Pile of Volta

Observations and Experiments relating to the Pile of Volta (16 September 1801). 

In addition, this review has been prepared to promote the term voltaic cell in honor of Alessandro Volta, the inventor of the pile, i.e., an electrochemical generator of electricity. Up to now this name has been used in only a few papers. This term is a logical analogue to the term galvanic cell, particularly in discussions of Volta potential and Gal-vani potential concepts. 

Z.S. Wronski, On the possibility of mechano-chemical activation of powders used in electrochemical power sources. In 200 Years of Electrochemical Energy Conversion - Bicentenary of Volta s Invention of the Energy Pile, International Society of Electrochemistry (ISE) Symposium, ISE, Geneva, 5-10 September (1999). University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy (CD ROM), pp. 830. 

In 1800. William Nicholson and Anthony Carlisle decomposed water into hydrogen and oxygen by an electric current supplied by a voltaic pile. Whereas Volta had pruduced electricity from chemical action these experimenters reversed the process and utilized electricity to produce chemical changes. In 1807. Sir Humphry Davy discovered two new elements, potassium and sodium, by the electrolysis of ihe respective solid hydroxides, utilizing a voltaic pile as the source of electric power. These electrolytic processes were the forerunners of the many industrial electrolytic processes used today to obtain aluminum, chlorine, hydrogen, or oxygen, for example, or in die electroplating of metals such as silver or chromium. 

Before 1800, electricity meant static electricity, generated by friction. It could be stored in jar-like condensers, and a number of these condensers could be discharged simultaneously, like an artillery battery, producing a very hefty shock—up to half a million volts. The sparks from such discharges could ignite gas mixtures and decompose relatively small samples of some substances. Then in 1800, Volta published a description of a new piece of apparatus, the electric pile. It was called a pile because it consisted literally of a pile of alternating disks of metals and blotting paper moistened with a salt solution. It was... 

Practical Cells and Batteries. (A) The first nonrechargeable battery was Volta s pile of 1800 a series of Zn (cathode) and Cu (cathode) electrodes immersed in concentrated sodium chloride solution (brine). 

Volta pile — Figure 1. Drawings of Volta piles (Figs. 2-4) and the chain of cups arrangement (Fig. 1.) from the original paper of Volta [i]. A is Ag or Cu, Z is Zn or Sn... 

Volta s Battery, a simple pile of silver and zinc discs separated by brine-soaked paper, was the first device to generate a continuous electric current. 

The very first batteries were called Voltaic Piles, after Volta, who invented them. They consisted of alternate discs of copper and zinc, separated by cardboard soaked in salt solution (Figure 3.4.1). 

Alessandro Volta, Italian physicist, discovered why the frog s leg twitched. He built the first battery (voltaic pile) of stacked Ag-Zn plates separated by paper or cloth soaked in saltwater. 

At the end of April, 1800, Sir Joseph Banks showed the first part of Volta s letter to Carlisle, who by 30 April had constructed a pile from 17 silver half-crowns, a like number of pieces of zinc, and pasteboard discs soaked in salt water, arranged in the order silver, zinc, card, silver. . . card, silver, zinc. A gold-leaf condensing electroscope showed that the silver end was negative and the zinc end positive (see p. 14). To ensure better contact, Carlisle put a drop of water on the upper plate and noticed evolution of gas, which Nicholson thought smelt of hydrogen. Nicholson proposed an experiment which they made on 2 May. A joint paper was published by Nicholson in July. ... 

Davy s opinion was, that contact like that of Volta excited the current or was the cause of it, but that chemical changes supplied the current. For myself I am at present of the opinion which De la Rive holds, and do not think that, in the voltaic pile, mere contact does anything in the excitation of the current, except as it is preparatory to, and ends in, complete chemical action. ... 

The first battery was a pile of discs alternating between silver and zinc interleafed with a separator soaked in an electrolyte. Soon Volta had improved the system with a multicell battery called couronne de tasses, whereby it was possible to draw electric current from that multicell battery at a controlled rate (. After Volta s discovery in 1800, Nicholson and Carlisle in the same year (1800) decomposed water into hydrogen and oxygen by an electric current, and Cruickshank also in 1800 deposited metals from solutions. In 1803, Hisinger and Berzelius showed that when solutions are decomposed by electric current, acids, oxygen and chlorine are deposited at the positive pole, and alkalis, metals and hydrogen at the negative pole. All this within three years of Volta s discovery. 

The first battery was invented by Alessandro Volta about 1800. He assembled a pile consisting of pairs of zinc and silver disks separated by paper disks soaked in salt water. With a tall pile, he could detect a weak electric shock when he touched the two ends of the pile. Later Volta showed that any two different metals could be used to make such a voltaic pile (Figure 20.1). 

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