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REF: Oleg Jefimenko and David K. Walker, "Electrostatic Motors", Phys. Teach, 9, 121-129 (1971) |
| This unsigned apparatus is in the museum collection at the University
of Mississippi. Although it has the appearance of an electrical toy, it
actually demonstrates the principle of the electrostatic motor proposed
by Benjamin Franklin in a letter written in 1748 to Peter Collinson, a
Fellow of the Royal Society of London.
The original motor had thirty glass rods projecting horizontally outward at regularly spaced intervals from a rotating vertical shaft. At the end of each rod was a thimble, as shown in the drawing below. Sparks from the positively and negatively charged Leiden jars gave charges to the insulated thimbles to provide the necessary forces of repulsion and attraction to drive the rotor in a circular motion. |
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