Ruhmkorff spark coil

Do you remember the Fiat 126p? It had only two cylinders and if something broke it must have been the circuit breaker. The breaker was connected to a coil, and the coil provided voltage for the sparking plugs. If something went wrong, the Fiat stopped.

The so called Ruhmkorff spark coil is one of the oldest devices used to produce high voltage. There are only few basic windings and a lot more secondary windings - this gas spark has three sections of thin wire.

In this spark coil, similarly to the 'real' one, there is a small condenser parallel to the basic winding. It is used to reduce the oscillations of high frequency which would make it difficult for the secondary winding to create high voltage. The only change is that the core of the transformer, originally consisting of parallel iron wires, has been replaced by ferrite and the ring breaker with an electronic system.

Seems complicated, doesn't it? And it often breaks down! The piezoelectric one I much simpler.