Electric organ (biology) in research because of their resemblance to nerve-muscle junctions. The stack of electrocytes has long been compared to a voltaic pile, and may even have inspired the invention of the battery, since the analogy was already noted by Alessandro Volta. While the electric organ is structurally similar to a battery, its cycle of operation is more like a Marx generator, in that the individual elements are slowly charged in parallel, then suddenly and nearly simultaneously discharged in series to produce a high voltage pulse. To discharge the electrocytes at the correct time, the electric eel uses its pacemaker nucleus, a
Alessandro Cruto Alessandro Cruto Alessandro Cruto was an Italian inventor, born in the village of Piossasco, who created the incandescent light bulb. Son of a construction foreman, he attended the school of architecture at the University of Turin, while also attending Physics and Chemistry lectures with the dream of crystallizing carbon to obtain diamonds. In 1872 he opened a small workshop in his home village where he conducted tests on the production of pure carbon from ethylene. His efforts were rewarded in 1874 when his experiments succeeded in producing thin sheets of graphite, albeit his initial purpose was that of producing diamonds.