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
John Read (inventor) after his death. John Read (inventor) John Read was a British physicist and inventor. He developed a rotating doubler electrostatic generator, used to produce static electricity, which he called a 'spectacle doubler' because it involved discs of glass. His work was based on William Nicholson's doubler. Reid lived in Knightsbridge, London and taught at the Knightsbridge Charity School. He made observations of the atmospheric electric field, which he observed behaved differently in different air quality conditions, in 1791 and 1792. This phenomenon is now understood as originating from the global electric circuit. Richard Lovett was the first British academic to