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
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