{"id":7426,"date":"2013-07-31T07:24:54","date_gmt":"2013-07-31T06:24:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.inmesol.com\/blog\/?p=672"},"modified":"2025-01-10T09:20:35","modified_gmt":"2025-01-10T09:20:35","slug":"alessandro-volta-inventor-of-the-electric-battery-1745-1827","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.inmesol.com\/en\/blog\/alessandro-volta-inventor-of-the-electric-battery-1745-1827\/","title":{"rendered":"Alessandro Volta, inventor of the electric battery (1745-1827)"},"content":{"rendered":"

All presently produced models of batteries are based on the principle discovered by Volta.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"volta-alessandro-pila-de-volta\"Alessandro Volta invented what is known as the Volta pile<\/i>, the forerunner of the electric battery<\/strong>. His work constitutes a crucial milestone in the history of science since he was the first inventor who managed to produce a stable flow of electricity<\/strong>. His battery was made out of alternating discs of zinc and silver with brine-soaked cardboard discs placed between the metals.<\/p>\n

\"http:\/\/www.everystockphoto.com\/photo.php?imageId=1660032&searchId=1533a795102160b0ea553f7c034fcbea&npos=1\"<\/p>\n

The Italian physicist <\/strong>Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta, son of Filippo Volta and the Countess Maddalena Mar\u00eda Magdalena Inzaghi, was born in Como<\/strong> (Italy) on 18 February 1745<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

He had a rigorously humanist education<\/strong> but at university he opted to study science<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

By the age of eighteen he had already discovered some of the key elements of electricity and was exchanging letters with some of Europe\u2019s leading scientists.<\/p>\n

In 1774, he was appointed professor of Physics at the Royal School in Como. Between 1776 and 1778 he gave his attention to chemistry and discovered and isolated methane gas<\/strong>. A year later, in 1779, he took up the position of Professor of<\/strong> Experimental Physics at the University of Pavia<\/strong>. In 1800, he informed the Royal London Society of his invention of the battery<\/strong>. This illustrious institution confirmed that the \u201cvoltaic pile\u201d was effective and publicly recognised the importance of Volta\u2019s discovery.<\/p>\n

\"Descubrimiento\"<\/p>\n

Alessandro Volta was successful with several research projects<\/strong> in his lifetime. For example, he discovered and isolated methane gas<\/strong> and perfected the electrophorus<\/strong> a device which, invented by Johan Carl Wilcke, produced an electrostatic charge. Nevertheless, Volta\u2019s great contribution<\/strong> to science and humanity was his discovery of the voltaic pile<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

At the end of the eighteenth century, virtually nothing was known about electricity and its study was almost exclusively focused on static electricity<\/strong>. In 1780, Luigi Galvani<\/strong> observed that an electric current was generated when two different metals were connected in series with the muscles of a frog\u2019s leg. Interested in Galvani\u2019s discovery, Volta began to experiment with metals alone and came to the conclusion that animal muscular tissue was not necessary for producing an electric current<\/strong>. In 1800 he successfully carried out a demonstration<\/strong> showing how the first electric pile<\/strong> functioned, thus proving his thesis.<\/p>\n

The pile was made of discs of silver (or copper) and zinc<\/strong> in alternate layers separated by cardboard discs soaked in brine. When the top and bottom contacts were connected by means of a wire an electric current<\/strong> flowed through the system and this was a constant flow<\/strong>, in contrast with the Leiden jar which stored static electricity and released it in a single discharge when its inner and outer coatings were shorted.<\/p>\n

Thanks to Volta\u2019s invention, physicists were then able to work with electric currents which they could start and stop at will<\/strong>. Moreover, it was now possible to increase or reduce the current by adding or removing discs.<\/p>\n

Not long afterwards, other researchers discovered that the electric current generated by the voltaic piles could be used to break down water into hydrogen and oxygen<\/strong>. This was just one possibility which, thanks to its applications, opened up another whole field for research in science<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"Italian<\/p>\n

In 1801, Volta demonstrated to Napoleon how his battery generated an electric current<\/strong>. The emperor recognised his contribution to science by making him a count<\/strong> and senator of the Kingdom of Lombardy<\/strong>, as well as awarding him a Gold Medal for Scientific Merit.<\/p>\n

In 1815, after the collapse of the Napoleonic regime, the Imperial Government of Vienna appointed him as head of the Faculty of Philosophy in Padua<\/strong>. He was also elected to membership of the prestigious Royal Society in London.<\/p>\n

The unit of electromotive force, the volt<\/strong>, and also Volta, a crater in the moon, have been named in honour of Alessandro Volta<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"Genset-Inmesol\"<\/p>\n

The Battery in a Generator<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

The role of a battery in a generator is of fundamental importance<\/strong>: this is the device which supplies the necessary continuous flow of electric current that is used to start the generator motor.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alessandro Volta invented what is known as the Volta pile, the forerunner of the electric battery. His work constitutes a crucial milestone in the history of science since he was the first inventor who managed to produce a stable flow of electricity. His battery was made out of alternating discs of zinc and silver with brine-soaked cardboard discs placed between the metals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":665,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,33],"tags":[],"categorias-smart-power-":[],"paises-":[],"class_list":["post-7426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scientists-who-have-changed-and-who-will-change-the-world","category-ingles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.inmesol.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.inmesol.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.inmesol.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.inmesol.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.inmesol.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.inmesol.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7426\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.inmesol.com\/en\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.inmesol.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.inmesol.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.inmesol.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7426"},{"taxonomy":"categorias-smart-power-","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.inmesol.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categorias-smart-power-?post=7426"},{"taxonomy":"paises-","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.inmesol.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/paises-?post=7426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}