Interestingly electrostatic motors (albeit very weak ones) predate Faraday's invention by decades. Ben Franklin even designed one [1]. In the early days of ele

Interestingly electrostatic motors (albeit very weak ones) predate Faraday's invention by decades. Ben Franklin even designed one [1]. In the early days of electricity research, static electricity was more common than "current" electricity. There were early static-based telegraph experiments that predated Morse [2] and used a silk thread as a conductor. Before the electromagnet was invented, people didn't know how to build an indicator based on electric current - one concept was to use electrolysis and look for bubbles. [1]: https://hackaday.com/2017/10/03/ben-franklins-weak-motor-and-other-forgotten-locomotion/ https://hackaday.com/2017/10/03/ben-franklins-weak-motor-and... [2]: https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/PT.3.3079 https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/PT.3.307...