Google Doodle honours Alessandro Volta, inventor of the battery
GOOGLE has celebrated the 270th birthday of Italian physicist Alessandro Volta, the inventor of the modern battery, with a Doodle on its homepage.
In 1800, Volta published a theory that led to the first modern battery.
In honour of his contribution, his name inspired the electrical unit 'volt' in 1881.
Volta was born on this day, February 18th, in 1745 in Como, Italy.
He became a professor of physics at the Royal School in Como in 1774 and began to experiment with electricity.
His pivotal invention arose from a competition with Luigi Galvani, a friend and fellow physicist.
Galvani is famous for discovering that dissected frogs' legs would twitch once probed with different metals. Galvani had generated an electrical current.
Google Battery
While Galvani mistook the frogs' muscles as the source of the electricity, Volta argued that the animal's tissue served only as a conductor.
In his rivalry with Galvani, Volta would often go to extremes to experiment with conductivity, even testing the currents on his own tongue.
Eventually, Volta proved that animal tissue was not needed to produce an electrical current.
Volta managed to create a current simply using stacks of metal disks and connecting wires.
When Volta invented the battery in 1800, he even made the trip to Paris to demonstrate the creation in front of Napoleon.
Volta’s invention, a 'voltaic pile', was made up of copper and zinc separated by paper that had been soaked in salt water.
So impressed with the scientist's work, the French leader made Volta a senator of the kingdom of Lombardy in 1810.
Volta died on 5 March, 1827 in Como.
