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 battery by Lithium-ion (Li-Ion) inventor John Goodenough, "that could lead to safer, faster-charging, longer-lasting rechargeable batteries for handheld mobile devices, electric cars and stationary energy storage". More specifics about the new technology were published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Energy & Environmental Science. Independent reviews of the technology discuss the risk of fire and explosion from Lithium-ion batteries under certain conditions because they use liquid electrolytes. The newly developed battery should be safer since it uses glass electrolytes, that should eliminate short circuits. The solid-state battery is also said to have "three times the energy density" increasing its useful life in