an angle of 90° some of the up turns would be ascending and some descending, so that conflicting currents would arise. Yet we want to utilize the whole surface of the drum; and by winding a number of coils in the manner hinted at, each coil, as it passes the zero point, top or bottom, at once generates a current in the desired direction and reinforces that in all the other turns of its own and of other coils on the same side of a line drawn vertically through the centre. There is thus practically no fluctuation in the pressure of the current generated.
The action of single and multiple coil windings may be compared to that of single and multiple pumps. Water is ejected by a single pump in gulps; whereas the flow from a pipe fed by several pumps arranged to deliver consecutively is much more constant.
MULTIPOLAR DYNAMOS.
Hitherto we have considered the magnetic field produced by one bi-polar magnet only. Large dynamos have four, six, eight, or more field magnets set inside a casing, from which their cores project towards the armature so as almost to touch it (Fig. 74). The magnet coils are wound to give N. and S. poles alternately at their armature ends round the field; and the lines of force from each N. pole stream each way to the two adjacent S. poles across the path of the armature coils. In dynamos of this kind several pairs of collecting brushes pick current off the commutator at equidistant points on its circumference.
EXCITING THE FIELD MAGNETS.
Until current passes through the field magnet coils, no magnetic field can be created. How are the coils supplied with current? A dynamo, starting for the first time, is excited by a current from an outside source; but when it has once begun to generate current it feeds its magnets itself, and ever afterwards will be self-exciting,19 owing to the residual magnetism left in the magnet cores.