Thomas Davenport
Thomas Davenport was a Vermont blacksmith who constructed the first American DC electric
motor in 1834.Davenport was born in Williamstown, Vermont. He lived
in Forest Dale, a village near the town of Brandon.
As early as 1834, he developed a battery-powered electric motor. He used it
to operate a small model car on a short section of track, paving the way for
the later electrification of streetcars.
Davenport's 1833 visit to the Penfield and Taft iron works at Crown Point, New York, where an electromagnet was operating, based on the design of Joseph Henry, was an impetus for his electromagnetic undertakings. Davenport bought an electromagnet from the Crown Point factory and took it apart to see how it worked. Then he forged a better iron core and redid the wiring, using silk from his wife's wedding gown.
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| Thomas Davenport's electric locomotive. |
With his wife Emily and colleague Orange Smalley, Davenport
received the first American patent on an electric machine in 1837, U.
S. Patent No. 132. In 1840, he printed The Electro-Magnetic and
Mechanics Intelligencer, making it the first magazine to be printed with
electricity.
In 1849, Charles Grafton Page, the Washington scientist and inventor,
commenced a project to build an electromagnetically powered locomotive, with
substantial funds appropriated by the US Senate. Davenport challenged the
expenditure of public funds, arguing for the motors he had already
invented. In 1851, Page's full sized electromagnetically operated
locomotive was put to a calamity-laden test on the rail line between
Washington and Baltimore.