In this space, visitors are invited to post any comments, questions, or skeptical observations about Philo T. Farnsworth's contributions to the field of Nuclear Fusion research.Subject: Re: Help me think this through
Date: May 05, 1:18 pm
Poster: Richard HullOn May 05, 1:18 pm, Richard Hull wrote:
>I don't know, this is starting to look more and more like a multigrid vacuum tube, with screen grids and suppressor grids.. No wonder they went to ion guns.
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Sorry, They ABANDONED ion guns!!!
Ion guns were used from the get go in 1959 and used on all the Farnsworth machines until the end of the project in 1968. It was Hirsch-Meeks in their little break away clique within the project, (64-68), who ditched the ion guns and pushed the fusion rates UPWARDS over any of the original GUNNED Farnsworth devices.
This was more for simplicity sake, reduced cost, and reduced time to test, than through some negative problem with ion guns. Nonetheless, guns were found un-necessary for simple fusion.
Again all this is well studied by myself in preparation for maybe a two hour long update history video tape or a short book which I hope to get around to one day.
Richard Hull