This is your's truely, basking in the genius of Nikola Tesla. This statue of him is located in Niagra Falls, New York, on Goat Island, just in front of the Cave of the Winds ticket window. It commemorates Tesla for being the first to transmit AC electrical power from the Niagra Falls generating station to Buffalo, something that would have been impossible to do with the DC power that his rivals promoted. Let's all give a big round of applause for Nikola and AC, without which Tesla coils (and probably everything in your house that matters) would not be possible!

Before we start, please allow me to clear up a few things:

• The sparks coming off a Tesla Coil are NOT safe to touch. The skin effect, which causes high frequency current to flow through only the outermost surface of a conductor, has a negligible effect on the human body due to its relatively poor conductivity. It may not hurt as much as 60Hz, but this is due to the poor frequency response of the human nervous system.
• Building a Tesla Coil is not inexpensive. At first glance, it appears that all that's required is a scrap piece of plastic pipe and some copper wire and tubing. To date, I've spent between $1000 and $2000 to get to where I am now.
• Getting a coil to run well (i.e. long sparks) is not easy. Attempting to do so without a reasonable background in electronics to where you understand the underlying principals is even harder. One's first attempt (including mine) generally yields disappointing results, and one must be prepared to persevere and rebuild and spend still more money to get acceptable results.

My goal: Build and refine a Tesla Coil to extract the longest possible, repeatable sparks, subject to the self-imposed constraint that its components shall not exceed the confines of a 22" x 22" plywood base, with the necessary exceptions of a ground system, variac, and other operator controls. This constraint is largely due to having limited storage space in my house, but also forces me to use a neat and compact layout.