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.
History of the battery in the other cell iron and dilute nitro-muriatic acid remains constant for at least twenty hours when employed for electric incandescent lighting. (p. 80 at Google Books) Up to this point, all existing batteries would be permanently drained when all their chemical reactions were spent. In 1859, Gaston Planté invented the lead–acid battery, the first-ever battery that could be recharged by passing a reverse current through it. A lead acid cell consists of a lead anode and a lead dioxide cathode immersed in sulfuric acid. Both electrodes react with the acid to produce lead sulfate, but the reaction at the