FIG. 34–THE FIRST TRANSFORMER
Faraday discovered the induction-coil, the dynamo, and the transformer, and he showed that, in each of these, it is magnetism which produces the electric current. He had discovered the secret when he obtained a current by thrusting a magnet into a coil of wire. The space about a magnet in which the magnet will attract iron he called the "magnetic field" (Figs. 35 and 36). In every case of magnetism causing an electric current to flow in a coil of wire, the coil is in a magnetic field, and the magnetic field is changing—that is, the magnetic field is made alternately stronger and weaker, or the coil moves across the magnetic field. The point is that magnetism at rest will not produce an electric current. There must be a changing magnetic field or motion. In Faraday's dynamo a copper disk whirled between the poles of a magnet and the whirling of the disk in the magnetic field caused an electric current. In the modern dynamo it is the whirling of a coil of wire in a magnetic field that causes a current to flow. In the induction-coil it is the change in the magnetic field that causes a current to flow in the secondary coil. A coil of wire with an electric current flowing through it will attract iron like a magnet. The primary coil with a current from a battery flowing through it acts in all respects like a magnet; but as soon as the current ceases to flow the magnetic field disappears—the coil is no longer a magnet. When we make and break the connection between the primary coil and the battery, then, we repeatedly make and destroy the magnetic field, and this changing magnetic field causes a current to flow in the secondary coil. The induction-coil is one form of transformer. We shall see later how the dynamo and the transformer developed in the nineteenth century.
FIG. 35–THE "MAGNETIC FIELD" IS THE SPACE AROUND A MAGNET IN WHICH IT WILL ATTRACT IRON
The iron filings over the magnet arrange themselves along the "lines of force."
FIG. 36–MAGNETIC FIELD OF A HORSESHOE MAGNET