The Historical Road of "Motor"

Nowdays, many kind of device help people to do daily life easily and effectively such as mixer, blender, fan, Drilling machine, and water pumper. the core all of that device is electric motor. But do you know the development motor itself until now?

"Electric motor is an electric machine that converts electrical energy into mechanical energy"-Wikipedia

Core Idea of "Motor"

The principle behind production of mechanical force by the interactions of an electric current and a magnetic field, was discovered by André-Marie Ampère in 1820. Now it's called Ampère's force law. It is the force of attraction or repulsion between two current-carrying wires. That is the very basic idea of the motor.

The conversion of electrical energy into mechanical energy by electromagnetic means was demonstrated by the British scientist Michael Faraday in 1821. A free-hanging wire was dipped into a pool of mercury, on which a permanent magnet (PM) was placed. When a current was passed through the wire, the wire rotated around the magnet, showing that the current gave rise to a close circular magnetic field around the wire. This motor is often demonstrated in physics experiments, brine substituting for toxic mercury. see the picture below.

In 1827, Hungarian physicist Ányos Jedlik started experimenting with electromagnetic coils. in his experiment he solved the mechanical paroblem of continous rotation by the discovery of comutator. In that time he called that "electromagnetic self-rotor". In 1928 Jedik introduce 3 main component of the first generation DC motor : the stator, rotor and commutator.

The First Generation DC Motor

The first commutator DC electric motor capable of turning machinery was invented by the British scientist William Sturgeon in 1832, 4 years before he was famous for iventented the Galvanometer. a commutator-type direct-current electric motor made with the intention of commercial use was built by the American inventor Thomas Davenport, which he patented in 1837. But because of the primary baterry that become the main source of this early DC motor is too expensive and no industry can afford it, Thomas Davenpot was bangkrupt.


Finally Zénobe Théophile Gramme ,Belgian electrical engineer, invented a proper DC motor for industries. He invented the Gramme machine, a type of direct current dynamo capable of generating smoother (less AC) and much higher voltages than the dynamos known to that point. In 1873 he accidentally discovered that the device was reversible and would spin when connected to any DC power supply. The Gramme machine was the first usefully powerful electrical motor that was successful industrially. Before Gramme's inventions, electric motors attained only low power and were mainly used as toys or laboratory curiosities.

The First Generation AC Motor

In the 1880s, many inventors were trying to develop workable AC motors, because AC's advantages in long distance high voltage transmission were counterbalanced by the inability to operate motors on AC. Galileo Feraris is the pioneer of it.
Galileo Ferraris of Turin, Italy is one of the greatest unsung heroes of AC power systems. At one time European newspapers had stated that Ferraris's work on the induction motor and power transmission systems was "One of the greatest inventions of any age".The motor he invent operating by systems of alternating currents displaced from one another in phase by definite amounts and producing what is known as the rotating magnetic field.  The result of the introduction of polyphase systems has been the ability to transmit power economically for considerable distances, and, as this directly operated to make possible the utilization of water-power in remote places and the distribution of power over large areas, the immediate outcome of the polyphase system was power transmission; and the outcome of power transmission almost surely will be the gradual supersession of coal and the harnessing of the waste forces of Nature to do useful work. below is Feraris AC motor.

Actualy, The Application of electric motors give massive change in industry. every machine could be equipped with its own electric motor, providing easy control at the point of use, and improving power transmission efficiency. Electric motors also applied in agriculture, home daily life, otomotif and many else. electric motor made higher standards of convenience, comfort and safety possible of human life.


Samhuri Ikbal Pradana (112110022)