Past Forward: The Electric Motor at 200

Two hundred years ago this month, Michael Faraday almost invented the electric motor. "Very satisfactory," he wrote in his notebook on 3 September 1821, "but make more sensible apparatus." The next day he got it right. On the left-hand side, he suspended a fixed wire in a pool of mercury while a magnet was allowed to move freely. On the other side, he fixed a permanent magnet upright in the glass container, surrounded by mercury, with the wire allowed to move freely. Faraday observed that when he applied a current, either the magnet (on the left) or the wire (right) would rotate in a circle. This first-ever electric motor turned electricity into mechanical motion. Although a great proof of concept, it was not exactly useful, except as a parlor trick. It took another decade for Faraday to create the first dynamo, the direct ancestor of truly useful electric motors. By the end of the century, the electric motor had been transformed into the engine of the Industrial Revolution.