Alessandro Volta and the Discovery of the Battery

1 Primary Source 12.2 VOLTA AND THE DISCOVERY OF THE BATTERY1 Alessandro Volta (1745–1827) was born in the Duchy of Milan in a town called Como. He was raised as a Catholic and remained so throughout his life. Volta became a professor of physics in Como, and soon took a significant interest in electricity. First, he began to work with the chemistry of gases, during which he discovered methane gas. He then studied electrical capacitance, as well as derived new ways of studying both electrical potential and charge. Most famously, Volta discovered what he termed a Voltaic pile, which was the first electrical battery that could continuously provide electrical current to a circuit. Needless to say, Volta’s discovery had a major impact in science and technology. In light of his contribution to the study of electrical capacitance and discovery of the battery, the electrical potential difference, voltage, and the unit of electric potential, the volt, were named in honor of him. The following passage is excerpted from an essay, written in French, “On the Electricity Excited by the Mere Contact of Conducting Substances of Different Kinds,” which Volta sent in 1800 to the President of the Royal Society in London, Joseph Banks, in hope of its publication. The essay, described how to construct a battery, a source of steady electrical current, which paved the way toward the “electric age.” At this time, Volta was working as a professor at the University of Pavia. For the excerpt online, click here. The chief of these results, and which comprehends nearly all the others, is the construction of an apparatus which resembles in its effects viz. (such as giving shocks to the arms, &c.,2) the Leyden phial,3 and still better, electric batteries weakly charged; acting continually, or whose charge, after each explosion recharges itself again; which in short becomes perpetual, from one infallible4 charge, from one action of impulse on the electric fluid; but which besides differs essentially from the other, by this continual action which is proper to it, and because that instead of consisting, like the ordinary phials and electric batteries, in one or more isolated plates, or thin layers of those bodies deemed the only electrics, and armed with conductors5 or bodies called non-electrics, this new apparatus is formed only of a number of these last bodies, chosen even among the best conductors, and so the farthest removed, according to the usual opinion, from the electric principle. The astonishing apparatus is nothing but an assemblage of a number of good conductors of a different kind, arranged in a certain manner. Thus, 30, 40, 60, or more pieces of copper, or better of silver, each applied to a piece of tin, or still better of zinc, and an equal number of layers of water, or of some other liquid which may be a better conductor than simple water, as salt water, lye, &c., or of bits of card or leather, &c., soaked in such liquids. Of such layers interposed between each couple or combination of two different metals, one such alternate 1 Oliver Thatcher (ed.), The Library of Original Sources, 10 vols. (New York: University Research Extension., 1907), 6:358–61. 2 An old abbreviation of etcetera. 3 A device that stores static electricity between two electrodes. 4 Properly working charge. 5 An object that permits electrical flow. 2 series, and always in the same order, of these three kinds of conductors, is all that constitutes M. Volta’s new instrument; which imitates so well the effects of the Leyden phial or electric batteries; not indeed with the force and explosions of these, when highly charged, but only equaling the effects of a battery charged to a very weak degree, of a battery, however, having an immense capacity, but which besides infinitely surpasses the virtue and the power of these same batteries; as it has no need, like them, of being charged beforehand, by means of a foreign electricity; and as it is capable of giving the usual commotion as often as ever it is properly touched. This apparatus, as it resembles more the natural electric organ of the torpedo or of the electric eel than the Leyden phial and the ordinary electric batteries, M. Volta calls the artificial electric organ. For the construction of this instrument, M. Volta provides some dozens of small, round metal plates of copper, or tin, or best of silver, about an inch in diameter, like shillings or half-crowns, and an equal number of plates of tin, or much better of zinc, of the same shape and size. These piece she places exactly one upon another, forming a column, pillar or pile. He provides also, as many round pieces of card, or leather, or such like a spongy matter, capable of imbibing and retaining much of the water, or other liquid when soaked in it. These soaked roullets or circles are to be a little less in diameter than the small metal discs or plates that they may not jut out beyond them. All these discs are then placed horizontally on a table, one over another continually alternating, in a pile as high as will well support itself without tottering and falling down: beginning with a plate of either of the metals, as for instance, the silver, then upon that one of zinc, over which is to be put the soaked card; then other three discs, over these in the same order, viz. a silver, next a zinc, and then another moistened card, &c. After having raised the pile to about 20 of these stages or triads of plates, it will be already capable, not only of affecting Cavallo’s6 electrometer,7 assisted by the condenser, so as to raise it 10 to 15°, charging it by a simple touching, so as to cause it give a spark, &c., as also to strike the fingers with which we touch the top or bottom of the column, with several small snaps, the fingers being wetted with water. But if to the 20 sets of triplets of the plates be added 20 or 30 more, disposed in the same order, the actions of the extended pile will be much stronger, and be felt through the arms up to the shoulders; and by the continuing the touchings, the pains in the hands become insupportable. M. Volta constructs and combines his apparatus in various ways and forms, more or less powerful, convenient or amusing. One is as follows (Fig. 1, pl. 13,), which he calls a couronne de tasses.8 He disposes in a row a number of cups of wood, or earth, or glass, or anything but metal, half filled with pure water, or salt water or lye; these are all made to communicate in a kind of chain, by several metallic areas of which one arm or link, Aa, or only the extremity A, immersed in one of the cups, is of copper, or of copper silvered, and the other Z, immersed in the following cup, is of tin, or rather of zinc, the other two being soldered together near the crown of the arch. It is evident that a series of these cups, thus connected together, either in a straight or curved line, by the two metals and the intermediate liquid, is similar to the pillar or pile before described, and consequently will exhibit similar effects. Thus, to produce commotion or sensation in the hands and arms, we 6 Tiberius Cavallo (1749–1809) was an Italian physicist who invented a device to amplify small electric charges. 7 An electrical instrument for measuring electric charge or electrical potential difference. 8 French for “crown of mugs.” 3 need only dip one hand into one of cups and the finger of the hand into another cup, sufficiently far from the former; and the action will be so much stronger as the two cups are farther asunder, or have the more intermediate cups; and consequently the greatest by touching the first and last in the chain. As to the structures in the other method, by the column or pile, Mr. Volta found out various ways to prolong and extend it, in multiplying the metal plates without shaking it down; to render this instrument convenient, portable and durable; and among others, the three methods exhibited on figs. 2,3,4, pl. 13. In fig. 2, mmmm, are upright bars or rods, to the number of three or four, or more, erected from the bottom the pile, and the extended to a convenient height, inclosing the pile like a cage, to prevent its falling. These rods may be either of glass, wood, or metal; only, in this last case, they must be hindered from touching the metal plates; which may be done either by covering each metal rod with a glass tube or by interposing between them and the pile some bands of cere-cloth or oiled paper, or any imperfect conducting substance. But the best expedient for forming the instrument of a great number of plates, as of 60, 80, or 1,000, is to divide the pile into two or more, as the figures 3 and 4 show, where the pieces have all their respective positions or communications, as if it was one pile only, plied and turned. In all these figures the different metal plates are denoted by the letters A and Z, the initials of argent and zinc, and of the wet discs of card, or leather, &c., interposed at each pair of those metals, by a later or band shaded black.

Load more