1980 Upper Voltan coup d'état up against the President, which caused the 1966 Upper Voltan coup d'état, in which Lieutenant Colonel Sangoulé Lamizana took power. This marked the beginning of a long era of military rule in Upper Volta and later Burkina Faso. Lamizana would go on to rule the country as a military dictator until the Upper Voltan presidential election in 1978, when he was elected as the leader of a civilian regime. During the 1970s, the Lamizana government faced many problems, among them continued opposition from the trade unions, the rise of new political opposition groups, a strong Sahel drought, increasing desertification, and
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.