[1] Built in February 1844 at the Magneto Works of Thomas Prime and Son, Birmingham,[2][3] to a design by John Stephen Woolrich (1820–1850), it was used by the firm of Elkingtons for commercial electroplating.

[4][5][6] The generator stood for some time in the chapel of Aston Hall, accompanied by a plaque bearing the following inscription:[4] This machine, founded upon Faraday's great discovery of Induction, was invented by the late John Stephen Woolrich of Birmingham.

He offered to sell the rights to Elkingtons for the enormous sum of £15,000; they declined, and after some heated correspondence eventually, in May 1845, agreed to pay Woolrich £100 initially and then £400 annually for the rest of the term of the patent.

[12] The elder John Woolrich is listed in the United Kingdom Census 1841 as a "Chemist",[13] and at the time of his death on 20 April 1843 was a lecturer in chemistry at the Royal School of Medicine and Surgery in Birmingham.

[14] He had a particular interest in electrochemistry, and in February 1819 wrote a letter entitled On Galvanic Shocks to the Annals of Philosophy, pointing out an error in the editor Thomas Thomson's book System of Chemistry.