Alessandro Volta passion, every naturally noble spirit must love and accept it. May this confession which has been asked from me and which I willingly give, written and subscribed by my own hand, with authority to show it to whomsoever you will, for I am not ashamed of the Gospel, may it produce some good fruit! Alessandro Volta Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta (; 18 February 1745 – 5 March 1827) was an Italian physicist, chemist, and a pioneer of electricity and power, who is credited as the inventor of the electric battery and the discoverer of methane. He invented the Voltaic
Will-o'-the-wisp create ephemeral fires. Furthermore, phosphine produces phosphorus pentoxide as a by-product, which forms phosphoric acid upon contact with water vapor, which can explain "viscous moisture" sometimes described as accompanying ignis fatuus. In 1776, Alessandro Volta first proposed that natural electrical phenomena (like lightning) interacting with methane marsh gas may be the cause of ignis fatuus. This was supported by the British polymath Joseph Priestley in his series of works "Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air" (1772–1790); and by the French physicist Pierre Bertholon de Saint-Lazare in "De l’électricité des météores" (1787). Early critics of the marsh gas hypothesis