The contraction process of an azimuthal pinch was investigated with low values (up to about 109 G/sec), where is the rate of increase of the external magnetic field. Measurements of the primary current and voltage were used to obtain the inductance radius of the plasma column and the result was compared with high-speed photographs. An outer magnetic probe was used to deduce the internal magnetic field trapped in the plasma.The absence of instabilities during the contraction stage is a remarkable result of our experiment. An attempt was made to interpret this as due to the low values of . The assumption of infinite conductivity in computing the dynamics of contraction is found to be valid, and qualitative agreement with the snow-plow model is satisfactory.