I was thinking of that when I posed my question.
FWIW, pure water is a good insulator. It also has a high
specific heat. For those reasons water was used to cool the large
vacuum tubes used in radio transmitters and elsewhere. I think it
still is for some applications. The water had to be very pure
otherwise there was enough leakage to cause hydrolysis and
deposition of material in the cooling system. After about 1935
air cooled tubes became available. The air cooled tubes were at
first just the same ones but with large finned radiators brazed
to the plates. However, while air cooling solved some problems
the tubes had about half the power handling capability of their
water cooled counterparts. All replaced with solid state devices
in modern radio transmitters except for the very highest power ones.
Many early high power broadcast stations (50KW or more) had
a swimming pool sized pond for cooling the heat exchanger water.
I can't remember what the source of cooling water was i.e.
if the radio stations had to have their own distilling apparatus
or if they could buy suitable water.
--
Richard Knoppow
dickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
WB6KBL
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