Science and technology in Italy various astronomical observations, and initial formulation of the first and second laws of motion. Galileo was suppressed by the Catholic Church, but was a founder of modern science. The astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini, who made many important discoveries about the Solar System; the physicist Alessandro Volta, who invented the electric battery, thus providing for the first time a sustained source of current electricity; the mathematicians Giuseppe Peano, Lagrange, Fibonacci, and Gerolamo Cardano, whose "Ars Magna" is generally recognized as the first modern treatment on mathematics, made fundamental advances to the field; Marcello Malpighi, a doctor and founder of microscopic anatomy;
Anaerobic digestion streams and lakes released flammable gas. In 1778, the Italian physicist Alessandro Volta (1745-1827), the father of Electrochemistry, scientifically identified that gas as methane. In 1808 Sir Humphry Davy proved the presence of methane in the gases produced by cattle manure. The first known anaerobic digester was built in 1859 at a leper colony in Bombay in India. In 1895, the technology was developed in Exeter, England, where a septic tank was used to generate gas for the sewer gas destructor lamp, a type of gas lighting. Also in England, in 1904, the first dual-purpose tank for both sedimentation and