Michael Faraday invented the first electric motor 200 years ago... and it's been pretty useful ever since!

It's been 200 years since a man called Michael Faraday invented the electric motor, and helped massively change the world around him.

The electric motor has come a long way in the last 200 years and lots of the things you love to use today might not be here without it.

But how was it discovered and how has it developed?

A man named Michael Faraday was behind the idea of the electric motor.

He was born in 1791, and actually taught himself science! He was trained in something completely different, a job called bookbinding, which is the job of putting books together.

Faraday eventually became a chemist and a physicist, and worked at a place in London called the Royal Institution.

It was there that he invented, amongst other things, the electric motor.

He also worked on magnetism - the study of magnets - and discovered how to make electromagnets. These are used in things like electric generators.

An electric motor converts electrical energy into physical movement.

Faraday's motor used magnets and wire to create electric energy.

To make it, he took a nail and around 100 loops of copper wire. In the middle of the nail he placed a hole and put a wooden spindle into that hole, he wrapped the nail in the copper wire and connected it to a battery.

He then took a horseshoe-shaped magnet and placed his copper wrapped nail in the middle of the horseshoe.

With this, he saw that the wooden spindle would turn.

This was because the two opposing poles of the magnet were working against one another creating energy!

This simple mechanism would eventually become the electric motor that works in many things used today, like computers, mobile phones and electric toothbrushes.