Antique Dynamo

I recently purchased an old dynamo that has open construction, carbon?/wire gauze brushes, and an armature supported with 'pedestal' bearings; all of this constructed on a cast iron base. Its made by Hanson & Van Winkle, Newark,NJ:New York;Chicago No.3016 3N size speed:1125 600watts. Now I'm no Steinmetz or Tesla, but this thing weighs over 200lbs which is heavy for 600watts output. Has flat belt drive pulley. Its construction implies some continuous low power service???? No voltage listed anywhere. Does anyone have any info on this company and its products? Sorry no photo. One day, I will spin and smoke test it.Thanks.

I have no real info on this particular wonderfull find (I admit I am a little bit jealous), but I do have some information maybe on the brushes. Early brushes were made out of compressed brass gauze or screen. They wore the commutators or slip rings out pretty quickly.

A Mister Van Depoele, A Belgian, was at this time working at the Thompson Houston Electric Company. Thompson Houston was manufacturing trolly car trucks among many other electrical devices. The trolly car trucks had electric motors installed to move the trolly cars around. Thompson Houston had a test track installed on the factory's roof and men would run these trucks around and around the roof testing the product. One of the problems was that the brushes and the commutators would wear out rapidly with this combination of metal against moving metal.

The Thompson Houston company, along with many other similar companies, was having fits over what the solution to the problem was. One of Thompson's engineers, a Mr. Rice, ask Van Depoele what he thought the solution might be. Van Depoele suggested that carbon be used for the brushes instead. Mr. Rice said that wouldn't work because everyone knows that carbon has a high resistance. Van Depoele replied respectfully that if they made the carbon brushes in a block form, the total cross section area of the brush would have an effective low resistance.

Having no other solution, Thompson had a trolly car truck set up with a freshly turned commutator and a set of carbon brushes installed instead of the brass mesh brushes. Bets were probably made among employees that this experiment would fail.

The trolly car truck was set on the test track and it started its test runs. It ran and it ran around and around for several hours. Periodically every half hour the car would be stopped and the commutator and brushes would be inspected. To everyones surprise, the commutator took on a nice shine and the brushes were not wearing out.

A patent was issued around the 1890's for the new invention and old bets were probably paid off. The trolly car became dependable and trolly car lines sprung up all over the country. We use carbon brushes today in motors and generators. If you ever get this antique dynamo up and running, I would suggest using carbon brushes rather than tearing up the commutator or slip rings with the metalic brushes. It would still be authentic.

Just thought you would like to know if you didn't.

Goodday Kid (John) I'm a retired electrician & as an apprentice we used to do maintainace on this type of dynamo--re stone down the commutator while is was running. Hanson Van Winkle was company that specialized in the electro plating industry ,so my guess is that it's a plating dynamo --the voltage was usually 6 volts,so the wiring should be quite heavy on the terminals if this is the case--I hope this is of some help to you. I collect this type of machine myself,but not much is still left--you were fortunate to find it, All the best Larry