ALLESSANDRO VOLTA 169 



discovered the pile; he afterwards made no further contribu- 

 tion to science. He thenceforward devoted himself mainly 

 to his family; indeed, in the year 1804 he also wished to lay 

 down his professorship in Pavia, but this was refused by 

 Napoleon with the words: 'I cannot agree to Volta's resigna- 

 tion. If his activities as professor are too great a burden, 

 they must be limited. He may give even only one lecture 

 a year, but the University of Pavia would be wounded to 

 the heart if I were to allow so famous a name to be struck off 

 the rolls of its members; furthermore, a good general must 

 die upon the field of honour,' He thus remained for a con- 

 siderable time suitably employed; only in the last eight years 

 of his life did he live in retirement, in his native town of 

 Como, where he died at the age of eighty-two. It is not sur- 

 prising that Volta did not himself make any further use of his 

 pile, that completely new means of obtaining an ample flow 

 of electricity, in order to investigate the still unknown and 

 special effects of such a flow; the chemical effects, the heat 

 effects, and the magnetic effects, which however are much 

 less obvious. Experimenting with the pile and the ring of 

 cups was taken up on so many sides and with such haste im- 

 mediately after Volta's announcement, that the discovery of 

 such effects at once occurred in all sorts of places and in a 

 manner which for the moment excluded serious investigation. 

 It was also ridiculously easy to construct the new appliance: 

 a few bits of metal and rag or cups and some salt solution 

 were sufficient. It was a finished gun, loaded with 

 powder and shot, already invented, and easy to fire. It 

 is therefore not worth while to collect the names of those 

 who were the first to publish this or that observation on 

 the effects of the current; but we must consider the work of 

 Davy, Berzelius, Oersted, Faraday, Joule, in chronological 

 order, which work, in the course of the next seven to forty 

 years resulted in the thorough elucidation of the effects of the 

 electric current. It is noteworthy that the mass of new 



