The history of the invention of the battery
In 1786, there was an anatomist named Galvani at the University of Bologna in Italy. When he was doing a frog dissection experiment, he found that when a metal scalpel touched the muscles of the frog, the frog would jump and the legs would spasm. The discovery was very surprising, and he thought there was bioelectricity here.
In the eighteenth century AD, people's understanding of electricity mainly came from triboelectricity and lightning in nature, so the previous phenomena related to electricity, such as fur friction and Leiden bottle, were all static electricity. The discovery of the same phenomenon as triboelectricity on frog legs was indeed surprising at the time. After the publication of this result in 1791, it attracted great attention.
For example, it caught the attention of Volta, another university professor in Italy. Volta repeated and tested Galvani's experiment. After repeating it many times, he thought: Could the phenomenon of frog leg spasms have nothing to do with living things? Maybe a frog leg is just a conductor?
To prove this point, he removed all biological factors and used two different metals to generate electricity. Indeed, in the end he used different metals like reactive zinc and inactive silver or copper, immersed in cardboard with salt water, to generate a continuous electric current. This is the first battery in human history - the voltaic pile.
The "Volta Pile" made by Volta himself is now in the Volta Museum in Italy. Image source: Wikipedia
This study by Volta in 1800 changed the understanding of electricity from static electricity to electrokinetic electricity. Napoleon, who had conquered Italy at the time, recognized the importance of this research and granted him the title of Lord Volta. Until now the unit of voltage in our physics "volt" is also named after him.
Of course, the importance of this work is not only in winning the prize, it lays the foundation for the emergence and development of electromagnetism. Faraday's electromagnetic induction experiment was done in 1831. If there was no voltaic pile at the beginning, Faraday would have no way to do electromagnetic induction experiments, and human beings would have no way to establish a system of electromagnetic knowledge.
So was Galvani wrong? In fact, Galvani is very insistent on his own views. He believes that his experiments are no problem, and he has done a long time to verify it. Volta said that the current came from two different metals. Galvani simply did an experiment without using any metal. He used the nerves of a frog to touch the muscles of the frog's legs, and found that the frog's legs would still spasm, which means that even if there is no metal, there is no In the external voltaic pile, living things will also respond to electrical signals, and there is still bioelectricity.
So Galvani was right too. This phenomenon, after years of intensive research, eventually gave rise to modern electrophysiology. We go to the hospital for electrocardiograms and electroencephalograms, all of which are related to electrophysiology. Both the United States and China are studying neuroscience and brain science. These signal transmissions are based on the current generated by ions in the human body.
It is conceivable that at the turning stage from the eighteenth century to the nineteenth century, the academic debate between Galvani and Volta was very meaningful for the construction of the human knowledge system.
