instantly when power was removed, it slowly dropped as the disks spun down. so I unplugged a wire on the power, DC current should not flow with only one wire, yet it did, up to 15A of DC current with just one wire connected. not sure what that means
also tried a large magnetic field in line with the spinning shafts, I still have that coil, only I had a transformer that let me push it to 500V, could not leave it on that long like that, but it is a huge magnetic field, could have erased the neighbors VHS tapes from my house. but no effect at all from adding the magnetic field. the resistance in this wire stayed low for 20 years, it only went back to normal when I put real power through it again, so it is not like it can make useful superconductors out of copper.
it also effected people in side this field quite a bit, and often not in a good way. strikes me as very similar to how the MAGVID was described.
I kept this device as it was for 20 years, until now no one wanted to see it or even want it described, and the few that saw it running in the first place wanted no part of it again. it now has been reworked it for other tests.
over the years I have taken elements of this device and tried to reproduce it with no luck. (including something almost like the MAGVID idea) there are lots of variables going with this device, remove one and it appears to not work anymore.
so that is the curious device.
it clearly needs some work to figure out just why it was doing what it was doing.