[AT] Charging batteries

[Ken Knierim]

Steve, that one could have had several selenium rectifiers across a common
transformer so it could charge multiple batteries. They had a lot of
internal resistance which would help balance the voltage and current in
these types of applications. Just a thought... I remember seeing a lot of
those in battery chargers but I don't know when they started using those
types of rectifiers.

Ken in AZ

On Tue, Mar 12, 2019 at 4:42 AM Stephen Offiler <soffiler at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi farmer:   Interesting comments on the history of battery charging.
> Just thinking out loud here (haven't tried to tap the vast resources of the
> Internet) it seems this must somehow parallel the history of the
> rectifier.  Seems reasonable to assume that prior to the semiconductor,
> rectifiers weren't very efficient (vacuum tubes).  Rotating,
> commutator-equipped machines (aka generators) were probably needed to
> produce DC efficiently.   Wondering how that 12-battery charger from the
> 1930's worked; guessing it had an AC electric motor spinning a sizable
> generator.
>
> Steve O.
>
> On Mon, Mar 11, 2019 at 11:35 PM Indiana Robinson <robinson46176 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> As someone who grew up during the late 1940''s and early 1950's and as
>> kid I was watching life very closely and asking a million questions. My
>> father had many failings and we didn't always get along well but I have to
>> give him credit for teaching me many skills and always being ready to
>> answer questions and trying to teach me anything he was able to.
>> The 1946 Allis Chalmers C that I own that was bought new by an extremely
>> close family friend of three generations has almost since new been poor at
>> keeping the battery charged. It was almost allways used for a lot of short
>> running jobs with a lot of starts but short run times. When charging it
>> usually only threw a couple of amps and at times it just wasn't in the mood
>> to charge at all. His son had a "lot" of electrical training while in the
>> army during WW-II and he cursed it constantly.
>> Now this part may be new for a lot of the younger folks but in about the
>> first half of the last century reasonably priced home battery chargers were
>> mostly just not there. For many years it was very common for folks to
>> remove the battery from their car or tractor and take it to a service
>> station and pay to have it charged. I can well recall going into service
>> stations in the early 1950's and seeing shelves sitting full of batteries
>> being charged.
>> My father had a very good friend in the late 1930's who had a service
>> station in a small community about 8 miles from here. When war was declared
>> after Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and the country went into war
>> production in early 1942 his friend shut down the service station and both
>> of them started working 12 hour shifts 7 days a week at Allison's in Indy.
>> I don't know what his friend did but my father was testing aircraft
>> engines. Since he was making very good money he bought a lot of the tools
>> and equipment out of the service station from his friend. One of those
>> items was a large battery charger capable of charging 12 batteries at a
>> time.
>> On another tractor note, that was the same time that he bought his new
>> 1941 9N and a batch of farm equipment.
>> Back to the Allis C, the family friend kept the C in a tiny shed and his
>> son ran an electric line out to it. Then he built a 6 volt charger from a
>> junk yard auto generator, a matching voltage regulator and a smallish
>> electric motor to drive the generator. I recall being really impressed as a
>> kid the first time I saw it running. Then again in those days I was
>> impressed by about anything with moving parts that made noise.  :-)
>> That Allis still has major rounds of depression when It doesn't want to
>> charge... We replaced the generator with a rebuilt one from TSC and
>> replaced the cut-out with a conversion kit that used a conventional voltage
>> regulator and did away with the original light / charge rate switch and all
>> wiring replaced. I can assure you that I have checked the grounds, checked
>> the grounds, checked the grounds until I am blue in the face but it still
>> lacks reliability. I think that I will break with my normal approach and
>> convert it to 12 volts and a smallish alternator. I'll just keep all of the
>> original stuff in a box on a shelf up in the loft. Over the years I have
>> usually just used the crank to start it if it was weak but the family
>> friend was elderly, very slightly built and in poor health and that tractor
>> does crank kind if hard. He just couldn't crank start it.
>>
>>
>> .
>>
>>
>> --
>> --
>>
>> Francis Robinson
>> aka "farmer"
>> Central Indiana USA
>> robinson46176 at gmail.com
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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