The invention of Volta’s Pile and its diffusion in Europe at war in the year 1800

Abstract

Abstract Alessandro Volta built his pile in the winter of 1799 in his country house with no lab and no technical staff because, due to the war against Napoleon, the Austrians had closed the University of Pavia and fired the professors. Volta sent the article on the pile to the Royal Society in March 1800, and through the long process of publication in the journal Philosophical Transactions (September 1800), the news spread through the London scientific community. The physician Anthony Carlisle and the chemist and editor William Nicholson were the first to build a battery and used it to decompose water. The great news that electricity could be generated by a simple and easily constructed device was also printed in the daily newspapers, which helped to spread the word throughout Europe and inspired scientists and practitioners to build their own pile and carry out the electrical decomposition of various electrolytes, thus creating the basis for the new discipline of electrochemistry.