Article: The blacksmith's motor.(includes related article on rotating electric machines)(electric motor inventor Thomas Davenport)

Electricity, magnetism, and motion: A self-taught Vermonter pointed the direction for lighting the world.

In the spring of 1833, a self-educated but impoverished blacksmith in Forestdale, Vt., by the name of Thomas Davenport heard some curious news. This news, as it turned out, would not only change his life but would eventually change the life of almost everyone on earth. Davenport's curiosity led to his invention of the first rotating electric machine. Today, we would describe it as a shunt-wound brush and commutator dc motor.

The momentous news that roused the blacksmith's curiosity was that the Penfield and Hammond Iron Works, on the other side of ...

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