[time-nuts] HP Stories: Battery Chargers, and a fading idolization of HP

[Bob Bownes]

> 
> Yes, those brown roughly 1" square caps used intact sheets of mica as dielectric. You can easily split the mineral into uniform, thin, transparent sheets.

Beware inclusions that will make the surface rough and change the behavior, particularly breakdown voltages. 

> The reconstituted caps are still around - used in high power RF circuits (mica has really low loss, but high epsilon) and in Tesla coils (a sort of special case high power RF). Most of them are surplus Russian/Soviet.
> 
Hmm, mica is pretty much hexagonal version of graphite/carbon/diamond created when there is a large axial force and the proper temperature. It is synthesized for many uses today, I’d be very surprised if precision high voltage caps was not one of them. 

That being said, thanks for the insights into the 5061A/B. Now I feel the need to go power mine up!