For nearly 300 years, a weird kind of electric motor that works on static electricity has been little more than a scientific and engineering curiosity.

Then a couple of PhD students threw themselves into figuring out if modern tech could make it viable.

Turns out they were right.

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Here’s the result, alongside a reproduction of Franklin’s original model. It doesn’t use a continuous flow of electricity, like all modern electric motors. Instead, it relies on the attraction and repulsion of electric poles.

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