Fast response with magnetic amplifiers

FOR MANY years the use of magnetic amplifiers was confined to those applications where extreme reliability was required, but where speed of response was not particularly important. Under the pressure of greater reliability and weight-saving requirements in higher power installations, important advances have been made in magnetic amplifier circuitry and components to achieve higher gain-to-time-constant ratios. It was not until the work of R. A. Ramey,1 however, that attention was focussed on the fact that magnetic amplifiers could be made with extremely fast response (i.e., one-half cycle of the power frequency) more or less independently of the power gain.