It’s grown in Montana. Ask Frank Zappa (well, his heirs).

DaveD

Sent from a small flat thingy

The Oxford Bell is an electro chemical version of Franklin's Bell, and
truth be know ol'' Ben probably ripped off the idea from someone in
antiquity.

George Dowell

On 2019/07/22 07:24 PM, Dave Daniel wrote:

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No, the string does not have to be a very good insulator as long as you suspend it from something that is.
A glass rod, for example.

⁣Met vriendelijke groet,
Rob Klein

verstuurd vanaf mijn smartphone​

Op 23 jul. 2019 01:01, om 01:01, Laurence Motteram lmotteram@scientific-devices.com.au schreef:

If you can find (or draw your own) pure polystyrene filament, that
should work very well. Someone suggested optical fiber - this should
work very well too, in the right conditions. You'd want bare glass
fiber, with no protective plastic cladding, then thoroughly clean and
treat it with a silicone oil like Dow 200. Glass isn't really all that
great an insulator (in an extremely high impedance context), due to
surface effects, so a silicone treatment helps a lot.

Besides optical fiber form, just regular fibers of glass should be
available, in different sizes and alloys. It may be hard to find it in
small quantities though.

PTFE should also be available in fiber form - somewhere - since it's
used for making meshes, filters, separators, and screens for chemical
process applications. Someone must produce the raw fiber stock that goes
into these sorts of things. Again, finding it in small quantities could
be problematic. It's best to use virgin PTFE if you go this route.

Ed

On 7/22/2019 11:16 AM, Dr. David Kirkby wrote:

Really, I dunno WTF you're all on about.

We are discussing an instrument built almost 200 years ago.
No PTFE, no optical fibers, no silicone oil or anything like that was available back then!
Yet here's everyone falling over themselves suggesting 21st century technology for something the people who built the original probably didn't even think twice about.

I'd still say waxed silk, as back then this was commonly used as insulating material. But the catgut (actually mostly made from sheep intestines) suggested earlier is also a strong contender.

⁣Met vriendelijke groet,
Rob Klein

verstuurd vanaf mijn smartphone​

Op 24 jul. 2019 20:21, om 20:21, ed breya eb@telight.com schreef:

A very long time ago scientific instrument makers were using quartz fibres.
These were made from a piece of quartz heated to melting point with an oxy-acetylene
flame on the bolt of a cross-bow which was discharged to draw out a quartz fibre
that was very thin.
Then experiments determining the gravitation constant and
such like used this fibre to suspend items that were subject to tiny forces in torsion,
the angular displacement being measured by light beams reflected off a suspended mirror.
Quartz fibre has a long and distinguished history, and is a probably starter for
the electrostatic gong instrument.
Cheers,
Neville Michie

On Wed, 24 Jul 2019 at 21:23, Rob Klein rob.klein@smalldesign.nl wrote:

Rob,
am not looking to make a replica.

I can see why someone might want to make a replica, but that was not my
aim. I was not intending making the batteries either, but again I can see
why one would want to do that. I just intended running it from a capacitor
I had previously charged up to a couple of kV with a PSU.

Hence I don’t have a problem using 21st century materials. It was just
going to be a challenge at our amateur radio club to make something broadly
similar.

Dave

Dr. David Kirkby,

G8WRB DE K0FF
Sounds like a fun project.

George Dowell

On 2019/07/24 05:48 PM, Dr. David Kirkby wrote: