Alessandro volta

Decorated by Napoleon Bonaparte for the invention of the electric battery, the Italian Alessandro Volta (February 18, 1745 – March 5, 1827) did not always have the support of the international community. The physicist showed that it was not the bodies of animals but rather the contact of two metals The current batteries are an evolution of Volta’s invention. Credit: Peter Miller The early years of his life also strayed outside the established canons. Born into an aristocratic family, his parents were alarmed because he did not start talking until age four, as recorded in the book Alessandro Volta (1999) by Umberto F. Molteni. But this delay did not seem to harm his later intellectual development considering that, in addition to his native Italian, he also learned Latin, French, German, English, Spanish, Dutch, Russian and Ancient Greek. After focusing on humanistic studies in his education by Jesuits, Volta became interested in experimentation and, at the age of only eighteen, was corresponding with the French physicist Jean-Antoine Nollet on the subject of electrical attraction. In 1775, when he was working at the Royal School in Como (Italy), he developed his first invention (or, more precisely, he improved, named and popularised an earlier version): the perpetual electrophore, a device that, by electrostatic induction, produced a continuous electric current and transferred electricity to other objects. Illustration of the perpetual electrophore designed by Volta. Credit...

February 18, 1745 to March 5, 1827 Alessandro Volta (February 18, 1745 to March 5, 1827) Volta was an Italian scientist, who is most famous for his invention in 1800 of the first battery, which was called a“voltaic pile.” A voltaic pile was a stack of electrochemical cells, each of which consisted of an electrolyte-soaked paper sandwiched between two different metals, such as zinc and copper. Volta’s invention of the battery made possible further progress in electromagnetic research as well as in chemistry. Electrical currents produced by voltaic cells were used to split chemical compounds through electrolysis and isolate new chemical elements. (In 1807-8, Sir Humphrey Davy used this method to discoversodium, potassium, boron, barium, calcium, magnesium, and strontium.) In honor of Volta’s researches in electricity, the Standard International unit of electrical potential (the “volt”) was named after him. Volta also made other scientific contributions, including discovering and isolating the gas methane. Volta gave testimony to his religious beliefs in a letter sent on Jan 6, 1815 to the Canon Giacomo Ciceri, in which he declared, “I have, indeed, and only too often, failed in the performance of those good works which are the mark of a Catholic Christian, and I have been guilty of many sins; but through the special mercy of God I have never, as far as I know, wavered in my faith. … I constantly give thanks to God, who has infused into me this belief in which I desire to liv...

Key Points: • Alessandro Volta is known for discovering methane gas (1776) and inventing the world’s first electric battery. • Napoleon Bonaparte gave Volta the title of count and senator of the kingdom of Lombardy after he presented his voltaic pile to the emperor in 1801. • Volta made discoveries in other areas including voltage, electrical condensers, electroscopes, the behavior of gases, and electric conductors. Alessandro Volta (1745-1827) Alessandro Volta (1745-1827) was an Italian scientist, inventor, and physics professor that contributed major discoveries in electricity and chemistry. He is known for discovering methane gas (1776) and inventing the voltaic pile (1800), known as the world’s first electric With a noble yet confounding upbringing, Volta worked as a renowned physics professor at the University of Pavia. Over his 40-year career, Volta would go on to inspire many celebrated physicists of his time, including Carl Friedrich Gauss, Michael Faraday, and André-Marie Ampère. Quick Facts Full Name Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta Birth February 18, 1745 Death March 5, 1827 Net Worth N/A Awards • Copley Medal • Legion of Honour • Order of the Iron Crown Children Three Nationality Italian Place of Birth Como, Lombardy Fields of Expertise [“Physics”] Institutions University of Pavia Contributions first electric battery, discovery of methane gas Early Life Alessandro Volta, named Allessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta, was born in Como, Lombardy o...

The Menlo Park lab of Thomas Edison, who invented the lightbulb, is shown here after its relocation to the Henry Ford Museum in Greenfield Village, Dearborn, Michigan. The arrow on the vacuum pump (center) marks the site of Edison's recreation of the lighting of the incandescent bulb on Oct. 21, 1929. (Image credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images) Early research & development The story of the lightbulb begins long before Edison patented the first commercially successful bulb in 1879. In 1800, Italian inventor Alessandro Volta developed the first practical method of generating electricity, the voltaic pile. Made of alternating discs of zinc and copper— interspersed with layers of cardboard soaked in salt water — the pile conducted electricity when a copper wire was connected at either end. Volta's glowing copper wire is officially considered a precursor to the battery, but is also one of the earliest manifestations of incandescent lighting. According to Harold H Schobert (" Energy and Society: An Introduction," CRC Press, 2014) the Voltaic Pile "made it possible for scientists to experiment with electric currents under controlled conditions" and furthered experiments with electricity. Not long after Volta presented his discovery of a continuous source of electricity to the Royal Society in London, Davy produced the world's first electric lamp by connecting voltaic piles to charcoal electrodes. Davy's 1802 invention was known as an electric arc lamp, named for the bright arc of...

Alessandro Volta Physicist Specialty Electric cell, battery, methane, volt Born Feb. 18, 1745 Como, Duchy of Milan Died Mar. 5, 1827 (at age 82) Como, Lombardy-Venetia Nationality Italian Alessandro Volta is among the most popular Italian physicists. He first gained fame in 1775 with a charge-generating machine he invented while teaching physics in Como. Volta was appointed to Pavia University in 1779, where he continued with his work and invented a number of gadgets. Early Life Alessandro Volta was born in 1745 to a wealthy family and a strict Christian home. He attended a Jesuit school as well as a local seminary. Volta was dearly loved by his teachers who thought he had all the qualities to become a Jesuit priest. He wanted to study electricity which was in its early stages at the time. Volta pictured that there was a net neutral condition in the body in which electrical attractions are balanced. This effect could be changed by an external source which later transforms the relative configuration of particles. He believed that in that electrically unstable condition, the body gets charged electrically. Volta dropped his formal education and did not continue to study at a university. However, by the age of 18 he was corresponding with prominent scientists of the time and conducting experiments in the lab owned by a family friend. In 1769, he wrote a treatise in which he demonstrated a theory of electric phenomenon. Volta’s Early Work In 1774, Volta was appointed to be the...

Alessandro Volta Alessandro Volta (1745-1827) A century and a half after Galileo's death, something of scientific importance was to develop in Italy. Volta, a former high school physics teacher, found that it was the presence of two dissimilar metals, not the frog leg, that was critical. In 1800, after extensive experimentation, he developed the voltaic pile. The original voltaic pile consisted of a pile of zinc and silver discs and between alternate discs, a piece of cardboard that had been soaked in saltwater. A wire connecting the bottom zinc disc to the top silver disc could produce repeated sparks. No frogs were injured in the production of a voltaic pile. Count Alessandro Volta was born in Como, Italy, into a noble family. The Italian physicist Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta was the inventor of the voltaic pile, the first electric When Volta built different piles using thirty, forty or sixty elements. This enabled him to study the action of the pile on the electric fluid, depending on the number of elements, and he confirmed that the electric shock increased in intensity with the number of elements used in the pile. If more than twenty elements were used, it became painful. The first piles constructed by Volta comprised alternating zinc and copper discs. Each was separated from its neighbor by a piece of cloth or card dampened by an acid solution. The column was supported by three vertical glass rods. Volta's "artificial electrical organ" that provided t...

(Last Updated On: April 16, 2021) Born in 1745 in Italy, Alessandro Volta is one of the greatest scientists of all time. The whole world is immensely indebted to Alessandro Volta inventions. In this article, I am going to talk about Alessandro Volta inventions. Alessandro Volta inventions Let’s find below a glimpse of Alessandro Volta inventions: 1. Electric battery Alessandro Volta constructed and described the primary electrochemical battery, the voltaic pile, in 1800. This was a stack of copper and zinc plates, separated by brine-soaked paper disks, that would produce a gentle current for a substantial size of time. Volta didn’t perceive that the voltage was attributable to chemical reactions, which is one of the Alessandro Volta inventions. He thought that his cells have been an inexhaustible supply of power and that the related corrosion results on the electrodes have been a mere nuisance, relatively than an unavoidable consequence of their operation, as Michael Faraday confirmed in 1834. The Alessandro Volta battery consists of a variety of voltaic cells. Each cell consists of two half-cells linked in sequence by a conductive electrolyte containing metallic cations. One half-cell consists of an electrolyte and an unfavorable electrode, the electrode to which anions (negatively charged ions) migrate; the opposite half-cell consists of an electrolyte and the constructive electrode, to which cations (positively charged ions) migrate. 2. Methane Methane was found and rem...