The secret, open-air, high-voltage testing device was constructed in the late 1970s for testing insulators to protect vehicles, aircrafts and electronic equipment against lightning.
The facility is absolutely unique; nothing like it exists anywhere in the world, primarily because of its outstanding charge capacity. At its peak operating capacity the giant Marx
generator, when lightning is discharged onto an isolated platform, has power equal to all power generation facilities in Russia – including thermoelectric, hydroelectric, nuclear,
solar, and wind power stations combined. But only for about 100 microseconds, Rossiya-1 TV reported. The Marx Generator was named after German electrical engineer Erwin
Otto Marx, who described it back in 1924. In Russia it’s known as the Arkadyev-Marx generator, as Russian physicist Vladimir Arkadyev and his co-worker, renowned scientific
film director Nikolay Baklin, constructed a so-called “lightning machine” 10 years earlier, in 1914.
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