MD / DE / PA / NJ / VA Bottleneck meet

[Grainger49]

Um... 2wo,

those are large synchronous motors not generators.

And you thought no one would know the difference! ! !  

Bwa, ha, ha, ha!  I laugh my evil laugh.

I used to work with the likes of these at Alcoa.  The plant I worked in was built in 1942 for the war.  Made a lot of aircraft aluminum.  Now they make can stock.

Now if you put an alternator on the other side of a synchronous motor you have the ultimate isolated power system.  I have worked on those too.  Lots of industrial stuff not enough consumer electronics.

[RayP]

Now I am intrigued. I presumed the photo showed some sort of hydroelectric generator in a dam but looking closer I see I was probably mistaken.

So what is going on here? From the left I see a long shaft. Halfway along the shaft there appears to be some sort of small belt driven device. Any idea what this is?

Moving to the right we reach the big whirlygig thingie which I presume is the motor. Am I correct?

Finally on the right at the end of the shaft is a smaller whirlygig thingie. What's this?

And what would have been the purpose of all of this?

ray

[2wo]

No, they are generators, early Allis Chalmers. Here is the link.

http://beta.wisconsinhistory.org/Content/Articles/FEAT-PrairieDuSacDam.aspx

And here is a similar one

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Allis-Chalmers_electric_generator_DCAPC_August_2008_show.jpg

The belt driven thing is probably an oil pump to supply lube to the bearing through the wall, or might be a governor. Next is the generator itself. At the far end is the brushes or commutator, not sure what the correct term is...John    

[Grainger49]

I had seen the A-C on the base.  So they are alternators.

The mills I worked on had synchronous motors running generator lines with variable fields, thus variable DC outputs.  The generators were much deeper and had larger, deeper from front to back, field coils than these.  

The speed has to be tightly controlled.  If the alternators are not synchronized they will destroy each other.  The speed control could be what is probably belted to the shaft.  The speed control system might also be tied into the device on the right end of the shaft.

Original equipment used babit bearings and a wet sump with a slinger ring.  We had some that were updated in the 50s using a pump and sump to circulate the oil.

[RayP]

There are a bunch more photos at the following URL.
http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/whi/results.asp?subject_narrow=Electric+apparatus+and+appliances

It looks like the turbines were housed in the wall at one end of the axle. The turbines appear to be the correct size to fit the hole in the wall and were mounted vertically.

Earlier this year, I visited Cragside in England, where hydro-electricity was first used.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cragside

The original incandescent lamps are still there in use. At the time, when the lamps were to be switched off, the current was diverted to the equivalent resistor because it was too difficult to turn off and on the generator.
(http://)

[2wo]

Thanks for the link Ray, I had found it the other day but it would not open for me.
I love this old stuff, I like to think of myself as a very amateur industrial archeologist, might, in part, explain my interest in tubes.

Granger, They could get away without precise speed  control because they did not link the alternators. There was no power grid back then and each alternator supplied power to a given town(s)