Any of the heating hazards described in the foregoing chapter may cause currents which will damage apparatus. All devices for the protection of apparatus from such damage, operate either to stop the flow of the dangerous current, or to send that flow over some other path.

Protection Against High Potentials. Lightning is the most nearly universal hazard. All open wires are exposed to it in some degree. Damaging currents from lightning are caused by extraordinarily high potentials. Furthermore, a lightning discharge is oscillatory; that is, alternating, and of very high frequency. Drops, ringers, receivers, and other devices subject to lightning damage suffer by having their windings burned by the discharge. The impedance these windings offer to the high frequency of lightning oscillations is great. The impedance of a few turns of heavy wire may be negligible to alternating currents of ordinary frequencies because the resistance of the wire is low, its inductance small, and the frequency finite. On the other hand, the impedance of such a coil to a lightning discharge is much higher, due to the very high frequency of the discharge.

Were it not for the extremely high pressure of lightning discharges, their high frequency of oscillation would enable ordinary coils to be self-protecting against them. But a discharge of electricity can take place through the air or other insulating medium if its pressure be high enough. A pressure of 70,000 volts can strike across a gap in air of one inch, and lower pressures can strike across smaller distances. When lightning encounters an impedance, the discharge seldom takes place through the entire winding, as an ordinary current would flow, usually striking across whatever short paths may exist. Very often these paths are across the insulation between the outer turns of a coil. It is not unusual for a lightning discharge to plow its way across the outer layer of a wound spool, melting the copper of the turns as it goes. Often the discharge will take place from inner turns directly to the core of the magnet. This is more likely when the core is grounded.

Air-Gap Arrester. The tendency of a winding to oppose lightning discharges and the ease with which such discharge may strike across insulating gaps, points the way to protection against them. Such devices consist of two conductors separated by an air space or other insulator and are variously known as lightning arresters, spark gaps, open-space cutouts, or air-gap arresters. The conductors between which the gap exists may be both of metal, may be one of metal and one of carbon, or both of carbon. One combination consists of carbon and mercury, a liquid metal. The space between the conductors may be filled with either air or solid matter, or it may be a vacuum. Speaking generally, the conductors are separated by some insulator. Two conductors separated by an insulator form a condenser. The insulator of an open-space arrester often is called the dielectric.

Fig. 203. Saw Tooth Arrester
[View full size illustration.]

Discharge Across Gaps:—Electrical discharges across a given distance occur at lower potentials if the discharge be between points than if between smooth surfaces. Arresters, therefore, are provided with points. Fig. 203 shows a device known as a "saw-tooth" arrester because of its metal plates being provided with teeth. Such an arrester brings a ground connection close to plates connected with the line and is adapted to protect apparatus either connected across a metallic circuit or in series with a single wire circuit.

Fig. 201 shows another form of metal plate air-gap arrester having the further possibility of a discharge taking place from one line wire to the other. Inserting a plug in the hole between the two line plates connects the line wires directly together at the arrester. This practice was designed for use with series lines, the plug short-circuiting the telephone set when in place.

A defect of most ordinary types of metal air-gap lightning arresters is that heavy discharges tend to melt the teeth or edges of the plates and often to weld them together, requiring special attention to re-establish the necessary gap.