oppose and delay its magnetization.  That they oppose the magnetization is perfectly true, but if you carefully laminate the iron so as to eliminate eddy currents, you will find, strangely enough, that the magnetism rises still more slowly to its final value.  For by laminating the iron you have virtually increased the self-inductive action, and increased the time constant of the circuit, so that the currents rise more slowly than before.  The lag is not in the iron, but in the magnetizing current, and the current being retarded, the magnetization is of course retarded also.

CONNECTING COILS FOR QUICKEST ACTION.

Now let us apply these most important though rather intricate considerations to the practical problems of the quick working of the electromagnet.  Take the case of an electromagnet forming some part of the receiving apparatus of a telegraph system in which it is desired to secure very rapid working.  Suppose the two coils that are wound upon the horseshoe core are connected together in series.  The coefficient of self-induction for these two is four times as great as that of either separately; coefficients of self-induction being proportional to the square of the number of turns of wire that surround a given core.  Now if the two coils instead of being put in series are put in parallel, the coefficient of self-induction will be reduced to the same value as if there were only one coil, because half the line current (which is practically unaltered) will go through each coil.  Hence the time constant of the circuit when the coils are in parallel will be a quarter of that which it is when the coils are in series; on the other hand, for a given line current, the final magnetizing power of the two coils in parallel is only half what it would be with the coil in series.  The two lower curves in Fig. 54 illustrate this, from which it is at once plain that the magnetizing power for very brief currents is greater when the two coils are put in parallel with one another than when they are joined in series.

Now this circumstance has been known for some time to telegraph engineers.  It has been patented several times over.  It has formed the theme of scientific papers, which have been read both in France and in England.  The explanation generally given of the advantage of uniting the coils in parallel is, I think, fallacious; namely that the “extra currents” (i.e., currents due to self-induction) set up in the two coils are induced in such directions as tend to help one another when the coils are in series, and to neutralize one another when they are in parallel.  It is a fallacy, because in neither case do they neutralize one another.  Whichever way the current flows to make the magnetism, it is opposed in the coils while the current is rising, and helped in the coils while the current is falling, by the so-called extra currents.  If the current is rising in both coils at the same moment, then, whether the coils are in series or in parallel, the effect of self-induction is to retard the rise of the current.  The advantage of parallel grouping is simply that it reduces the time constant.