Alessandro Volta

Hello. My name is Alessandro Volta. I was born in a beautiful town called Como in Italy a long, long time ago, in 1745. Even when I was a little boy, I was super curious. I loved looking at the clouds, the water, and the bugs. I always asked, 'Why?' and 'How does that work?'. My family thought I was a little chatterbox, but I just wanted to understand everything.

One day, I was walking by a swampy pond and saw bubbles coming up from the mud. I collected the air from the bubbles and, with a spark, it made a big POP. It was a new kind of air. Later, I heard about experiments that made a frog's leg twitch with a little 'zap' of electricity. I thought, 'Wow. What is that?'. I did not think the zap came from the frog. I believed I could make my own electricity. So, around the year 1800, I started stacking shiny metal circles, like they were silver and gray pancakes, with wet paper in between. I stacked them high.

When I touched a wire to the top and bottom of my pancake tower, I felt a ZAP. I had made the very first battery. My invention could make a steady flow of electricity. I lived to be 82 years old and was so happy to see how my discovery helped other scientists. Today, my invention is in all your toys, flashlights, and even in cars. The power of electricity is measured in 'volts,' a special word named just for me. So whenever you use a battery, you can think of my electric pancake stack.