{"id":131,"date":"2004-09-27T21:08:01","date_gmt":"2004-09-27T11:08:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/?p=131"},"modified":"2006-01-27T21:09:42","modified_gmt":"2006-01-27T11:09:42","slug":"early-electric-motors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/?p=131","title":{"rendered":"Early electric motors"},"content":{"rendered":"

A while ago I made a primitive electric motor using instructions from an old school science book – My excuse was that I wanted my then pre-teen daughter to see how they worked, but really it was as much for my own satisfaction and fun \ud83d\ude09 <\/p>\n

The one I made used a large bolt (with corresponding nut and washers at each end for balance) which was inserted transversely through a pre-drilled hole in a cylinder of wood. The axis of the cylinder had a couple of nails inserted as axles – and the rotor assembly was supported on thick wire supports. I wound a fairly long length of insulated wire around the bolt and set up two electromagnets made the same way and lined up with the head and nut of the bolt. I used a couple of pieces of tin can tacked to the wooden shaft as contacts for the brushes (which were themselves made from the springy tin cut from a tin can and sanded to make a good contact surface. There were not that many windings so it took four of the big square ‘dolphin torch’ batteries to make it go – but it worked – to the amazement of my neighbour \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

A slightly similar (and simpler) one can be found at this site<\/a> – their motor looks like this:<\/p>\n

Electric motor<\/p>\n

and they give instructions for making it.<\/p>\n

Today, doing a bit of surfing I came across a web site with images of a wide range of early electric motors and their precursors – some fascinating devices! I loved the magnetic beam engine…<\/p>\n

Magnetic beam engine<\/p>\n

Enjoy!<\/p>\n

Cheers
\nJerry<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A while ago I made a primitive electric motor using instructions from an old school science book – My excuse was that I wanted my then pre-teen daughter to see how they worked, but really it was as much for my own satisfaction and fun \ud83d\ude09 The one I made used a large bolt (with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,8,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-diy","category-technology","category-woodwork"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}