When Ed first started using his pulse motor techniques, he had a capacitor bank which, I think I've read, consisted of around 16 caps, each rated at 23 uf. As he continued developing his skill, he replaced this bank of capacitors with a single cap, used in conjunction with his Conversion Tube. Although a higher frequency of operation would allow for the use of a smaller cap, I've often wondered if his Tube itself had an unusual capacitance, due to the high level of static charge which builds up in the air molecules in the Tube, giving him the same capacitance as his original bank? I've just recently found out that there may be a correlary with one of T.H. Moray's Tubes. In Moray's radiesthesia patent (#2,460,707), Fig. 2 illustrates his "Sparking Condenser". This Tube has an outer cylindrical electrode with a corrugated inner surface which acts as a brush electrode, aiming a corona discharge at a central cylinder which is surrounded by a dielectric. Moray reported that this Tube had an unusual capacitance around one Farad. Although Moray mixed radioactive powders with the dielectric to produce the effect, there still may be some similarity with the Gray Tube, since a radioactive substance gives off longitudinal rays, which is the same thing that the central electrode in Gray's Tube does. Moray's contention is that these longitudinal rays are modulated by the corona field, thereby producing the tremendous interstitial capacitance. This same type of non-local energy storage may occur in the dielectric of the air molecules between and around the grids of Gray's Tube. -JV
