Trough battery spaces between the plates (the troughs) were filled with dilute sulfuric acid. So long as the box was not knocked about, there was no risk of electrolyte spillage. Trough battery The trough battery was a variant of Alessandro Volta's Voltaic Pile and was invented by William Cruickshank c. 1800. Volta's battery consisted of brine-soaked pieces of cloth sandwiched between zinc and copper discs, piled in a stack. This resulted in electrolyte leakage as the weight of the discs squeezed the electrolyte out of the cloth. Cruickshank solved this problem by laying the battery on its side in a rectangular box.
Electric bicycle are the electric motor-powered versions of motorized bicycles, which have been in use since the late 19th century. Some bicycle-sharing systems use them. In the 1890s, electric bicycles were documented within various U.S. patents. For example, on 31 December 1895, Ogden Bolton Jr. was granted for a battery-powered bicycle with "6-pole brush-and-commutator direct current (DC) hub motor mounted in the rear wheel". There were no gears and the motor could draw up to 100 amperes (A) from a 10-volt battery. Two years later, in 1897, Hosea W. Libbey of Boston invented an electric bicycle () that was propelled by a