Electric battery common fuels such as gasoline. In automobiles, this is somewhat offset by the higher efficiency of electric motors in converting chemical energy to mechanical work, compared to combustion engines. The usage of "battery" to describe a group of electrical devices dates to Benjamin Franklin, who in 1748 described multiple Leyden jars by analogy to a battery of cannon (Benjamin Franklin borrowed the term "battery" from the military, which refers to weapons functioning together). Italian physicist Alessandro Volta built and described the first electrochemical battery, the voltaic pile, in 1800. This was a stack of copper and zinc plates, separated by
Bust of Alessandro Peretti di Montalto Bust of Alessandro Peretti di Montalto The Bust of Alessandro Peretti di Montalto is a portrait sculpture by the Italian artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Executed in 1622 and 1623, the sculpture is currently housed in the Kunsthalle Hamburg, in Germany. Although possibly mentioned by one of Bernini's early biographers, the bust had been considered lost and therefore makes no appearance in Rudolf Wittkower's catalogue of Bernini’s sculptures of 1955. However, the bust was identified in the 1980s and is now considered an authentic work by Bernini. Bernini had already been commissioned by Cardinal Montalto to create the Neptune and Triton