From Ruston to Siemens | 150 years of engineering history
Ernst Werner Siemens (1816-1892) was a German inventor and industrialist. Siemens’s name has been adopted as the SI unit of electrical conductance, the siemens. He was also the founder of the electrical and telecommunications company Siemens.
2013-04-28 19:00:00 - The Engineer
A dynamo is an electrical generator that produces direct current with the use of a commutator.
Dynamos were the first electrical generators capable of delivering power for industry, and the foundation upon which many other later electric-power conversion devices were based, including the electric motor, the alternating-current alternator, and the rotary converter.
Today, the simpler alternator dominates large scale power generation, for efficiency, reliability and cost reasons.
A dynamo has the disadvantages of a mechanical commutator. Also, converting alternating to direct current using power rectification devices (vacuum tube or more recently solid state) is effective and usually economic.