Alessandro volta biography invention impact
Alessandro Volta
Italian chemist and physicist (1745–1827)
For the concept car, see Toyota Alessandro Volta.
Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta (, ; Italian:[alesˈsandroˈvɔlta]; 18 February 1745 – 5 March 1827) was an Italian chemist and physicist who was a pioneer of electricity and power, and is credited as the inventor of the electric battery and the discoverer of methane. He invented the voltaic pile in 1799, and reported the results of his experiments in a two-part letter to the president of the Royal Society, which was published in 1800. With this invention, Volta proved that electricity could be generated chemically and debunked the prevalent theory that electricity was generated solely by living beings. Volta's invention sparked a great amount of scientific excitement and led others to conduct similar experiments, which eventually led to the development of the field of electrochemistry.
Volta drew admiration from Napoleon Bonaparte for his invention, and was invited to the Institute of France to demonstrate his invention to the members of the institute. Throughout his life, Volta enjoyed a certain amount of closeness with the emperor who conferred upon him numerous honours. Volta held the chair of experimental physics at the University of Pavia for nearly 40 years and was widely idolised by his students. Despite his professional success, Volta was inclined towards domestic life and this was more apparent in his later years when he tended to live secluded from public life and more for the sake of his family. He died in 1827 from a series of illnesses which began in 1823. The SI unit of electric potential is named the volt in his honour.
Early life and marriage
Volta was born in Como, a town in northern Italy, on 18 February 1745. His father, Filippo Volta, was of noble lineage. His mother, Donna Mad
Alessandro Volta
Alessandro Volta was an Italian scientist whose skepticism of Luigi Galvani’s theory of animal electricity led him to propose that an electrical current is generated by contact between different metals. Volta’s theoretical and experimental work in this area resulted in his construction of the first battery. Known as the voltaic pile, Volta’s battery made available for the first time a sustainable source of electrical current. Using the innovative apparatus, a number of his contemporaries, such as William Nicholson and Sir Humphry Davy, made important scientific advances in the early 19th century.
Volta, whose full name was Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta, was born on February 18, 1745, in the town of Como in Lombardy, Italy. His family was part of the aristocracy but was not particularly wealthy. Volta’s father died when Volta was only 7, and the boy’s education was overseen by relatives associated with the church. Volta was expected to embark on an ecclesiastical career, but he developed an early interest in science and decided to follow a different path. He related many of his earliest scientific ideas to French physicist Jean-Antoine Nollet and prominent Italian men of science with whom he regularly corresponded while still a teenager.
Volta was particularly interested in electricity. His first published treatise, “De vi attractiva ignis electrici” (“On the forces of attraction of electric fire”), appeared in 1769. Two years later he published a work describing a new type of electrostatic generator he had built. The recognition Volta garnered from these early works helped gain him an academic appointment teaching natural philosophy at the Liceo of Como in 1774. The following year, he described to Joseph Priestley another of his inventions, the perpetual electrophorus. Others had known of the principle of electrostatic induction on which the device was based, but Volta’s electrophorus was the first practical instrument for tra 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. When Luigi Galvani's experiments with "animal electricity" were published (1791), Volta began experiments that led him to theorize that animal tissue was not necessary for conduction of electricity. Proof of this theory was the battery, which Volta invented in 1800. He built in 1800 the first electrical pile, or battery: a series of metal disks of two kinds, separated by cardboard disks soaked with acid or salt solutions. This is the basis of all modern wet-cell batteries, and it was a tremendously important scientific discovery, because it was the first method found for the generation of a sustained electrical current. Volta built d Italian physicist Alessandro Volta made a number of discoveries in the late 18th and early 19th century critical to the then all-new and growing field of electricity. His development of the first electric pile preceded the modern battery and this, among many other accomplishments, led fellow scientists to immortalize him by naming the unit for electromagnetic force, the volt, in his honor. Born Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta on February 18, 1745, in Como, Italy, Volta was encouraged by his family to study law and by his teachers to enter the priesthood, but he became fascinated with electricity as a teenager and by 14 years of age had decided to pursue his passion for physics. He left school early and did not pursue university studies, but Volta did begin working and corresponding with scientists conducting research in the electricity arena including Abbott Nollet in Paris and Giambatista Beccaria in Turin. In 1769 he wrote his first paper, a theory on the forces of “attraction of electrical fire.” He began teaching in a local school in Como in 1774 while continuing his experiments with electricity and made several notable accomplishments within that decade including improving and popularizing the perpetual electrophorus, an object that produces charges of static electricity and is able to transfer charge to other objects; and isolating methane gas, which he did after observing bubbles rise to the surface of the marsh in swamps. He also experimented with causing interacting gases to explode inside a closed chamber, producing an experimental device known as the Voltaic pistol; this has been cited as a predecessor to several later technologies including the telegraph and the internal combustion engine. During these years, Volta’s reputation began to grow quickly throughout academic circles in Europe. In 1778 he accepted a post as professor of physics at the University of Pavia where he began teaching experimental physics in 1779 a Alessandro Volta (1745-1827)
Voltage effects on humans and animals
Types of electromagnetic fields
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 battery. In 1775 he invented the electrophorus, a device that, once electrically charged by having been rubbed, could transfer charge to other objects. Between 1776 and 1778, Volta discovered and isolated methane gas. Health effects of electromagnetic fields
Voltaic Piles
Alessandro Volta