In 1837, the American blacksmith and inventor Thomas Davenport patented the first electric motor designed for commercial use in Brandon, Vermont. Davenport, who had no formal scientific education, built his motor after seeing a demonstration of an electromagnet and recognizing its potential for mechanical power. His device, patented in Vermont and later demonstrated in Washington, D.C., was the first electric motor to be put to practical work, driving a small printing press and a model railroad, though the lack of cheap electrical generation limited its commercial success.

Davenport's story of a self-taught blacksmith from rural Vermont inventing a revolutionary machine embodied the American myth of the autodidact inventor that would become a central figure in American literature, from Hawthorne's stories to the works of Mark Twain. His motor's connection to a printing press symbolically linked electrical power to the dissemination of written language, a connection that would become literal with the electrification of the printing industry later in the century. Davenport's rural Vermont origins also connected the story of electrical invention to American pastoral and frontier literary traditions.