  The homogeneous dynamo effect is at the root of magnetic field generation in
cosmic bodies, including planets, stars and galaxies. While the underlying
theory had increasingly flourished since the middle of the 20th century,
hydromagnetic dynamos were not realized in laboratory until 1999. On 11
November 1999, this situation changed with the first observation of a kinematic
dynamo in the Riga experiment. Since that time, a series of experimental
campaigns has provided a wealth of data on the kinematic and the saturated
regime. This paper is intended to give a comprehensive survey about these
experiments, to summarize their main results and to compare them with numerical
simulations.
