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wrote:

On Tue, 18 Jan 2005 06:51:04 GMT, SpamFree
wrote:

As to where the "induction" idea came from I heard an interesting
comment from an old guy who was certainly around at the time of the
introduction of the follower wire (early sixties). He said that the
problem with the old no-follower-wire BX was that it caused
interference with the TV sets which were becoming popular at the time.
The solution was the follower wire which stopped the spiral from
becoming an antenna. This may of course be a crock-of-****. If anyone
has any firm documented information from the era, I'd be interested in
hearing about it.

Not picking on you, or proclaiming an expert, but if the bonding wire
prevented the clading from being sometype of interferring antena,
wouldn't MC have the same type bonding wire?

Just tossing that out for thought.

Like I said this might be a crock-of-****; it just seemed to be an
interesting hypothesis given the apparent problems with the induced
resistance mantra. I can only guess (and the physics are way beyond my
level) that perhaps the interference only occurs when the EGC (outside
sheathing) is carrying current (i.e. there is some sort of fault).
With MC the armor never carries current even if a fault occurs. This
would also explain why there's no rush to replace the installed
no-follower-wire AC: the armor has to be used as an EGC AND a fault
has to occur.