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
Abraham Bennet Abraham Bennet Abraham Bennet FRS (baptised 20 December 1749 - buried 9 May 1799) was an English clergyman and physicist, the inventor of the gold-leaf electroscope and developer of an improved magnetometer. Though he was cited by Alessandro Volta as a key influence on his own work, Bennet's work was curtailed by the political turbulence of his time. Abraham was baptised in Taxal, Derbyshire, the son of another Abraham Bennet, a schoolmaster, and his wife Ann "née" Fallowes. There is no record of him having attended university but he is recorded as a teacher at Wirksworth Grammar School as "MA".