The Textbook Behind the VIC, 1: the pulsing transformer is an induction coil

Part 1 of 6 in The Textbook Behind the VIC: 1 · 2 · 3 · 4 · 5 · 6

Why a book from 1896

Stanley Meyer's Voltage Intensifier Circuit is usually argued about as if it were new physics. Most of it is not, and that is a strength rather than a weakness: nearly every part of the circuit has a name, a formula and a worked explanation in the electrical textbooks of the 1890s. This tutorial puts his circuit beside two of them.

• J. A. Fleming, The Alternate Current Transformer in Theory and Practice, Volume I, The Induction of Electric Currents, new edition, 1896 (in the Reference Library). Fleming taught electrical engineering at University College London and later invented the thermionic valve.
• Charles Proteus Steinmetz, Theory and Calculation of Alternating Current Phenomena (third edition, 1900, here) and Theory and Calculation of Transient Electric Phenomena and Oscillations (here). Steinmetz was General Electric's consulting engineer and the man who taught a generation of engineers to calculate alternating-current circuits.

A note on the book. The copy the archive files as "The Alternate Current Transformer Vol. 2: The Utilisation of Induced Currents (1896)" is, on its own title page, Volume I, The Induction of Electric Currents, the 1896 new edition — the same book as the archive's Volume 1 entry, from a different library's scan. Section and page numbers below are Fleming's own.

The aim is the one the archive keeps for all its teaching: to set out what Meyer said, how the textbook physics supports it, and what a builder should measure. Where the textbooks and Meyer part company, the parts say so, as questions for the bench rather than verdicts.

The circuit, in the textbooks' words

In Meyer's words, from Energy of the Future in raum&zeit (1990), the VIC is a pulsing transformer, a blocking diode, and a resonant charging choke in series with the water cell:

The pulsing transformer (a/g) steps up voltage amplitude or voltage potential during pulsing operations. The primary coil is electrically isolated (no electrical connection between primary and secondary coil) to form Voltage Intensifier Circuit (AA). Voltage amplitude or voltage potential is increased when secondary coil (a) is wrapped with more turns of wire.

The pulsing transformer is an induction coil

Fleming's whole book is organised around one device, which he calls indifferently the induction coil or the transformer: a primary of few turns and a secondary of many, sharing a magnetic circuit, so that a change of current in the primary induces a larger electromotive force in the secondary. Meyer's description above is the same device in the same words. The ratio of turns sets the ratio of voltages; the rest of the book is about what spoils that simple rule.

Meyer's own numbers for one build survive in his five pencil pages of 1987: a primary of 200 turns and a secondary of 84,500 turns, a ratio of 422.5, which he multiplies up to 5,070 volts. That is Fleming's rule used exactly as Fleming uses it.

What the iron does: open and closed magnetic circuits

Fleming draws a distinction every VIC builder meets:

Such an imperfect iron circuit is often called an open magnetic circuit, whilst the complete iron ring core would be called a closed magnetic circuit.

— Fleming, §3 of Chapter II, p. 38 (part 3)

A closed core carries far more induction for the same winding, and so multiplies a coil's inductance. The archive has this measured on a real estate VIC. Don Gabel put its windings on an LCR meter in 2009, first loose and then on the core (VIC coil readings). At 100 Hz:

That factor of about sixteen is the iron. It is also why an air-core estimate of a VIC choke comes out over a thousand times too small — a common mistake, worked through in Resonant Action.

Fleming adds the warning that goes with it:

…the magnetic resistance even of a closed magnetic circuit is not a constant quantity. It is not only affected by temperature, but is also determined, within very wide limits, by the value of the magnetic induction itself… and, in fact, it is dependent upon the whole past magnetic history of the iron.

— Fleming, p. 38

So a VIC's inductances are not fixed numbers. They move with how hard the core is driven and with what it was driven with a moment ago. Gabel's own table shows it: with the other windings shorted, choke C1 falls from 1.26 H to 0.61 H. The chokes and the secondary share one core, and each loads the others.

What to measure

• Every winding's inductance on the core, not loose, at the frequency you will pulse at.
• The same with the other windings open and then shorted. The difference is the coupling, and it changes the circuit.
• The turns ratio by measurement: drive the primary with a small sine and read the secondary. Compare it with the ratio of turns you wound.

Next: part 2, the water is a condenser, and a leaky one.