> I would expect it's horribly inefficient.  The coil for the charger is 
> below
> base, so the coil for the chargee must be in the very bottom of the
> handle, which means that the coupling between the two must be kind
> of poor.  Nothing I see makes me think there's a lot of electronics or
> any kind of ferrous core to the coil in the charger, so I expect its a
> 60 Hz air/plastic core transformer.

If you make the inductors resonant the efficiency will surprise you.
If you raise the frequency, it gets a lot easier to make them resonant.
If you are worried about patent violations, it is highly probable that Tesla 
had the necessary patent and it is now public domain...

John Ferrell
http://DixieNC.US


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