. XVIII 

 ALESSANDRO VOLTA 

 1745-1827 



Alessandro Volta, horn at Como, Italy, February 18, 1745, became 

 teacher of physics at Como in 1774, and five years later accepted a 

 professorship at Pavia. Becoming interested in Galvani's experi- 

 ments with electricity on the muscles of a frog, he applied them in 

 his attempts to confirm his own theory that the frog's muscles were 

 a sensitive electrometer. In doing this he conceived the voltaic pile, 

 which produced the first constant electrical current — a discovery 

 which had immense effects in later studies in electricity. He died 

 at Como, March 5, 1827, 



NEW GALVANIC INSTRUMENT * 



ON THE ELECTRICITY EXCITED BY THE MERE CONTACT OF CONDUCTING 



SUBSTANCES OF DIFFERENT KINDS 



The chief of these results, and which comprehends nearly all the 

 Others, is the construction of an apparatus which resembles in its 

 effects, viz. (such as giving shocks to the arms, &c.,) the Leyden phial, 

 and still better, electric batteries weakly charged ; acting continually, 

 or whose charge, after each explosion, recharges itself again; which 

 in short becomes perpetual, from one infallible charge, from one 

 action or impulse on the electric fluid ; but which besides differs es- 

 sentially from the other, by this continual action which is proper to 

 it, and because that instead of consisting, like the ordinary phials 

 and electric batteries, in one or more isolated plates, or thin layers 

 of those bodies deemed the only electrics, and armed with con- 

 ductors or bodies called non-electrics, this new apparatus is formed 

 only of a number of these last bodies, chosen even among the best 

 conductors, and so the farthest removed, according to the usual 

 opinion, from the electric principle. This astonishing apparatus is 



* From the Transactions of the Royal Society of London. 



135 



