Scary 1920's high voltage thing (LOUD ELECTRICAL NOISES)

This is pleasingly freaky. It's a 100 year old piece of electro-medical apparatus that probably predates most electrical appliances.

This thing is NOT child safe (or even adult safe). It has exposed electrical contacts that can deliver a significant electric shock. That's just how they did stuff in that early electrical era.

It needed a few broken solder joints resoldered and an improvised replacement for the old capacitor, but still works. The circuitry is very typical of that era, with a coil and magnetically activated circuit interrupter causing pulses of current through a step up transformer. It's very similar to a violet ray or violet wand unit. The high voltage is used to create ozone by applying it across two pieces of metal mesh on either side of a tubular glass insulator. The resultant capacitively coupled charge causes a corona discharge as it breaks the air molecules apart. In the process of recombining they create ozone and many other exotic air molecules that have a sterilizing and deodorising effect as they revert back to more stable molecules.

Ozone is an essential part of natural outdoor air at very low levels to maintain a level of sterility. It is useful to generate similarly low levels indoors, but this unit produces higher levels that are not recommended for continuous inhalation. A rough rule of thumb is that if you can smell ozone there's too much. Modern low level air cleaning units tend to use a very high airflow to mix the active air molecules into the room.

I was expecting the power consumption to be quite high, but it's actually around 5W and produces a reasonable amount of ozone. I'm not sure how long it is intended to be run for continuously, with it's continually vibrating and sparking electrical contact.

The name written on the bottom of the unit looks like A-Massey or Massoy written with a stylish flourish. It could be the name of the builder or the customer it was being made for.

If you like high voltage stuff then you may find it interesting that Jeff Behary of The Electrotherapy Museum fame is currently trying to rehome the GE 3 million volt lightning lab (He's already got the parts from it). If you can spare a few dollars He would appreciate the support:-
https://www.gofundme.com/f/Saving-GE-...


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