Upper Volta at the 1972 Summer Olympics but boycotted it with other Africa nations. By the time it returned to the Games in 1988, the nation was known as Burkina Faso. The first athlete from Upper Volta to compete in the Olympics was Taka Gangua, who along with Chadian Taki N'Dio, competed in the men's javelin throw as part of the French delegation to the 1924 Summer Games in Paris. French Upper Volta then formed part of French West Africa, a federation of eight French colonial territories. Upper Volta competed under that name for the first and only time at the Summer Olympics in the 1972 Games
Alessandro Volta an early electric battery, which produced a steady electric current. Volta had determined that the most effective pair of dissimilar metals to produce electricity was zinc and copper. Initially he experimented with individual cells in series, each cell being a wine goblet filled with brine into which the two dissimilar electrodes were dipped. The voltaic pile replaced the goblets with cardboard soaked in brine. In announcing his discovery of the voltaic pile, Volta paid tribute to the influences of William Nicholson, Tiberius Cavallo, and Abraham Bennet. The battery made by Volta is credited as one of the first electrochemical cells.