Emily Davenport
1810–1862Emily Davenport helped build the first American electric motor, using mercury as a conductor and her wedding dress for insulation, leading to the first U.S. patent for an electric machine.
Particulars
Emily Goss Davenport Weeks helped build the first American electric motor in the 1830s, contributing the crucial idea of using mercury as a conductor and sacrificing her wedding dress to insulate the wire windings. Her work with her husband, Thomas Davenport, led to U.S. Patent No. 132 in 1837, the first American patent for an electric machine, and their motor later powered the first newspaper printed with electricity in 1840.
Born in Brandon, Vermont, in 1810, Emily was one of five children of merchant Rufus Goss and Anna Green. She married Thomas Davenport, a blacksmith, and they lived in Salisbury, Vermont, where they raised two sons, George and Willard. Emily kept detailed notes and actively participated in the invention process, and her suggestion to use mercury as a conductor allowed the motor to function for the first time.
After Thomas died in 1851, Emily moved to Middlebury and later remarried in 1856 to John Mosely Weeks, the inventor of the Vermont beehive. She died in 1862 and was buried in Pine Hill Cemetery in Brandon, Vermont.
Compiled from Wikipedia. Automated record.