Acknowledging a large increase in the study of biological molecular motors over the past few years, this chronicle describes a wide range of molecular motors, ranging from chemical to biological, in a manner that reviews both classification of the type of motor and the grouping into families. Charting the evolution of many techniques to study and characterize molecular motors at the single molecule level, this report introduces the concepts and benefits of each technique and how some of these motors may be used in the future as part of a synthetic biology approach to building devices and sensors.