[~ot]magnets was Re: [FT] Railgun Goals

> On Fri, 27 Nov 1998, Thomas Anderson wrote:

in a remarkable and sad case of synchronicity, Prof Nicholas Kurti, who worked
on magnetic cooling here, died on tuesday; i read his obituary in the
Independent today, where this is quoted from his memoirs:

"I built the solenoid and with great expectation late one evening I pressed
the switch which sent a current of 40 amperes through the coil.
The result was spectacular - a deafening explosion, the apparatus
disappeared, all windows were blown in our out, a wall caved in, and thus
ended my pioneering experiment on liquid hydrogen cooled coils!"

Kurti did this work in the 1930s after fleeing to the UK to escape the Nazis.

Tom