The first battery was made by Italian scientist Alessandro Volta. His simple invention evolved into an invaluable piece of technology for the modern world.
The first battery was made by Italian scientist Alessandro Volta. His simple invention evolved into an invaluable piece of technology for the modern world.
The battery also played a vital role in advancing scientific understanding of matter and energy in the 19th century.
Volta was inspired by the intriguing discovery of another Italian scientist, Luigi Galvani (1737–1798).
In the 1780s, Galvani was experimenting with ‘animal electricity’, making the muscles of animals’ dismembered limbs move during electrical storms and when stimulated by electrostatic generators.
Galvani found that frogs’ legs twitched whenever they were touched by two different metals at once – even with no outside source of electricity.
Galvani wrongly believed the power was coming from the nerves in the frogs’ legs.
Volta (1745–1827) realised the electricity was generated by the interaction between the metals, not by the frogs’ legs, and made his battery to prove it.
The device was a pile of copper and zinc discs, interspersed with cardboard ones.
The cardboard discs were soaked in salt water to increase conductivity.
In 1802, English surgeon-chemist William Cruickshank improved the design.
In the ‘Voltaic Pile’, the weight of the metal discs squeezed out the salt water from the cardboard discs, so the battery never lasted very long and was limited in height and therefore power.
Cruickshank’s battery was horizontal, with copper and zinc plates arranged in a trough. The salt water, or sometimes dilute acid, sat in the trough so the battery did not dry out.
Having a handy source of power – rather than ‘static’ electricity that could not easily be controlled – greatly increased the pace of scientific discovery.
The battery allowed physicists to investigate the nature of electricity itself.
The relationship between voltage, current and electrical resistance – known as Ohm’s Law – was discovered in 1827 by German physicist Georg Ohm (1759–1854).
The battery led to the discovery of electromagnetism in 1820 by Danish physicist Hans Christian Ørsted (1777–1851). And it helped to found a new science, electrochemistry.
Scientists realised they would be able to use batteries to separate compounds, producing pure samples of elements.
By 1809 English scientist Humphry Davy (1778–1829) had managed to extract several metals never before prepared pure, including sodium, potassium and magnesium.
More powerful and reliable batteries were made with new combinations of metals and electrolytes.
More portable, dry batteries followed. French physicist Gaston Planté (1834–1889) invented the first rechargeable battery in 1859.
It was a ‘lead-acid’ accumulator – very similar to the batteries used to start car engines today.
Nowadays batteries are used in a huge variety of machines and everyday gadgets such as watches, remote controls and the iPod.
Six weeks after Volta announced his battery to the world in 1800, English scientists William Nicholson (1753–1815) and Anthony Carlisle (1768–1842) made their own.
While they were testing it, they added some water to one end to make a better contact. Immediately, bubbles of gas came from the water.
The two scientists reasoned that the gases were hydrogen and oxygen, already known to be the constituent elements of water.
They inserted one wire from each end of their pile into a small tube containing water, and confirmed that hydrogen gas appeared at one wire, oxygen at the other. It was the birth of electrolysis, now heavily used by industry.