We wrote about natural energy systems in fish and people in our previous article. By the late 1700s, scientists knew that electricity existed, but nobody knew how to produce it. Then two Italian scientists changed history, when they built the first human battery made with their own hands.
The First Human Battery Began With Two Frog Legs
Luigi Galvani was a doctor before science existed as we know it. He was researching animal electricity in yj late 1700s when he noticed something remarkable. If two different metals touched the nerves on two dissected frog legs, the legs twitched as though they were alive. Galvani believed he had discovered animal electricity flowing through the frog’s body.
But Was This Animal Electricity Or The Birth of Batteries?
But Volta was not convinced this was animal electricity. A theory is just an idea without a working example. To prove his idea, Volta stacked alternating discs of copper and zinc in 1899, and separated each pair with cloth soaked in salty water.
This ‘pile’ produced a steady flow of electricity without using any animal tissue. Excited scientists began calling his invention the ‘Voltaic Pile’. It was simple, but revolutionary. For the first time, scientists had a reliable source of electricity they could use whenever they wished.
