Voltaic Pile

Hello there! My name is the Voltaic Pile. I know, it’s a funny name! I look like a stack of shiny coins playing a sandwich game. I have a secret power. I can make a special, buzzy feeling called electricity. A very clever man named Alessandro Volta made me a long, long time ago, way back in the year 1800. He wanted to understand the tingly, zappy magic that could make things light up and move. He thought and thought, and then, he built me!

Before I was born, Alessandro’s friend, Luigi Galvani, saw something amazing. A frog’s leg wiggled when two different kinds of metal touched it! Luigi thought the frog was making the zap. But Alessandro had a different idea. He thought the zap came from the metals themselves! So, he got to work. He took a shiny circle of silver and a circle of zinc. In between them, he put a piece of cardboard that he dipped in salty water. He stacked them up, over and over again: silver, salty cardboard, zinc. Silver, salty cardboard, zinc. He made a tall tower of circles—and that tower was me!

When Alessandro finished stacking my layers, he attached a little wire to my top and another to my bottom. And guess what? I made a continuous spark! A little river of electricity flowed out of me. I was the very first battery! I showed everyone how to make electricity that could keep going and going. Because of me, you have batteries for your toys, for flashlights when it’s dark, and even for big, quiet cars. I may just be a simple stack of circles, but I started the amazing world of electricity that powers your wonderful world today!