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Bifilar coil

electromagnetic coil containing two closely spaced parallel windings

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionDec 21, 2025
Entity authorityQ794683 ↗
Source-derived summary

A bifilar coil is an electromagnetic coil that contains two closely spaced, parallel windings. In electrical engineering, the word bifilar describes wire which is made of two filaments or strands. It is commonly used to denote special types of winding wire for transformers. Wire can be purchased in bifilar form, usually as different colored enameled wire bonded together. For three strands, the term trifilar coil is used.

Description and applications

The parallel-wound, series connected bifilar coil is how Nikola Tesla patented (512340) it. This way the capacity between the parallel windings is charged by the increased voltage difference (1/2 of the supply voltage) between the series connected windings. This makes it possible for the coil to hold a greatly increased amount of energy in its electric field, and lowers the resonant frequency of the coil drastically.

Some bifilars have adjacent coils in which the convolutions are arranged so that the potential difference is magnified (i.e., the current flows in same parallel direction). Others are wound so that the current flows in opposite directions.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Bifilar coil” as electromagnetic coil containing two closely spaced parallel windings. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Bifilar, coil and electromagnetic.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current 173-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Bifilar, coil and electromagnetic providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

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Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 21, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q794683. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Bifilar coil” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.