He listened with attention to Alexander Graham Bell, who had the idea that electric wires might be made to carry the human voice, and encouraged him to proceed with his experiments.
"He said," Bell writes, "that he thought it was the germ of a great invention and advised me to work at it without publishing.

I said that I recognized the fact that there were mechanical difficulties in the way that rendered the plan impracticable at the present time.

I added that I felt that I had not the electrical knowledge necessary to overcome the difficulties.

His laconic answer was, 'GET IT!' I cannot tell you how much these two words have encouraged me." Henry had blazed the way for others to work out the principles of the electric motor, and a few experimenters attempted to follow his lead.
Thomas Davenport, a blacksmith of Brandon, Vermont, built an electric car in 1835, which he was able to drive on the road, and so made himself the pioneer of the automobile in America.

Twelve years later Moses G.
Farmer exhibited at various places in New England an electric-driven locomotive, and in 1851 Charles Grafton Page drove an electric car, on the tracks of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, from Washington to Bladensburg, at the rate of nineteen miles an hour.