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From: ee5391aa@hydra.unm.edu (Duke McMullan n5gax)
Newsgroups: sci.electronics
Subject: Re: Plasma speakers (was Re: homemade welder)
Message-ID: <1990Oct16.145517.10214@ariel.unm.edu>
Date: 16 Oct 90 14:55:17 GMT
References: <7203.2719ec15@jetson.uh.edu> <2142@oucsace.cs.OHIOU.EDU>
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Organization: University of New Mexico, Albuquerque
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In article <2142@oucsace.cs.OHIOU.EDU> bwhite@oucsace.cs.OHIOU.EDU
(Bill White) writes:
>	I seem to recall reading or hearing about a beast called a "plasma
>speaker" - which used some form of a gas plasma (I think argon) to produce
>high-quality sound.  I guess it even went to market, but was too high
>priced and too bulky (you had to have a tank of argon to make it work)
>for most people.  Is this just another urban myth?

Back in the sixties, there was a plasma tweeter on the market (Ioneer, or
something like that, I think.) for a while. It died, apparently. I heard
stories of ozone-induced nausea, bad shocks and even a fire. (Note that I
_do_not_ speak for the veracity of any of those stories: they're _rumors_!)
Whatever the reason, it went away.

In the early seventies, Alan Hill of Albuquerque developed a virtually
distortionless corona/plasma speaker and marketed it in the late seventies.
It was an "upscale" (read: expensive as hell) device, and as far as I'm
aware was a commercial failure. I don't know if he ever sold any of the
things or not. If there's any interest, I can ask him...I need to talk to
him about something else, anyway....

A ham I knew, Howard Meridith w5q-something-or-other, now a silent key, had
a resonant coil of some sort that he drove with a 2 kW amplifier. In AM mode,
that thing developed an eight-inch corona -- corona, hell, it was an electri-
cal _flame_ -- that said whatever you said into the microphone. It's been
years since I've seen that...I musta been about twelve when he showed it to
me...and I can't recall any details on the how and what. Such is life.

							d


--
	"It's my _dessert_ that's gross! Look, a thermos full of phlegm!"
						-- Calvin
   Duke McMullan n5gax nss13429r phon505-255-4642 ee5391aa@hydra.unm.edu