Artist: Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta
Date: 1800
Museum: Musée des arts et métiers (Paris, France)
Technique: Textile
In the late 18th century electricity was known only through electrostatic phenomena producing spectacular sparks. That made for very popular entertainment in physics cabinets, but this weak, fleeting form of energy had no practical applications until Italian physicist Alessandro Volta took a passionate interest in electricity and studied the muscle contractions in frogs observed by his friend Luigi Galvani. Believing this phenomenon to be the result of a current produced by the chemical reaction of two metals in contact with the muscle tissue, Volta discovered that metal plates in contact with a saltwater solution caused a current to circulate between them. In 1800 he developed his first battery, consisting of two copper and zinc discs separated by a fabric disk soaked in acid water. Volta stacked several of these groups atop one another, building an
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