Word: fulchronograph
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Dates: during 1939-1939
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...Pittsburgh last week the Westinghouse laboratories announced a new type of lightning recorder. Called a "fulchronograph," it gives a complete picture of a lightning stroke's intensity, from start to finish. Essential feature is a wheel with 400 iron fins on its rim, revolving at 3,400 r.p.m. A lightning arrester no bigger than a quart-size fruit jar receives the bolt, discharges it harmlessly through its coils. In these coils the lightning sets up a varying magnetic field in which the fulchronograph wheel spins. Each iron fin of the fulchronograph is magnetized according to the intensity...
Developed by Engineer Charles Frederick Wagner and his coworkers, the fulchronograph has been tried out on top of the University of Pittsburgh's skyscraper Cathedral of Learning. The record of one bolt passing through the arrester and dissected by the fulchronograph shows that it reached a crest of 21,000 amperes, then fell rapidly (in 100 microseconds) to 1,000 amperes, and from that point more slowly to zero. From start to finish the flash lasted one-sixtieth of a second. Engineer Wagner intends to acquire a complete gallery of different types of bolt, then redesign the arresting equipment...
Previous-lightning measurement has relied mainly on the oscillograph, which records the changing intensity of a bolt by means of an oscillating electron beam playing on photographic film. The fulchronograph is not only cheaper to use, says Westinghouse, but furnishes a clearer lightning picture...
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