The first U.S. patent for an electric motor
On this day · 25 February 1837
On February 25, 1837, a Vermont blacksmith won U.S. Patent No. 132 for a working electric motor — a world first.
On February 25, 1837, a Vermont blacksmith named Thomas Davenport of Brandon received U.S. Patent No. 132 for “improvement in propelling machinery by magnetism and electro-magnetism” — the first American patent ever granted for an electric motor.
Davenport had built a working battery-powered motor as early as 1834: a wheel whose spokes were electromagnets, spun between fixed magnets and switched by a commutator. To insulate the wire windings, his wife and collaborator Emily Davenport reportedly gave up the silk from her wedding dress.
No one had ever patented an electric device before, and the Patent Office did not make it easy.
With Emily and colleague Orange Smalley, Davenport finally secured the patent after rebuilding a model lost to a Patent Office fire. He dreamed of electric trains and presses, but batteries were costly and weak, and he died poor in 1851 — decades before the world caught up to his idea.
Sources & references
2 referencesWell-established. Corroborated by 2 independent sources.
