Jacob’s ignition testing. Thanks to Newbomb Turk….

Interesting, I think that's a plasma ignition system. We tested a similar design when I worked at DIYAutoTune - I won't say who built it because it was an early development mule and maybe they sorted the bugs out. What this ignition did was it charged a capacitor to 500 volts similar to a CDI system - but instead of dumping the capacitor's charge into a coil, it used a power diode (which would be in that small aluminum box) to send it down the spark plug wire. The voltage would only go down the wire once the ignition already struck an arc, but then it would give a massive surge of current.

That particular ignition had a rather nasty weakness, though: It could just about double as an electromagnetic pulse weapon! It generated so much interference when we switched it on that it didn't just mess with the car's electronics, but we had to modify the chassis dyno's wiring with better grounding and shielding before we could get a reading. I'm not sure if the Jacobs system had a similar weakness or if they'd come further along in sorting it out.