Alessandro Volta - The Battery

Alessandro Volta - The Battery

Fern Farthington


Alessandro Volta (1745-1827)

In 1800, Alessandro Volta of Italy built the voltaic pile and discovered the first practical method of generating electricity. Count Volta also made discoveries in electrostatics, meteorology and pneumatics. His most famous invention, however, is the first battery.

 Amazing how a bit of imagination can change the world. -- radioguy1620

Almost three hundred year my Gee but ask an average normal person to built a battery or at least explain how is a battery made lol -- jassir amed

Watching this with my 5yr old son as an explanation on how the age of electricity has begun (: -- Uladzimir Darożka

Very interesting. -- matthewakian2

Thank You Volta -- Aventanario


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'Alessandro Volta - The Lombard inventor of the electrical battery, and referred to as "the father of electricity" '

Alessandro Volta Monument in Como

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Galvani vs. Volta

[Luigi Galvani vs. Alessandro Volta]

[Similar to the dueling wizards "Tesla vs. Edison"]

Volta, a professor of experimental physics in the University of Pavia, was among the first scientists who repeated and checked Galvani’s experiments. At first, he embraced animal electricity. However, he started to doubt that the conductions were caused by a specific electricity intrinsic to animal's legs or other body parts. Volta believed that the contractions depended on the metal cable Galvani used to connect the nerves and muscles in his experiments.

Volta's investigations led shortly to the invention of an early battery. Galvani believed that the animal electricity came from the muscle in its pelvis. Volta, in opposition, reasoned that the animal electricity was a physical phenomenon caused by rubbing frog skin and not a metallic electricity.

Every cell has a cell potential; biological electricity has the same chemical underpinnings as the current between electrochemical cells, and thus can be duplicated outside the body. Volta's intuition was correct. Volta, essentially, objected to Galvani’s conclusions about "animal electric fluid", but the two scientists disagreed respectfully and Volta coined the term "Galvanism" for a direct current of electricity produced by chemical action. Thus, owing to an argument between the two in regard to the source or cause of the electricity, Volta built the first battery in order to specifically disprove his associate's theory. Volta's “pile” became known therefore as a voltaic pile.

After the controversy with Volta, Galvani kept a low profile partly because of his attitude towards the controversy, and partly because his health and spirits had declined, especially after the death of his wife, Lucia, in 1790.

Since Galvani was reluctant to intervene in the controversy with Volta, he trusted his nephew, Giovanni Aldini, to act as the main defender of the theory of animal electricity.



Galvani vs. Volta [36:35 to 53:41]



 
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