Motor generator

[Carlos E Murillo-Sanchez]

Donald via cctalk wrote:
> In the deep recesses of my mind I seem to remember something about S/360
> machines using a motor generator.
>
>   
>
> If I am right was this to create a stable power source at a certain
> frequency or voltage?
Those systems predate my experience by roughly 25-30 years.  But once 
you go through the trouble of adding such a thing as a motor-generator, 
then you can make the generator a poly-phase device (say, 12-phase) and 
get a much lower ripple in a full-wave polyphase rectifier; you can also 
easily control the output voltage by acting on the generator's rotor 
field current.  This sort of equipment is used for industrial processes 
requiring DC at thousands of amps; the polyphase setup makes it possible 
to leave out the output filter capacitors.

carlos.