Dynamo

“ A dynamo in active work would resemble a conflagration, whilst a permanent magnet would realise the dream of mediæval mystics and become an everlasting lamp with no expenditure of energy or consumption of fuel. ”

“ It is the most compact, business-like, and dangerous of all utilitarian devices. To touch its brushes may be instant death, for the dynamo is the prison house of the lightning, and resents intrusion. Hidden away from public gaze in some sequestered power house, and working night and day like some tireless, dumb, [46] and mighty genii, it sends its magnetic thrills of force silently through the many miles of wire extending like radii from some great nerve center through the conduits in our streets, and stretching from pole to pole like giant cobwebs through the air. ”

“ One was loose in its foundations and kept the shed vibrating. But the big dynamo drowned these little noises altogether with the sustained drone of its iron core, which somehow set part of the ironwork humming. The place made the visitor's head reel with the throb, throb, throb of the engines, the rotation of the big wheels, the spinning ball-valves, the occasional spittings of the steam, and over all the deep, unceasing, surging note of the big dynamo. This last noise was from an engineering point of view a defect, but Azuma-zi accounted it unto the monster for mightiness and pride. ”

“ From the moment that a dynamo begins to run with excited field, heat is continuously generated by the passage of the current through the windings of the field-magnet coils and the armature, as well as by the action of hysteresis and eddy currents in the armature and pole-pieces. ”

“ The ocean steamer ran the surest line of triangulation into the future, because it was the nearest of man's products to a unity; railroads taught less because they seemed already finished except for mere increase in number; explosives taught most, but needed a tribe of chemists, physicists, and mathematicians to explain; the dynamo taught least because it had barely reached infancy, and, if its progress was to be constant at the rate of the last ten years, it would result in infinite costless energy within a generation. ”

“ Until today your own creation, engines, were more perfect than you.
WHY?
For every spark from a dynamo is a spark of pure reason; each motion of a piston, a pure syllogism. Is it not true that the same faultless reason is within you?
The philosophy of the cranes, presses, and pumps is complete and clear like a circle. But is your philosophy less circular? The beauty of a mechanism lies in its immutable, precise rhythm, like that of a pendulum. But have you not become as precise as a pendulum, you who are brought up on the system of Taylor? ”

“ So it lived all day in this big airy shed, with him and Holroyd to wait upon it; not prisoned up and slaving to drive a ship as the other engines he knew—mere captive devils of the British Solomon—had been, but a machine enthroned. Those two smaller dynamos Azuma-zi by force of contrast despised; the large one he privately christened the Lord of the Dynamos. They were fretful and irregular, but the big dynamo was steady. How great it was! How serene and easy in its working! Greater and calmer even than the Buddhas he had seen at Rangoon, and yet not motionless, but living! ”

“ The dynamo and everything of a dynamic nature—every mechanical motor-working of forces, whether material or political, are naturally congenial to the man of the Western world—understandable by him, serviceable to him—and they are not so to the man of the East. ”

“ Yet by the aid of the dynamo the power to be derived from waterfalls can be economically and conveniently converted into an electrical form and brought to the neighbouring factory or distant town, to be there reconverted by motors into mechanical power. Over any but very short distances energy is most easily transmitted when it is in an electrical form, and turbine-driven dynamos are very largely and successfully employed for such transmission. ”

“ There are two types of dynamo, one generating a direct and the other an alternating current. (By alternating we mean first a positive and then a negative current impulse.) We cannot enter into a technical description of the dynamo in a popular treatise such as this.
The dynamo has evolved from the germ discovered by Faraday, till to-day it is a machine, the construction of which requires the highest class of engineering skill. When in action it seems like a great living presence, scattering its energy in every direction in a way that is at once a marvel and a blessing to mankind. ”

“ Probably the modern dynamo is the most efficient, the most accurately measurable, the least wasteful of its power, and the most manageable, of any power-machine so far constructed by man for daily use.
The motor.--This is the twin of the dynamo. In all essentials the two are of the same construction. A difference in the arrangement of the terminals of the wire coils or the wrappings of armature and field magnet, makes of the one a dynamo and of the other a motor. Nevertheless, they are separate studies in electrical science. ”

“ This experiment gives the theory of the dynamo. Instead of passing only one wire through the field of force of a magnet, we have hundreds bound lengthwise on a revolving drum called an armature. Instead of one magnetic pole in a dynamo we have two, or [Pg 96] four, or twenty according to the work the machine is designed for—always in pairs, a North pole next to a South pole, so that the lines of force may flow out of one and into another, instead of escaping in the surrounding air. ”

“ The Dynamo and Motor.—The principle on which the dynamo electric machine works was discovered by Faraday in 1831. In 1866 both Wilde and Siemens [205] built dynamos, but it was Gramme who made the dynamo a commercial machine by inventing the ring armature, which he did in 1870. Then some genius, or bonehead, no one seems to know which, found that when a current was passed through a dynamo it became a motor. From 1880 inventions for electric light, heat and power advanced by leaps and bounds and everybody that invented anything at all worth while in the electrical line got rich quick. ”

“ Dynamo, Tuning Fork.
A dynamo in which the inductive or armature coils were carried at the
ends of the prongs of a gigantic tuning fork, and were there maintained
in vibration opposite the field magnets. It was invented by T. A.
Edison, but never was used.
Dynamo, Uni-polar.
A dynamo in which the rotation of a conductor effects a continuous
increase in the number of lines cut, by the device of arranging one part
of the conductor to slide on or around the magnet. (S. P. Thomson.)
Faraday's disc is the earliest machine of this type.
203 STANDARD ELECTRICAL DICTIONARY.
Dyne. ”

“ Such small extent of surface evidently required an enormous force to propel a man in rapid flight. We found the dynamo to consist of a central wheel made to revolve by the attraction of a vast occult force evolved from the contact of two metals, one being of a vermilion color and the other of a bright green tint, that constituted the cell of the apparatus. ”

“ The outside line or lines, to carry the current away to the motor. (6.) The pulley for strap-belting, by means of which the water or steam power used is made to turn the dynamo machine.
But we must not forget the motor as a companion of the dynamo, as its indispensable brother, in turning to practical account the electricity sent to it. As we have seen, the motor is the reverse of the dynamo, at least in its effects. It is fed by the dynamo, and it imparts its power to the machinery which it is to set in motion. It is to the dynamo what the water-wheel is to the water. ”

“ In this place, however, a full description of a direct-current dynamo will explain the principle involved in all dynamos—that to generate a current of electricity makes it necessary for us to move a field of force, like an armature, rapidly and continuously through another field of force, like a magnetic field. ”

“ Edison, in his work on the electric light and the electric railway, made some important improvements in the dynamo. The armature of a dynamo is usually turned by a steam-engine. Edison found that much power was wasted in the use of belts to connect the engine and the dynamo. He therefore connected the engine direct to the dynamo, placing the armature of the dynamo on the shaft of the engine. ”

“ Since the voltage of the dynamo is the second factor to which its output is proportional, the conditions which render the induced E.M.F. a maximum must evidently be reproduced as far as possible in practice, if the best use is to be made of a given mass of iron and copper. The first problem, therefore, in the construction of the dynamo is the disposition of the wires and field in such a manner that the three directions of field, length of active conductors, and movement are at right angles to one another, and so that the relative motion is continuous. ”

“ The vertical shaft of the turbine is attached to a propeller shaft which rises to the floor of the power-house—built over the wheel-pits—where it is attached to a dynamo. Though the dynamos are the largest in the world, they are not the size originally designed, owing to the fact that no cars were large or stout enough to transport them, so the size of the base-plate of the dynamo was limited to one which could be carried by rail from the manufactory to the Falls. ”

“ The Dynamo, Dynamo-Electric Machine or Generator, is a machine for converting mechanical energy into an electric current, through electromagnetic induction. The dynamo is a machine that will convert steam power, for example, into an electric current. Strictly speaking, a dynamo creates electrical pressure, or electromotive force, and not electricity, just as a force-pump creates water-pressure, and not water. They are generally run by steam or water power.
Fig. ”

“ To give a clear idea of the principles of the dynamo, the bipolar machine is best suited for illustration, and is here given in Figs. 20 and 21, in which Fig. 20 represents the dynamo complete, and Fig. 21 [42] a detail of the end of the armature and commutator. This armature consists of coils or bobbins of insulated wire, each section having its terminals connected with separate insulated plates on the hub, which plates are known as the commutator. ”

“ The dynamo, for instance, which produces middle C makes the electric currents surge back and forth 256 times a second, and this causes the diaphragm of a telephone receiver to vibrate 256 times a second, and this sends forth 256 air waves per second, and when these reach our ears we recognize the tone we call middle C. The frequency of alternation in a dynamo may be increased by either increasing its speed of revolution or by increasing the number of coils upon its armature. ”

“ A dynamo, then, is a machine in which, by means of continuous relative motion, an electrical conductor or system of conductors forming part of a circuit is caused to cut the lines of a magnetic field or fields; the cutting of the magnetic flux induces an electromotive force in the conductors, and when the circuit is closed a current flows, whereby mechanical energy is converted into electrical energy. ”

“ The Thomson-Houston Dynamo. In considering the current generator the first thing to be decided upon is the definition of the term dynamo. The following is thought to be a correct definition,—A dynamo or dynamo electric machine is a machine which is used to convert energy in the form of mechanical motion into energy of electric currents, or vica-versa. Those used to generate currents of electricity are called dynamos, those used to generate mechanical motion are known as motors. ”

“ The auxiliary dynamo is usually 710 belt driven by the main dynamo, and acts as a dynamo when the load is greater on the negative side of the circuit, and as a motor when the excess of load is on the positive side. ”

“ The gyration of the earth in its daily act of whirling around in its spiral rotation—at a rate greater than one thousand miles every hour, or about seventeen miles per second—makes of it a vast electro-generating body, a huge machine, a mighty prototype of the puny-man-made dynamo, which, at best, is but a feeble imitation of nature's original. ”

“ Able constructive engineers, Brown Mordey, Crompton and Kapp, perfected the structural development, and the dynamo within four or five years became, within its class, a far more highly efficient machine than any steam-engine. And as by the principle of reversibility every dynamo is also capable of acting as a motor, the perfection of the dynamo implied the perfection, both scientific and commercial, of the motor also. ”

“ Alternating current
dynamos are often of this construction. Direct current dynamos are not
generally so. The term is the opposite of self-exciting.
Fig. 140. SERIES DYNAMO.
Dynamo, Series.
A dynamo whose armature, field winding, and external circuit are all in
series.
In such a dynamo short circuiting or lowering the resistance of the
external circuit strengthens the field, increases the electro-motive
force and current strength and may injure the winding by heating the
wire, and melting the insulation. ”

“ Dynamo Construction.
HOW TO MAKE A DYNAMO: A Practical Treatise for Amateurs. Containing numerous Illustrations and Detailed Instructions for Constructing a Small Dynamo, to Produce the Electric Light. By Alfred Crofts. Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged. Crown 8vo, 2s. cloth.
"The instructions given in this unpretentious little book are sufficiently clear and explicit to enable any amateur mechanic possessed of average skill and the usual tools to be found in an amateur's workshop, to build a practical dynamo machine."—Electrician. ”