In a village blacksmith shop in Brandon, Vermont, a self-taught craftsman and his wife did something that no American had done before: they harnessed electricity to move a vehicle. The year was 1834 C.E., and Thomas and Emily Davenport had just built a battery-powered electric motor — and promptly used it to drive a small model car along a short section of track.
What the evidence shows
- Electric motor car: The Davenports used their DC electric motor to propel a small model vehicle along a track, marking the first known attempt to apply electrification to locomotion in the United States.
- Battery-powered motor: Their device ran on battery power — a significant distinction from steam, which dominated transportation in 1834 C.E. — and laid conceptual groundwork for electrically powered transit.
- Emily Davenport’s role: Emily was a co-inventor and hands-on collaborator; she contributed silk from her own wedding gown to rewire an early electromagnet prototype, and is credited alongside Thomas in the historical record.
From iron works to invention
Thomas Davenport’s path to electric motors began in 1833 C.E. with a visit to an iron works in Crown Point, New York. There, he saw an electromagnet operating on a design developed by physicist Joseph Henry — and he was transfixed.
Davenport bought one of the electromagnets, took it apart to understand how it worked, then built a better one. He reforged the iron core and rewound the coil — using silk stripped from Emily’s wedding dress. It is one of the more vivid images in early American invention: a blacksmith and his wife, in a Vermont farmhouse, dismantling the cutting edge of science with their bare hands.
By 1834 C.E., they had a working DC electric motor. By 1837 C.E., they had secured U.S. Patent No. 132 — the first American patent ever granted on an electric machine — awarded jointly to Thomas, Emily, and their colleague Orange Smalley.
Why this matters beyond the model car
The model vehicle on its short track was a proof of concept, not a product. But proof of concept is exactly what changes history.
What the Davenports demonstrated in 1834 C.E. was that electrical energy could be converted into mechanical motion capable of moving a vehicle. That idea — so simple in hindsight — was the seed of the electric streetcar systems that would transform American and European cities by the end of the 19th century. It was the same idea that animated the first commercial electric railways, and that would eventually lead, a century and a half later, to modern electric vehicles.
Thomas also applied the motor to other purposes, including powering a small printing press that, in 1840 C.E., produced The Electro-Magnetic and Mechanics Intelligencer — the first magazine ever printed using electricity. The man was restless with ideas.
Lasting impact
The Davenports did not commercialize their motor in their own lifetimes. Thomas died in 1851 C.E., just days before his 49th birthday, with limited financial reward for his work. But the trajectory he helped set in motion is unmistakable.
Electric streetcars — directly foreshadowed by the Davenports’ track experiment — became the dominant form of urban transit in the late 1800s, reshaping how cities were built and how people moved through them. The DC electric motor they pioneered became foundational to industrial machinery, household appliances, and eventually the traction motors in modern electric vehicles.
The history of the electric motor is genuinely international — Scottish inventor Robert Anderson and Hungarian engineers Ányos Jedlik and others were working on related problems in the same period — but the Davenports made a distinct and documented contribution: the first American patent on an electric machine, and one of the first demonstrated uses of an electric motor to move a vehicle along a track.
Blindspots and limits
The historical record gives Thomas significantly more visibility than Emily, despite her documented co-inventor role. Her contribution — including the material sacrifice of her wedding gown silk — appears in the sources but rarely in the headline. The same pattern of erased or minimized female invention runs through much of early American technology history.
It is also worth being precise: the Davenports built a small model vehicle, not a full-scale transportation system. Several inventors in Europe were working on early electric vehicle concepts in the same era, and scholarly debate continues about who deserves the “first” label globally. What the evidence clearly supports is that the Davenports made a real and well-documented contribution — and that their work was foundational to what came after.
Read more
For more on this story, see: Wikipedia — Thomas Davenport (inventor)
For more from Good News for Humankind, see:
- Renewables now make up at least 49% of global power capacity
- Indigenous land rights: 160 million hectares recognized ahead of COP30
- The Good News for Humankind archive on the industrial age
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