Alesananro Volta and the invention of the battery
https://www.bitchute.com/video/IoOA6Qw5F7Og/
Alessandro Volta
Born
18 February 1745
Como, Duchy of Milan
Died
5 March 1827 (aged 82)
Como, Lombardo-Venetian Kingdom, Austrian Empire
Nationality: Italian, Lombard, and 100% Westman.
Volta is best known for the invention of the voltaic pile, or what we would today call, the battery. Though best known for the invention of the battery Volta also made other significant contributions to the Scientific body of knowledge of Western Civilization.
After reading Benjamen Franklin’s description of exploding air Volta became the first person to isolate methane.
• and he Discovered that methane when mixed with air could be exploded using an electric spark: No, Volta did not invent the spark plug but I point this out just so we can appreciate the how layers of Western scientific discovery shaped the development of our Western technological civilization.
Also Volta discovered that the electrical potential (what we now call voltage) in a capacitor is directly proportional to electrical charge. A key concept in electrical engineering today.
Alessandro was also the first to discover thermo electricity. Wait a minute, I thought Thomas Seebeck discovered thermo electricity and Ohm famously used a Seebeck thermoelectric generator in formulating his famous electrical law? We’ll get back to this a little later in our story.
Alessandro Volta came from a distinguished Lombard family. Alessandro’s father, Filippo Maria Volta , was a Jesuit priest for eleven years but left the priesthood for the love of a woman. His marriage in 1733 to Maria Maddalena de’Conti Inzaghi produced seven children with Alessandro, being the youngest. Alessandro spent most of his early years in the nearby town of Brunate, in the house of Ludovico Monti, a barometer builder and another of our great westmen.
When Alessandro was 7 his father died leaving a number of unpaid debts that were a to burden the family. The young Alessandro was educated at home by his uncle until he was twelve years old. Yes, that is correct, the inventor of the battery was home schooled. At 13 he started studies at a Jesuit boarding school. The Jesuit school charged no fees, they were always on the lookout for brilliant students who they could recruit into the priesthood. And a brilliant Westman Alessandro was. The Jesuits tried to pressure Alessandro into committing to the priesthood on multiple occasions. But Alessandro did not want to become a priest. His family did not want that either. Alessandro left the Jesuit school after four years. He then studied at the Benzi Seminary until reaching eighteen years of age. By this time Alessandro had made up his mind to become a physicist.
Although as a child he had been slow to speak his native Italian, Volta now seemed to have a special talent for languages. Before he left school, he had learned Latin, French, English, and German. At 18 years of age he began an exchange of letters about electricity and physics with some of the leading physicists of the day. His language talents also helped him in later when he traveled with the aim of discussing his work in the centers of European science.
In 1765 – When Volta had reached 20 years of age. His wealthy friend Giulio Cesare Gattoni built a physics laboratory in his home. For several years he kindly allowed Volta to do experiments in this laboratory. Volta began experimenting, publishing papers and corresponding with other scientists.
In 1774, Volta began teaching as superintendent of public schools in Como. The following year he became professor of Experimental Physics in the Gymnasium of Como.
By 1777 Volta realized he needed more exposure to what was happening in the scientific centers of Eurpoe. He embarked on a scientific tour, where he met many of the important scientific figures of his time, including Voltaire, Henry Cavendish, Benjamin Franklin, Antoine Lavoisier, Joseph Priestley, Pierre-Simon Laplace, Joseph Louis Lagrange and James Watt. How is that for a list of Great Westmen, wow. Alessandro showed them his innovations in electrical equipment. His travels also had the purpose of making his name better known outside Italy.
In 1778, Volta was appointed to the new chair of Experimental Physics at the University of Pavia. He held the chair of experimental physics at the University for nearly 40 years. He was quite affable and his students loved him.
The experiments that led to the invention of the battery were actually performed to show the claims of another of our Great Westmen and scientist was incorrect. That Great Westman and scientist was another than Italian, Luigi Galvani.
Galvani was a professor of anatomy. In the late 1780s when he noticed that a spark of static electricity carried by a metal scalpel touching the nerves of a dead frog while the legs lay on a metal plate caused the legs to move.
This was an amazing discovery, animal movement was in some way based on electricity. Galvani conjectured that animal electricity existed as its own type of electricity. In 1791, Galvani announced his discovery of animal electricity.
As an aside here, the concept of animal electricity was used by Mary Shelley in her 1817 novel Frankenstein. In this novel, a creature made of a monstrous mixture of body parts from dead people is brought to life by Doctor Frankenstein using electricity from a lightning storm.
Alessandro however had different thoughts about animal electricity. He set out to prove that electricity did not come from the animal tissue but was generated by the contact of different metals, brass and iron, in a moist environment. Ironically, both scientists were right.
Volta performed various experiments on frogs’ legs. He found the key to getting them to move was contact with two different metals. Contact with pieces of the same homogeneous metal did nothing.
Then, moving away from frogs’ legs, in 1794, Volta did experiments to measure the electrical effect of bringing different pairs of metals into contact. He listed the metals in order of what he called their electromotive force.
Thus, it was apparently Volta who, apparently, discovered thermoelectricity 23 years earlier than Thomas Seebeck. Volta reported on his observations on February 10, 1794. And By 1797, Volta had completely proved his “contact theory” of electricity.
He now knew that the key to producing a voltage was two metals connected by something moist, like frogs’ legs. The moist connection between the metals however did NOT have to be an animal. Connecting the metals by placing them in a cup of dilute acid was a very effective way of producing electricity.
Volta categorized electrical conductors into 2 types, those of the first kind: these were metals, graphite and pure charcoal; and the second kind: these were substances we would now call electrolytes, such as salt water or dilute acids. An electric current would result when a circuit was built using two conductors of the first kind combined with one of the second kind. Connecting metals with paper soaked in dilute acid or salt water worked well to produce a voltage. And so the electrical battery was born.
In 1800, Volta described his results using alternating zinc and silver discs linked by card or cloth soaked in salt water in a letter to Joseph Banks, of the Royal Society in London. Banks showed the letter to other scientists, and arranged for Volta’s discovery to be read out at a meeting of the Society and then published.
The battery, or voltaic pile as it was called then was a ground breaking invention. After his invention was made public, Volta gained instant fame and was celebrated by the famous scientists of his day. Volta demonstrated his invention to Napoleon Bonaparte, then the French head of state. Napoleon visited Volta on a number of occasions and always praised his work. In honor of his work in the field of electricity, Napoleon made him a count in 1810 and created a prize for scientific achievement which he named the Volta price in honor of Alessandro.
Within weeks of Volta’s invention of the battery, other Great Westmen put it to use. William Nicholson and Anthony Carlisle built and used a battery to decompose water into hydrogen and oxygen.
Within just six years, Humphry Davy had built a very powerful battery. With it, he isolated new chemical elements, and deduced that chemical bonds were electrical in nature. Davy discovered the following new elements: barium, calcium, lithium, magnesium, potassium, sodium, and strontium. Wow, Humphrey Davy, another brilliant Westman.
By 1820, courtesy of Volta’s batteries, Hans Christian Oersted was investigating the relationship between electricity and magnetism. By the way, it was Oersted who coined the term “thermoelectricity”.
By 1821, Michael Faraday had produced an electric motor and would soon discover electromagnetic induction. All of Faraday’s experiments and discoveries would not have been made without the voltaic pile. If you saw the video on Farady you might recall that Faraday got his start as an assistant to Humphrey Davy.
Alessandro Volta actively practiced the Catholic religion, but was certainly not prudish He was a large, vigorous man, who enjoyed thе life. He is described by his friend Christoph Lichtenberg:
He is an extraordinary man. DeLuc is right: he wrote me once, He is full of ideas and without peer. He had many instruments along; he unpacked them for me, and during his stay here I kept them in my own quarters. […] He is a handsome fellow, and during some extremely uninhibited hours, at a supper at my place we talked wildly till about one o’clock, I noticed that he had an expert knowledge of both electricity and girls.
Since 1789 Volta had a long love affair with a famous singer, Marianna Paris, but his family, and the emperor himself, did not allow the marriage, because the profession of singer was not of good repute. So Just like his father, Alessandro at a venerable age decided to marry a much younger woman, and a rich one at that. Volta married on 22 September 1794 in the church of San Provino in Como, to Maria Teresa Alonsa Peregrini. Maria Teresa was very young, only 14. But surprisingly, the marriage was a happy one, and three sons were born. They were Volta’s pride and joy. Despite his professional success, Volta also enjoyed and appreciated his domestic life. In his later years he tended to live secluded from public life and more for the sake of his family.
With Volta’s invention of the battery, a steady electric current could be produced for the first time ever. Without Volta’s invention, there could be no modern technology. Volta’s battery was an absolutely crucial invention in the development of our technological based civilization. Another Promethean gift of Westernkind to the world.
References:
http://dspace.nbuv.gov.ua/xmlui/bitstream/handle/123456789/27907/01-Pastorino-ENG.pdf?sequence=1
https://ethw.org/Milestones:Volta's_Electrical_Battery_Invention,_1799
https://ethw.org/Alessandro_Volta
https://www.famousbirthdays.com/people/alessandro-volta.html
https://history-computer.com/alessandro-volta-biography-history-and-inventions/
https://www.thoughtco.com/battery-timeline-1991340
https://www.thoughtco.com/alessandro-volta-1992584
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Johann_Seebeck
https://www.famousscientists.org/alessandro-volta/
Alessandro Volta
Born
18 February 1745
Como, Duchy of Milan
Died
5 March 1827 (aged 82)
Como, Lombardo-Venetian Kingdom, Austrian Empire
Nationality: Italian, Lombard, and 100% Westman.
Volta is best known for the invention of the voltaic pile, or what we would today call, the battery. Though best known for the invention of the battery Volta also made other significant contributions to the Scientific body of knowledge of Western Civilization.
After reading Benjamen Franklin’s description of exploding air Volta became the first person to isolate methane.
• and he Discovered that methane when mixed with air could be exploded using an electric spark: No, Volta did not invent the spark plug but I point this out just so we can appreciate the how layers of Western scientific discovery shaped the development of our Western technological civilization.
Also Volta discovered that the electrical potential (what we now call voltage) in a capacitor is directly proportional to electrical charge. A key concept in electrical engineering today.
Alessandro was also the first to discover thermo electricity. Wait a minute, I thought Thomas Seebeck discovered thermo electricity and Ohm famously used a Seebeck thermoelectric generator in formulating his famous electrical law? We’ll get back to this a little later in our story.
Alessandro Volta came from a distinguished Lombard family. Alessandro’s father, Filippo Maria Volta , was a Jesuit priest for eleven years but left the priesthood for the love of a woman. His marriage in 1733 to Maria Maddalena de’Conti Inzaghi produced seven children with Alessandro, being the youngest. Alessandro spent most of his early years in the nearby town of Brunate, in the house of Ludovico Monti, a barometer builder and another of our great westmen.
When Alessandro was 7 his father died leaving a number of unpaid debts that were a to burden the family. The young Alessandro was educated at home by his uncle until he was twelve years old. Yes, that is correct, the inventor of the battery was home schooled. At 13 he started studies at a Jesuit boarding school. The Jesuit school charged no fees, they were always on the lookout for brilliant students who they could recruit into the priesthood. And a brilliant Westman Alessandro was. The Jesuits tried to pressure Alessandro into committing to the priesthood on multiple occasions. But Alessandro did not want to become a priest. His family did not want that either. Alessandro left the Jesuit school after four years. He then studied at the Benzi Seminary until reaching eighteen years of age. By this time Alessandro had made up his mind to become a physicist.
Although as a child he had been slow to speak his native Italian, Volta now seemed to have a special talent for languages. Before he left school, he had learned Latin, French, English, and German. At 18 years of age he began an exchange of letters about electricity and physics with some of the leading physicists of the day. His language talents also helped him in later when he traveled with the aim of discussing his work in the centers of European science.
In 1765 – When Volta had reached 20 years of age. His wealthy friend Giulio Cesare Gattoni built a physics laboratory in his home. For several years he kindly allowed Volta to do experiments in this laboratory. Volta began experimenting, publishing papers and corresponding with other scientists.
In 1774, Volta began teaching as superintendent of public schools in Como. The following year he became professor of Experimental Physics in the Gymnasium of Como.
By 1777 Volta realized he needed more exposure to what was happening in the scientific centers of Eurpoe. He embarked on a scientific tour, where he met many of the important scientific figures of his time, including Voltaire, Henry Cavendish, Benjamin Franklin, Antoine Lavoisier, Joseph Priestley, Pierre-Simon Laplace, Joseph Louis Lagrange and James Watt. How is that for a list of Great Westmen, wow. Alessandro showed them his innovations in electrical equipment. His travels also had the purpose of making his name better known outside Italy.
In 1778, Volta was appointed to the new chair of Experimental Physics at the University of Pavia. He held the chair of experimental physics at the University for nearly 40 years. He was quite affable and his students loved him.
The experiments that led to the invention of the battery were actually performed to show the claims of another of our Great Westmen and scientist was incorrect. That Great Westman and scientist was another than Italian, Luigi Galvani.
Galvani was a professor of anatomy. In the late 1780s when he noticed that a spark of static electricity carried by a metal scalpel touching the nerves of a dead frog while the legs lay on a metal plate caused the legs to move.
This was an amazing discovery, animal movement was in some way based on electricity. Galvani conjectured that animal electricity existed as its own type of electricity. In 1791, Galvani announced his discovery of animal electricity.
As an aside here, the concept of animal electricity was used by Mary Shelley in her 1817 novel Frankenstein. In this novel, a creature made of a monstrous mixture of body parts from dead people is brought to life by Doctor Frankenstein using electricity from a lightning storm.
Alessandro however had different thoughts about animal electricity. He set out to prove that electricity did not come from the animal tissue but was generated by the contact of different metals, brass and iron, in a moist environment. Ironically, both scientists were right.
Volta performed various experiments on frogs’ legs. He found the key to getting them to move was contact with two different metals. Contact with pieces of the same homogeneous metal did nothing.
Then, moving away from frogs’ legs, in 1794, Volta did experiments to measure the electrical effect of bringing different pairs of metals into contact. He listed the metals in order of what he called their electromotive force.
Thus, it was apparently Volta who, apparently, discovered thermoelectricity 23 years earlier than Thomas Seebeck. Volta reported on his observations on February 10, 1794. And By 1797, Volta had completely proved his “contact theory” of electricity.
He now knew that the key to producing a voltage was two metals connected by something moist, like frogs’ legs. The moist connection between the metals however did NOT have to be an animal. Connecting the metals by placing them in a cup of dilute acid was a very effective way of producing electricity.
Volta categorized electrical conductors into 2 types, those of the first kind: these were metals, graphite and pure charcoal; and the second kind: these were substances we would now call electrolytes, such as salt water or dilute acids. An electric current would result when a circuit was built using two conductors of the first kind combined with one of the second kind. Connecting metals with paper soaked in dilute acid or salt water worked well to produce a voltage. And so the electrical battery was born.
In 1800, Volta described his results using alternating zinc and silver discs linked by card or cloth soaked in salt water in a letter to Joseph Banks, of the Royal Society in London. Banks showed the letter to other scientists, and arranged for Volta’s discovery to be read out at a meeting of the Society and then published.
The battery, or voltaic pile as it was called then was a ground breaking invention. After his invention was made public, Volta gained instant fame and was celebrated by the famous scientists of his day. Volta demonstrated his invention to Napoleon Bonaparte, then the French head of state. Napoleon visited Volta on a number of occasions and always praised his work. In honor of his work in the field of electricity, Napoleon made him a count in 1810 and created a prize for scientific achievement which he named the Volta price in honor of Alessandro.
Within weeks of Volta’s invention of the battery, other Great Westmen put it to use. William Nicholson and Anthony Carlisle built and used a battery to decompose water into hydrogen and oxygen.
Within just six years, Humphry Davy had built a very powerful battery. With it, he isolated new chemical elements, and deduced that chemical bonds were electrical in nature. Davy discovered the following new elements: barium, calcium, lithium, magnesium, potassium, sodium, and strontium. Wow, Humphrey Davy, another brilliant Westman.
By 1820, courtesy of Volta’s batteries, Hans Christian Oersted was investigating the relationship between electricity and magnetism. By the way, it was Oersted who coined the term “thermoelectricity”.
By 1821, Michael Faraday had produced an electric motor and would soon discover electromagnetic induction. All of Faraday’s experiments and discoveries would not have been made without the voltaic pile. If you saw the video on Farady you might recall that Faraday got his start as an assistant to Humphrey Davy.
Alessandro Volta actively practiced the Catholic religion, but was certainly not prudish He was a large, vigorous man, who enjoyed thе life. He is described by his friend Christoph Lichtenberg:
He is an extraordinary man. DeLuc is right: he wrote me once, He is full of ideas and without peer. He had many instruments along; he unpacked them for me, and during his stay here I kept them in my own quarters. […] He is a handsome fellow, and during some extremely uninhibited hours, at a supper at my place we talked wildly till about one o’clock, I noticed that he had an expert knowledge of both electricity and girls.
Since 1789 Volta had a long love affair with a famous singer, Marianna Paris, but his family, and the emperor himself, did not allow the marriage, because the profession of singer was not of good repute. So Just like his father, Alessandro at a venerable age decided to marry a much younger woman, and a rich one at that. Volta married on 22 September 1794 in the church of San Provino in Como, to Maria Teresa Alonsa Peregrini. Maria Teresa was very young, only 14. But surprisingly, the marriage was a happy one, and three sons were born. They were Volta’s pride and joy. Despite his professional success, Volta also enjoyed and appreciated his domestic life. In his later years he tended to live secluded from public life and more for the sake of his family.
With Volta’s invention of the battery, a steady electric current could be produced for the first time ever. Without Volta’s invention, there could be no modern technology. Volta’s battery was an absolutely crucial invention in the development of our technological based civilization. Another Promethean gift of Westernkind to the world.
References:
http://dspace.nbuv.gov.ua/xmlui/bitstream/handle/123456789/27907/01-Pastorino-ENG.pdf?sequence=1
https://ethw.org/Milestones:Volta's_Electrical_Battery_Invention,_1799
https://ethw.org/Alessandro_Volta
https://www.famousbirthdays.com/people/alessandro-volta.html
https://history-computer.com/alessandro-volta-biography-history-and-inventions/
https://www.thoughtco.com/battery-timeline-1991340
https://www.thoughtco.com/alessandro-volta-1992584
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Johann_Seebeck
https://www.famousscientists.org/alessandro-volta/