All battery cells were single use devices, until Frenchman Gaston Planté invented the first rechargeable lead acid battery in 1859. All previous applications were fully spent after they consumed all their chemicals as a consequence. Although the operator could still add a new batch of chemicals if they wished. But Gaston Planté had a workaround.
The Principles of Lead Acid Batteries Unchanged Ever Since
A lead acid battery in basic terms comprises a lead anode, and a lead dioxide cathode resting in sulfuric acid. Both these electrodes react to the acid by producing lead sulfate. However, only the lead anode releases electrons while this is happening. Whereas only the lead dioxide cathode consumes them producing electric current.
Moreover, this chemical reaction is reversible by introducing electric current in the opposite direction. This supported Émilie du Châtelet’s theory of the conservation of energy she proposed a century earlier. This held we can can neither create nor destroy energy. Rather, we can only see it transform or transfer from one form to another.
Gaston Planté’s First Rechargeable Lead Acid Battery
Planté’s original lead acid battery looked remarkably like the cylindrical cells Dancer and Callaud made. However, he did not adopt Volta’s pattern of stacked discs. Instead, he rolled two lead sheets into a spiral after he inserted rubber strips between them.
The design was successful and powered electric lights of train carriages when paused at Paris stations. However, as we might have expected the lead was too heavy to make it a portable device. None the less, he did present a nine-cell version to the French Academy of Sciences in 1860.
One good idea always seems to lead to another. We’ll explain how Camille Alphonse Faure adapted the first rechargeable lead acid battery, for industrial scale manufacture in our next battery post.
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