HartfordTommy has put together a great look at some old motor technology that we all take for granted today. The video goes through the different systems of the motor in some interesting detail. I wonder what the safety people would say about the motor power disconnect switch these days…

"The very first plug-in motor.
Battery motors existed for decades before.
This however is the first motor made to run from mains/line current.

It was intended to power the tailor’s sewing machine.

The first-ever plug-in electric desk fan was also made by C&C at this same brief time of its existence.

These are the first mains-powered electric motors; all of the earlier motors were small, battery-powered curios.

Curtis and Crocker soon differed in their goals for the firm, and so by 1888, C&C dissolved. Wheeler, Curtis’s friend who designed the fan-version of this motor, became partners and flourished.
Curtis went on to invent the steam turbine electric generator which even today produces the bulk of the world’s electric power.
Note that the three men involved in the design and production of this motor were in their middle twenties and brilliant, free thinkers.

Crocker later co-invented the helicopter, though it remained for Sikorsky to produce a flying example.

Wheeler co-founded the organization that would later set electrical standards for the world: the IEEE

But,for less than two years in that first decade of power distribution to the public, these three men worked together to make our electric-present day possible. And this is the oldest motor of their production that you are ever likely to witness. And it yet lives and works as well as it did 120 years ago."