The testing of mercury-arc rectifiers

THE design of mercury-arc rectifiers is based, as is that of all electrical apparatus, upon knowledge gained from fundamental principles, test data, and operating experience. Our knowledge of the physical action occurring within the rectifier is very limited. While the fundamental processes which take place in an arc discharge have been quite completely described by physicists,¹ their complexity has prevented their expression in a form usable by the engineer. For this reason rectifier design depends, to a larger degree than does the design of most electrical apparatus, upon experimental data obtained from tests.