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If you ask a classroom of kids who invented the lightbulb, they’ll shout "Edison." Ask about the telephone, and you’ll hear "Bell." But if you ask who invented the electric motor, you’re usually met with a blank stare or maybe a hesitant guess at Tesla. Honestly, that’s fair. The story isn't a straight line. It’s a messy, decades-long relay race involving a Benedictine priest, a Vermont blacksmith, and a British polymath who was basically the Michael Jordan of 19th-century science.
The electric motor didn't just "appear" in a single "Aha!" moment. It was a slow burn. We're talking about a transition from static sparks that did nothing but scare people to machines that now power everything from your vibrating phone to the massive propulsion systems in a Tesla Model S. It started with people just trying to understand why a compass needle twitched when it got near a wire.
The First Twitch: Oersted and Ampère
Before we got to actual motors, we had to figure out electromagnetism. In 1820, Hans Christian Ørsted noticed something weird during a lecture. He had a wire connected to a battery, and when he moved it near a compass, the needle moved. It was a fluke. But it proved that electricity and magnetism were siblings.
Then came André-Marie Ampère. He took that tiny twitch and did the math. He figured out that if you coil the wire, you concentrate the force. But these guys weren't building motors yet. They were just poking at the laws of physics. They had the "push," but they didn't have the "spin." Without the spin, you just have a very expensive paperweight that gets warm.
Michael Faraday and the "Primitive" Spin
In 1821, Michael Faraday changed everything. He was a self-taught genius who worked as a lab assistant at the Royal Institution. He took a stiff wire, dipped it into a pool of mercury (which we now know is super toxic, but hey, it's 1821), and placed a permanent magnet in the middle. When he sent a current through that wire, it started to circle the magnet.
It worked.
This was the first time anyone had turned electrical energy into mechanical motion. It was the world's first "homopolar motor." But let's be real—it was useless for work. You couldn't hook it up to a grain mill. It was a parlor trick. It proved the principle, but it didn't solve the problem of how to get actual, sustained power out of a battery. Faraday basically gave us the alphabet, but he didn't write the book yet.
The Forgotten Blacksmith: Thomas Davenport
Most history books skip over Brandon, Vermont. They shouldn't. In 1834, a blacksmith named Thomas Davenport saw a magnet being used to separate iron ore and became obsessed. He went home and built his own. He even tore up his wife's silk wedding dress to use as insulation for the copper wires. That is commitment.
Davenport created the first real American DC motor. He didn't just make a wire spin; he built a machine that could actually do stuff. He used it to power a small circular saw and even a printing press. In 1837, he received the first U.S. patent for an electric motor (U.S. Patent No. 132).
Why don't we know his name? Because he went broke. Batteries in the 1830s were incredibly expensive and inefficient. It cost more to run Davenport's motor than it did to feed a horse or burn coal in a steam engine. He died in poverty, a classic case of being "right" too early. The technology to make his invention viable—large-scale power grids—was still fifty years away.
Anyos Jedlik and the Commutator
While Davenport was tinkering in Vermont, a Hungarian priest named Ányos Jedlik was doing similar work in Europe. Jedlik is a bit of a cult hero in engineering circles. Around 1828, he solved a massive problem: the "clunkiness" of the rotation.
Early motors tended to jerk or get stuck. Jedlik invented the commutator, a device that switches the direction of the current so the motor keeps spinning smoothly in one direction. Without a commutator, a DC motor is basically just a vibrating hunk of metal. Jedlik’s "lightning-magnetic self-rotor" was remarkably advanced, but he was a modest guy who didn't publish his results for years. He treated his inventions more like classroom tools than commercial products.
The Big Leap: AC Power and Nikola Tesla
By the late 1800s, DC (Direct Current) motors were becoming common in factories, but they had a major flaw. You couldn't send DC power over long distances without losing most of it. Enter the AC (Alternating Current) revolution.
Nikola Tesla didn't just "invent the motor"—he invented the Induction Motor. This was the "God Tier" of engineering. Unlike DC motors, which used brushes that sparked, wore out, and smelled like ozone, Tesla’s induction motor had no touching parts between the rotor and the stator. It used a rotating magnetic field to "drag" the rotor around.
It was elegant. It was efficient. It was nearly maintenance-free.
Tesla’s 1888 patent (U.S. Patent 381,968) is the reason your refrigerator works today. George Westinghouse bought the rights, fought Thomas Edison in the "War of Currents," and eventually won. This allowed us to build power plants at Niagara Falls and send electricity hundreds of miles away to run motors in cities.
Who gets the credit?
If we're being honest, there isn't one winner.
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- Faraday found the spark.
- Davenport proved it could work in a shop.
- Jedlik made it smooth.
- Tesla made it a global reality.
Why This Matters Today
We are currently living through the second "Motor Age." The transition to Electric Vehicles (EVs) isn't just about batteries; it's about refining the motor designs these guys pioneered 200 years ago. Modern motors like the Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor (PMSM) used in high-end EVs are just highly evolved versions of what Faraday and Tesla dreamed up.
We've moved from mercury pools and silk wedding dresses to rare-earth magnets and computer-controlled inverters. But the physics? The physics hasn't changed a bit. We're still just using invisible magnetic fields to push things around.
How to Explore the History Yourself
If you’re a tech nerd or a history buff, don't just take my word for it. You can actually see these milestones if you know where to look.
- Visit the Smithsonian: The National Museum of American History in D.C. has Davenport’s original patent model. It looks like a steampunk toy, and it’s incredible.
- Build a Simple Motor: You can recreate Faraday’s experiment with a AA battery, a neodymium magnet, and a piece of copper wire in about 30 seconds. Seeing that wire spin for the first time feels like magic, even when you know how it works.
- Check the Patents: Go to Google Patents and search for "Tesla 381,968" or "Davenport 132." Reading the original language helps you realize these weren't just "scientists"—they were scrappy inventors trying to solve practical problems with very limited tools.
The next time you turn on a fan or drive an EV, remember the Vermont blacksmith who tore up his wife's dress and the Hungarian priest who didn't care about fame. They’re the ones who actually started the wheels turning.
To dive deeper into the technical side, look into the difference between Brushed DC and Brushless DC (BLDC) motors. Understanding why we moved away from physical brushes will give you a whole new appreciation for the quiet hum of modern electronics. If you’re feeling really ambitious, track down a copy of "My Inventions" by Nikola Tesla—it’s a short, weird, and fascinating look into the mind that finally perfected the spin.