the electrochemical battery by the Italian scientist Alessandro Volta in 1799 made possible the production of persistent electric currents. Hans Christian Ørsted discovered in 1820 that an electric current creates a magnetic field, which can exert a force on a magnet. It only took a few weeks for André-Marie Ampère to develop the first formulation of the electromagnetic interaction and present the Ampère's force law, that described the production of mechanical force by the interaction of an electric current and a magnetic field. The first demonstration of the effect with a rotary motion was given by Michael Faraday on 3 September 1821 in the basement of the Royal Institution in London. A free-hanging wire was dipped into a pool of mercury, on which a permanent magnet (PM) was placed. When a current was passed through the wire, the wire rotated around the magnet, showing that the current gave rise to a close circular magnetic field around the wire. Faraday published the results of his discovery in the Quarterly Journal of Science, and sent copies of his paper along with pocket-sized models of his device to colleagues around the world so they could also witness the phenomenon of electromagnetic rotations. This motor is often demonstrated in physics experiments, substituting brine for (toxic) mercury. Barlow's wheel was an early refinement to this Faraday demonstration, although these and similar homopolar motors remained unsuited to practical application until late in the century. In 1827, Hungarian physicist Ányos Jedlik started experimenting with electromagnetic coils. After Jedlik solved the technical problems of continuous rotation with the invention of the commutator, he called his early devices "electromagnetic self-rotors". Although they were used only for teaching, in 1828 Jedlik demonstrated the first device to contain the three main components of practical DC motors: the stator, rotor and commutator. The device employed no permanent magnets, as the magnetic fields of both the stationary and revolving components were produced solely by the currents flowing through their windings. DC motors The first commutator capable of turning machinery was invented by British scientist William Sturgeon in 1832. Following Sturgeon's work, a commutator-type direct-current electric motor was built by American inventor Thomas Davenport and Emily Davenport, which he patented in 1837. The motors ran at up to 600 revolutions per minute, and powered machine tools and a printing press. Due to the high cost of primary battery power, the motors were commercially unsuccessful