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
Alessandro Vespignani Alessandro Vespignani Alessandro Vespignani is an Italian-American physicist, best known for his work on complex networks, and particularly for work on the applications of network theory to the spread of disease, applications of computational epidemiology, and for studies of the topological properties of the Internet. He is currently the Sternberg Family Distinguished University Professor of Physics, Computer Science and Health Sciences at Northeastern University, where he is the director of the Network Science Institute. Vespignani is serving in the board/leadership of a variety of professional associations, institutions and journals. Vespignani is author, together with Romualdo Pastor-Satorras, of the book "Evolution