We spent the night of Wednesday, August 7th in Lewiston, on our
indirect way home from a meeting of the American Association of Physics
Teachers in Boise. Dinner was good and quite inexpensive at a restaurant
just off the big north-south highway, and we had a drive around both
towns and the college afterward. The next morning I got a couple of good
pictures of wheat fields after the long pull up out of the river valley.
If your generator is just like the one at Cincinnati, you have a
Miller-Cowan Dynamo Electric Machine, listed in the 1940 Central
Scientific catalogue at $20.00.
The device has a field winding -- the green coil that is used to set
up the magnetic field. To make the apparatus work as either a motor or a
generator you need to have current passing through this coil. I don't
remember the wiring to the coil, which is concealed under the board.
I am not a motor/generator expert, but I do know that there are two
ways of connecting the field coil -- either in series with the rotating
coil, or in parallel with it. You might try both of these connections.
You will probably want to set the brushes for Direct Current
operation -- with the brushes set to contact the split-ring commutater.
Then you connect the power supply to the two terminals and very
cautiously turn it on!
Best Regards,
Tom Greenslade
Professor Emeritus of Physics
Kenyon College
Gambier, Ohio 43022