

Milestones:Volta's Electrical Battery Invention, 1799

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Volta Battery, 1799


Alessandro Volta (1745-1827), professor of philosophy at Pavia (1774-1804), contributed much to electrical science. He introduced the theory of electrical current and observed electricity separating water into its component parts of hydrogen and oxygen. Before Volta, it was assumed that electricity was generated by living beings (animal electricity). He discovered that electricity could be generated chemically and made to flow evenly through a conductor in a closed circuit. He built a battery, known as a Voltaic pile, made of alternating copper and zinc discs, with each pair of metals separated by flannel soaked in weak acid.

Such was his fame that in 1801 he was summoned to Paris by Napoleon who had a special medal struck in Volta's honor. The world has honored Volta by naming the unit of electric potential - the volt - after him.

The Voltaic pile stimulated so much scientific inquiry that, by 1831, when Faraday built the first dynamo, the basic principles of electricity had been established.
