The first true electric battery was the voltaic pile, announced by the Italian physicist Alessandro Volta in a letter to the Royal Society in London. It was a stack of alternating zinc and copper discs separated by cloth soaked in brine, and it was the first source of a steady electric current. Volta built it to show that electricity could be produced by contact between different metals, in a debate with Luigi Galvani, who believed in animal electricity. The pile soon allowed scientists to decompose water and discover new elements. Later inventions included the Daniell cell, the rechargeable lead-acid battery of 1859 and the lithium-ion battery, first sold by Sony in 1991, whose developers received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2019.
Before and after
- 14 December 1799Death of George Washington
- from 1 January 1800 to 17 August 1945Dutch East Indies
- from 1800 to 1900Rise of Romantic music
- from c. 1800s to 1860sCircassian genocide
- 1800Battery
- 18th centuryRite of Adoption
- from 18th century to 19th centuryRomanticism
- 18th centuryAgrippina
- c. 1800sRise of nationalism
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The era
This moment belongs to the Industrial era (1760 CE to 1914 CE), steam, factories and revolutions. You can also browse everything in the 18th century.