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Fedderson-Daedalus: central claims

Source gap (updated after QE). The text of both PDFs is now available (Step 0 OCR: 405 of 406 and 26 of 27 pages), and the two works that carry the claims were read in full from page images: Trowbridge and Sabine (PDF pp.145-159, two independent reads) and Rich (PDF pp.6-24, tables checked against images). Trowbridge and Sabine's small-condenser height is 30.47 cm (earlier OCR 80.47). The remaining gap is Feddersen's own work. The file "Daedalus-Fedderson-109.pdf" is not Feddersen and not the journal Daedalus: it is the Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, vol. 25 (1890), 406 pages. Feddersen's 1857-1862 papers (Poggendorff's Annalen vols. 103, 108, 112, 113, 115, 116) are not in the folder, so claim 1 rests on Trowbridge and Sabine's citations and on [memory] (high confidence). Trowbridge's Doppler paper (claim 3), Nott, Dolbear and the Joule memoir have now been read in full (second QE round; Doppler page 229 from page images at up to 800 dpi); only Safford and Hofman rest on a digest. The Doppler period (3.0e-7 s) is confirmed and the sensitivity reads 1/100 of a wave length at about 85 percent confidence, with an ambiguous unit. To obtain: Feddersen's Annalen papers; any citation record of Rich (Phys. Rev. 10, 140, 1917).

  1. The discharge of a condenser (Leyden jar) through a spark gap is oscillatory, with period t = 2 pi sqrt(LC), and can be seen by photographing the spark in a rotating mirror (Feddersen; background in Trowbridge and Sabine 1890). Trowbridge and Sabine's own small-condenser data agree with the formula to 0.3% (right terminal mean 3.11 against 3.10 microseconds) once the capacity of the wire they list (200 cm) is added.
  2. Measured oscillation periods in air condensers deviate from the simple LC formula and show a periodicity, attributed in 1890 to a hysteresis-like "dielectric viscosity" of air (Trowbridge and Sabine). Deep read: the deviation is mostly the unapplied wire capacity; interval-to-interval scatter is real (2-3 times the reading error) but no repeatable pattern by oscillation number is shown; the spark-length test (0.4 vs 1.3 cm, on a glass jar) shows +2.2%, not "no variation". The capacity itself cannot be reproduced from the printed geometry better than about 15%: the small condenser (30.47 cm high, not 80.47) gives about 4,540 cm for 18 gaps against the quoted 5317.9, so a few-percent departure from the LC formula cannot be established from these data. The real effect they invoke, slow recovery of a solid dielectric (dielectric absorption), is also seen in Safford and Hofman and, in full-read detail, in Nott (residuals of 2-27% of the charge in every solid dielectric tested, recovering with waiting time; capacity rising 1.6-85% from 1 ms to 30 s), but it is not shown for air, and Nott measured only solids at kilohertz or slower.
  3. In an oscillatory spark the metal atoms of the electrodes are not carried to and fro by the oscillation; they are only excited to radiate, since iron lines show no Doppler shift (Trowbridge 1890; read in full from page images; Rumford Fund, $500). Evidence: two exposures on one plate (terminal along and across the slit) matched exactly near the H lines; a qualitative visual null, no repeats reported; the stated sensitivity of '1/100 of a wave length' has an ambiguous unit; periods 3.0e-7 s and 2.4e-6 s were calculated from 2 pi sqrt(LC) with no L or C given.
  4. An oscillatory spark between electrodes of different metals is initiated more readily on one polarity than the other, so a gap of unlike metals partly rectifies (Rich 1917). Evidence: one "typical" film per pair, about 30 half-cycles per polarity, no statistics, no gap length given for any table, and a Cu-Cu control run at different damping and with its own odd/even bias.
  5. The ordering of metals for easy spark initiation is Fe, Bi, Zn, Cu, interpreted as ease of electron emission, so electrode material is not negligible in spark initiation in air (Rich 1917). Bi against Zn is never measured directly (no Bi-Zn data), and Rich's wording of the favoured electrode as "anode" in the prose conflicts with his table headings and his closing "electrons are emitted from iron" (the favoured column is the negative electrode).
  6. Waves through glass in an intense magnetic field, with the electric strain perpendicular to the magnetic, are not noticeably affected, so Maxwell's displacement currents do not alter the surge time (Trowbridge and Sabine; tentative, qualitative, no numbers given).

Also in the folder (not claims of the project, but notable): - Dolbear (presented January 1891; PDF pp.309-315, read in full) claims that changing the form of a magnetised iron ring induces currents (30-40 degree galvanometer deflections at about 1,300 ampere-turns), that struck magnets act on each other by sympathetic vibration (heard in a telephone at about a yard), and, as speculation with no test proposed, that atoms are small elastic ring magnets whose vibrations send waves through the ether (vortex-ring atoms) and that a closed ring magnet emits waves that 'would not necessarily give rise to electro-magnetic effects directly'. The paper has no wireless, electrostatic or speed content, and no unmagnetised-ring control. - Rich's measured 4.1 mm spark spacing at 42,000 mm/s (97.6 microseconds) implies an effective capacity of about 0.039 microfarad, several times below the 0.125-0.5 microfarad low-frequency value he quotes: a measured rate-dependent capacity in the same folder as claim 2. - The Joule memorial (PDF pp.384-389, read in full) reports, as a secondary account written 40-47 years after the events, that members of the Royal Society called his mechanical-equivalent paper "nonsense from beginning to end" and as a body refused it in their Transactions until 1850, seven years after presentation (the memorial itself dates the Cork reading 1848, which contradicts its own seven years; the Royal Society record was not checked), and that a British Association committee in 1849 cut the sentence "Friction consists in the conversion of mechanical power into heat" from a printed paper. A documented-by-memorial case of resistance to a correct result.