When was the battery
invented?
One of the most important
discoveries in the last 400 years has been electricity. You may ask,
"Has electricity been around that long?" The answer is "yes", and
perhaps much longer. Surprisingly, electricity only became useful to
humanity in the late 1800s.
The earliest known methods
of generating electricity were by creating a static charge. Alessandro
Volta (1745-1827) invented the so-called "electric pistol" by which an
electrical wire was placed in a jar filled with methane gas. By sending
an electrical spark through the wire, the jar would explode.
Volta then thought of using
this invention to provide long distance communications, albeit only one
Boolean bit. An iron wire supported by wooden poles was to be strung
from Como to Milan in Italy. At the receiving end, the wire would
terminate in a jar filled with methane gas. On command, an electrical
spark is sent by wire that would cause a detonation to signal a coded
event. This communications link was never built.
The next stage of
generating electricity was through electrolysis. Volta discovered in
1800 that a continuous flow of electrical force was possible when using
certain fluids as conductors to promote a chemical reaction between
metals. Volta discovered further that the voltage would increase when
voltaic cells were stacked. This led to the invention of the battery.
From the availability of a battery, experiments were no longer limited
to a brief display of sparks that lasted a fraction of a second. A
seemingly endless stream of electric current was now available.
In the early 1800, France
was approaching the height of scientific advancements and new ideas were
welcomed with open arms to support the political agenda. By invitation,
Volta addressed the Institute of France in a series of lectures in which
Napoleon Bonaparte was present. Napoleon himself helped with the
experiments, drawing sparks from the battery, melting a steel wire,
discharging an electric pistol and decomposing water into its elements.
Figure 1: Volta's
experimentations at the French National Institute in November of 1800 in
which Napoleon Bonaparte was present.

In 1802, Dr. William
Cruickshank designed the first electric battery capable of mass
production. Cruickshank arranged square sheets of copper soldered at
their ends, intermixed with sheets of zinc of equal size. These sheets
were placed into a long rectangular wooden box that was sealed with
cement. Grooves in the box held the metal plates in position. The box
was filled with an electrolyte of brine, or watered down acid.
New discoveries were made
when Sir Humphry Davy installed the largest and most powerful electric
battery in the vaults of the Royal Institution of London. He connected
the battery to charcoal electrodes and produced the first electric
light. Witnesses reported that his voltaic arc lamp produced "the most
brilliant ascending arch of light ever seen."
All batteries at this time
were primary cells, meaning that they could not be recharged. In 1859,
the French physicist Gaston Plant?invented the first rechargeable
battery. This secondary battery was based on lead acid, a chemistry that
is still used today.
History of Battery Development: |
1600 |
Gilbert (England) |
Establishment of
electrochemistry study |
1791 |
Galvani (Italy) |
Discovery of
'animal electricity' |
1800 |
Volta
(Italy) |
Invention of the
voltaic cell |
1802 |
Cruickshank (England) |
First electric
battery capable of mass production |
1820 |
Ampère
(France) |
Electricity
through magnetism |
1833 |
Faraday (England) |
Announcement of
Faraday's Law |
1836 |
Daniell (England) |
Invention of the
Daniell cell |
1859 |
Plant?
(France) |
Invention of the
lead acid battery |
1868 |
Leclanch?
(France) |
Invention of the
Leclanch?cell |
1888 |
Gassner (USA) |
Completion of the
dry cell |
1899 |
Jungner (Sweden) |
Invention of the
nickel-cadmium battery |
1901 |
Edison
(USA) |
Invention of the
nickel-iron battery |
1932 |
Shlecht & Ackermann (Germany) |
Invention of the
sintered pole plate |
1947 |
Neumann (France) |
Successfully
sealing the nickel-cadmium battery |
Mid
1960 |
Union
Carbide (USA) |
Development of
primary alkaline battery |
Mid
1970 |
|
Development of
valve regulated lead acid battery |
1990 |
|
Commercialization
nickel-metal hydride battery |
1992 |
Kordesch (Canada) |
Commercialization
reusable alkaline battery |
1999 |
|
Commercialization
lithium-ion polymer |
2002 |
|
Limited production
of proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell |
Figure 2: History of battery development.
The battery may be much older. It is believed that the Parthians who
ruled Baghdad (ca. 250 BC) used batteries to electroplate silver. The
Egyptians are said to have electroplated antimony onto copper over 4300
years ago.
The third, and most
significant, method of generating electricity was discovered relatively
late - electricity through magnetism. In 1820, Andr?Marie Ampère
(1775-1836) had noticed that wires carrying an electric current were at
times attracted to one another, while at other times repelled. In 1831,
Michael Faraday (1791-1867) demonstrated how a copper disc was able to
provide a constant flow of electricity when revolved in a strong
magnetic field. Faraday and his research team succeeded in generating an
endless electrical force as long as the movement between a coil and
magnet continued.
In 1899, Waldmar Jungner
from Sweden invented the nickel-cadmium battery. In 1947, Neumann
succeeded in completely sealing the cell. These advances led to the
modern sealed nickel-cadmium battery in use today.
Research of the
nickel-metal-hydride system started in the 1970s but the metal hydride
alloys were unstable in the cell environment. New hydride alloys were
developed in the 1980s that improved the stability. nickel-metal-hydride
became commercially available in the 1990s.
The first primary lithium
batteries appeared in early 1970s. Attempts to develop rechargeable
lithium batteries followed in the 1980s but failed due to safety
problems. Because of inherent instability of lithium metal, especially
during charging, research shifted to a non-metallic lithium battery
using lithium ions. Although lower in energy density than lithium metal,
lithium? ion is safe, provided certain precautions are met when charging
and discharging. In 1991, the Sony Corporation commercialized the first
lithium-ion battery.
As awkward and unreliable
the early batteries may have been, our descendants may one day look at
today's technology in a similar way to how we view our predecessors'
clumsy experiments of 200 years ago. |