"Wayne.B" wrote in message
news
On Sat, 15 Sep 2012 09:52:49 -0400, "Eisboch" wrote:

I think serious additional research should be applied to resurrecting
the ultra-genius, Nikola Tesla's idea of capturing and storing the
electrical energy contained in lightning strikes.

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OK, you first !

:-)

Benjamin Franklin was lucky not to have been killed in his little
capture experiment.

I "captured" a lightning strike a few years ago with one our Norfolk
Island Pine trees. It was not a good thing but there *was* a lot of
energy involved.

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No thanks. I forgot to mention that Tesla was also a certified nut
case. He was one of those super geniuses that sometimes stepped over
the line of sanity.

I've been zapped by high voltage twice in my life. Once by being the
accidental discharge patch of a filter capacitor for a 100,000 watt
Navy transmitter. Knocked me about 10 feet across the room and up
against the wall like a thrown rag doll. The second time I was
touching the powered element in a system that was energized by 12,000
volts at 1-1/2 amps. It wasn't supposed to turn on, but the
interlocks were overridden and it turned on in a freak accident.
Don't remember much of that one. My last conscious recollection was
my hands feeling like they were the size of basketballs and the next
thing I knew I was in the emergency room being monitored with an EKG
machine.

Not long after we purchased the house we are in now, it was hit by
lightning. The roof has cupola on which was attached a large, copper
weather vane type thing. It was probably about 3 feet high and about
the same or more wide. Fortunately, it was grounded to a pair of 10'
copper ground stakes located in the basement of the house near the
power distribution boxes. The lightning hit the weather vane and
caused our driveway in front of the garage to light up with sparks,
zaps and pops for about 5 seconds. The copper weather vane was
completely vaporized. Not a trace of it remained.