Page 192 - Inventions - A Visual Encyclopedia (DK - Smithsonian)

The battery THE VOLTAIC PILE

Another Italian scientist, Alessandro
Volta, thought Galvani’s explanations
People have known about electricity for a long time. were wrong. He believed the metals,
not the animal, produced the electric
Ancient Greek scholars performed experiments with current. To prove it, he created the

static electricity and, in the 18th century, the American world’s first battery in 1800. This “Voltaic
Pile” was made of piled groups of
inventor Benjamin Franklin proved lightning to be a
three disks—made
form of electricity. But no one knew how to produce of copper, cardboard
soaked in seawater,
an electric current until the start of the 19th century,
AT HOME when the Italian scientist Alessandro Volta created and zinc.

the first battery.

Legs move when
Iron plate touched by metal rod
JUMPING FROGS
In 1780, the Italian scientist Luigi
Galvani found that he could Electric charge
make the muscles of a dead frog flows from one
metal to another
twitch, as if the animal were still across the wet
alive, by touching the nerves in cardboard,
creating a small
its legs with different metals.
electric current.
Thinking the force was being
Illustration produced inside the frog, he
of Galvani’s Brass rod called it “animal electricity.”
experiment

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