Evolution of Battery Technology: The First Battery (Part 1)
Batteries have been continuously evolving since the past four centuries. I started this “Evolution of Battery Technology Series” in an attempt to compile the major breakthroughs and a few little-known events that led to the current state of battery technology. Hope you enjoy reading the story!
As to what happened during those four centuries and how things unfolded, keep reading!
The Mysterious Baghdad Battery
The Baghdad Battery was first discovered in Khujut Rabu, a village located in the outskirts of Baghdad, Iraq. The battery was a setup made up of three constituents:
- A ceramic pot
- A copper tube
- An iron rod
Many archaeologists and researchers hypothesize that the artifact was for metallic plating rather than generating electricity. I use the word artifact because it appears to be created during the ancient Parthian (150 BC — 223 AD) or/and Sasanian (224–650 AD) empire of Persia. However, the purpose of developing this artifact is a mystery till date and could be regarded as the ancestor of batteries.
William Gilbert Lights the Torch of Evolution
It is speculated that static electricity is known to have been discovered by Ancient Greeks around 600 BC. However, the phenomena had not become popular until an English Physicist, William Gilbert differentiated between static electricity and magnetism (Lodestone Effect).
He recorded the results of all his experiments in his book — De Magnete [1] in 1600. He was amongst the first to argue that a compass pointed North (earlier it was called as Polaris, meaning the pole star) because Earth is a magnet with its own magnetic fields. In fact, he also stated that Earth’s center was made up of iron.
Furthermore, he also discovered electricity in its raw form from “amber” and is said to have coined the term “electricity” which was prominently known as “amber like properties”. This marked the beginning of a long chain of events that unfold the evolution of battery technology!
As a token of respect for all his contributions, today, he is popularly known as the father of electricity and magnetism.
Benjamin Franklin Carries the Torch Forward
The torch lit by William Gilbert was carried forward by Benjamin Franklin — arguably, the best inventor in American history (Thomas Edison is considered as his rival) and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States.
While his work as a polymath is beyond the scope of this article, his contribution to battery technology in the form of experiments and inventions paved the path for his successors.
One such rather popular experiment conducted by Franklin (and his team) was with Leyden jars (independently invented by Ewald Georg von Kleist and Pieter van Musschenbroek) in 1749. He simplified his work by introducing the terms plus and minus to describe the electrical states, and the terms charging and discharging to observe the effect of “certain activities” (mentioned below) performed on Leyden jars.
The jar was charged by a primitive version of modern day’s static electricity generator (refer Fig 2). Allison Marsh best describes the process in his article Ben Franklin’s Other Great Electrical Discovery: Turkey Tenderization and I quote
A user rotated the glass plate, which built up static electricity as it rubbed against the leather pads. The electricity was then drawn off by conductors (missing on this machine) to the Leyden jar.
The jar was essentially a capacitor that was discharged through a conductor. To obtain a higher magnitude of electric discharge, Franklin connected multiple such jars in a unique arrangement which he called battery.
Interestingly, he borrowed the term “battery” from military’s artillery battery because of its similarity. Both the batteries, involved a group of similar objects working and co-ordinating together for better output.
Fun Fact
The birth of the electrostatic generator deserves a special mention. Otto von Guericke was credited with the invention of (arguably) the first friction based electrostatic generator.
During 1660 and 1665, Guericke built the generator using a large sulphur ball casted within a glass globe mounted on a support (presumably a shaft). He created a charge imbalance by friction like rubbing the sulphur ball with dry hand or a rotating object.
A Pioneer of Battery Technology: Alessandro Volta
Thanks to the growing popularity of Leyden jars and the pioneering works of people like Benjamin Franklin, William Gilbert, Otto von Guericke the world saw an explosion in the experiments conducted on static electricity in 18th century.
Prominent educated people and scientists of the time gathered during literary salons (seminars) to demonstrate experiments on static electricity. In fact, fairs were specifically held in villages to demonstrate such experiments and instill a sense of excitement amongst peasants.
While the foundation was laid by Voltas’s predecessors, the first true manifestation of the term battery that drew the “start line” was marked by his invention in 1800 which he called “voltaic pile”.
As the name suggests, the voltaic pile was a stack of sandwiches where the lower part of each sandwich was a zinc plate, the upper part was a silver plate and the filling was a moisturized disk.
The order of the plates could be reversed with the condition that the same arrangement had to be used throughout the module. A detailed sketch is shown in Fig 3.
Napoleon Bonaparte and Alessandro Volta
The voltaic pile’s popularity spread like wildfire even reaching the ears of Napoleon Bonaparte. During Alessandro’s lecture series at the Institute of France, Napoleon is said to have participated in Alessandro’s experiments. Records state that Napoleon melted a steel wire and discharged an electric pistol.
Advantages and Disadvantages
More importantly, the voltaic pile offered a few notable advantages as compared to the Leyden jar:
- Provided steady-state current
- Pre-charging was not required
- Retained its “charge” and lasted for long duration
- Made up of conductors
In 1789, two Dutch merchants namely, Jan Rudolph Deiman and Adriaan Paets van Troostwijk first demonstrated electrolysis of water. The merchants used an electrostatic generator to produce an electrostatic discharge between two gold electrodes dipped in water. However, generating electric current was still a laborious task and the setup could hardly be called useful.
The invention of voltaic pile made life easy for many such experiments. For instance, improvements in other noteworthy electrochemical inventions like water electrolysis (by W. Nicholson and A. Carlisle) and separation of metals using electrolysis.
Although the pile continued to gain popularity, there were a few glaring issues that had to be fixed for it to work on demand in all types of situations:
- Frequent short-circuits between pairs of serially connected plates
- The internal resistance of the cell increased due to formation of hydrogen gas when the generated current reacted with the electrolyte. This phenomena was called polarization.
Daniell Cell: A Practical Solution
As the pile became increasingly popular, the imperfections were no longer unavoidable. Hence, multiple experiments were performed to improve the efficiency of the pile. An article depicting such experiments was originally published in Scientific American with the title Improvement in the Voltaic Pile in April 1858.
Consequently, John Frederic Daniel, like his contemporaries, also set his sights on improving the pile. On investigating the problems, he envisioned a system that separated the individual components of the cell. After multiple trials, he successfully invented the “Daniell Cell” in 1836.
The original cell was made up of two containers of different sizes and materials. The smaller container was placed into the larger one such that they did not touch each other.
The smaller container was a porous vase filled with diluted sulphuric acid and a cylindrical zinc stem (rod). On the other hand, the larger container was made up of copper and was filled with copper sulphate solution [5].
Actually, the introduction of a porous vase an improvement to a bullhorn (yes, a bull’s horn). However, the porous vase setup is widely considered as the first cell as it was more stable.
Despite ceasing the cell several decades ago, it is still the most popularly mentioned cell in most national and international textbooks for secondary schools and continues to maintain its status.
Conclusion
In summary, if the invention of Voltaic Cell was “the theoretical start line” then Daniell Cell was “the industrial start line” in the long series of events describing the evolution of battery.
Invariably, the invention of Daniell Cell led to variations and improvements like Bird’s Cell, Porous Pot Cell, Gravity Cell and Poggendorff Cell. In fact, Bird’s Cell paved the way for an entirely new discipline called electrometallurgy.
The next part of the “Evolution of Battery Technology Series” will outline some of the variants of the Daniell Cell and how the dream of recharging was turned into realty when Gaston Plante invented the first lead-acid battery.
References
[2] Wikipedia Contributors, “William Gilbert”, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, June, 2020
[4] F. Decker, “Volta and the ‘Pile’ “, Electrochemistry Encyclopedia , Jan, 2005
[6] W. B. Ashworth, “Scientist of the Day — John Frederic Daniell”, Linda Hall Library, March, 2019
