They knew
then, about 1835 to 1870, of the laws of induction as applied to the
electro-magnet, or in small machines the generating power, so called, of
the magneto-electric arrangement embodied, as a familiar example, in
Kidder's medical battery. There is a long list of those inventors,
American and European. The first patent issued for an American
electro-motor was in 1837, to a man named Thomas Davenport, of Brandon,
Vt. He was a man far ahead of his times. He built the first electric
railroad ever seen, at Springfield, Mass., in 1835, and considering the
means, whose inadequacy is now better understood by any reader of these
lines than it then was by the deepest student of electricity, this first
railroad was a success. Davenport came as near to solving the problem of
an electric motor as was possible without the invention of Pacinotti.
Following this there were many patents issued for electro-magnetic
motors to persons residing in all parts of the country, north and south.
One was made by C. G. Page, of the Smithsonian Institute, in which the
motive power consisted in a round rod, acting as a plunger, being pulled
into the space where the core would be in an ordinary electro-magnet,
and thereby working a crank.
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