Defective Computing

Voltaic Pile, the first battery.

A breakthrough that Volta announced in 1800—the Voltaic pile, a stack of alternating zinc and copper disks, separated by cloth or cardboard soaked in salt water. That was the first electrical battery, a device to produce a steady flow of current. Within a year, Humphry Davy of the Royal Institution in London attached two carbon electrodes to a massive battery and obtained an intense white glow, thus discovering the carbon arc, the earliest form of artificial electrical lighting.

posted by Hannah Drayson @ 11:52 AM