Since Paul isn't forthcomming with his knowledge of the machine, then we (the world he is trying to keep it from) must recreate the process and there is 2 ways to do so.
1) copy his work : well, he wont tell us how it works, and looking at it and guesing hasnt helped much thus far.
2) re-build it from the ground up : this i intend to do and i hope you are all on board here...
its obvious that by the design of Pauls device, he based this from a conventional induction-type static electric machine. so lets start there.
we have this electric charge and we collect is in capacitors and let it spark.. ( circuit??)
forget for a moment the positive and negative, this can get confusing because science switches names for it depending what context it is used in and people always agrue about it... so for the purposes of a circuit, the (+) is the side the spark originates from and the (-) is the place it goes TO.
Replace the machine with a Battery in the schematic, that will simplify things a bit. it makes our juice.. who cares if its a wimshurts, a van degraff, a roller-type, or some guy jacking a pvc pipe with a silk rag....
from the (+) in we run the electricity through a constrictor. this is an inductor of very high impedance. (why?) my theory on that is:
this electricity is 'wild' (sparks all over the place) and very high voltage. the first and foremost important thing is to 'tame' it. This is done by constricting the voltage flow. An inductor is placed within a magnetic field, this slows down the speed of the electricity, and allows current to build up for some number of picoseconds... [not very scientific, but thats how i analyze this thing]
from the constrictor we run through the HV side of our inductor.
This inductor should be custom made for this type of deal, and im still working out the details of "hv coil wire" ( any help ?)
so for now im using a microwave transformer, its designed for a MUCH LOWER voltage, and doesnt work very well, but its enough to demonstrate the principal.
made a short video, only using half of the electricity, i think a square-wave rectifier would pick up the back-EMF and sustain the flash or perhaps a secondary flash.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvpwivCvcDEThis is where im at.
I know a lot of you guys have static machines, and are getting pretty good at generating the sparky-stuff
lets take what we know so far, and bring it to the next level
turn the static into something we can use.
There is an infinite supply of electricity, with only the cost of moving it from the source to the collector.
which, if you reduce friction and lossescan be very small.