You’re probably holding a battery right now. It’s tucked inside your phone, keeping those pixels firing, or maybe it’s powering the laptop on your desk. We take them for granted until the "low battery" warning hits 1% and we scramble for a cable. But if you ask who invented the battery, the answer isn't a single name on a patent. It’s a centuries-long feud involving dead frogs, accidental sparks, and a massive ego trip between two Italian scientists who honestly couldn't stand being wrong.
Most textbooks point directly to Alessandro Volta in 1800. He’s the guy who gave us the "Volt," after all. But history is rarely that clean. If you dig into the dirt in Iraq or look at the strange experiments of the 1700s, you’ll find that the "invention" of the battery was more of a slow-motion discovery than a sudden "Eureka!" moment.
The Frog Legs That Started a War
In the late 1700s, Luigi Galvani was the man. He was a physician and physicist in Bologna, and he was obsessed with "animal electricity." One day, while dissecting a frog, his steel scalpel touched a brass hook holding the frog's leg. The leg kicked. It twitched like it was alive. Galvani freaked out, in a scientific way. He believed there was a vital life force—an "animal electricity"—flowing through the tissues of living things.
He thought the frog was the source. He was wrong, but his mistake is why we have the word "galvanized" today.
Enter Alessandro Volta. At first, Volta thought Galvani was a genius. Then, he got skeptical. Volta was a bit of a grump when it came to messy biological theories. He started poking around and realized the frog wasn't the source of the power. The frog was just acting as a conductor. The real magic happened because two different metals—the steel scalpel and the brass hook—were touching a moist substance (the frog).
This sparked one of the biggest scientific beefs in history. Volta set out to prove Galvani wrong by removing the "animal" part entirely. He wanted to show that electricity could be created using nothing but inorganic materials. This spite-driven mission is what actually led to the first real battery.
The Pile That Changed Everything
By 1800, Volta had built the Voltaic Pile. It was a literal stack. He took discs of copper and zinc and sandwiched pieces of cardboard soaked in saltwater (brine) between them.
🔗 Read more: Audífonos traductores de idiomas: lo que nadie te dice sobre la barrera del tiempo real
It worked.
The brine acted as an electrolyte, and the chemical reaction between the two metals created a steady flow of current. Unlike earlier machines that just created a big, scary spark (like a Leyden jar), Volta’s pile provided a continuous, reliable stream of electricity. He wrote a letter to the Royal Society of London describing his invention. He called it an "artificial electric organ," modeled after the anatomy of an electric eel. He was still thinking about biology, even while trying to disprove Galvani.
But the Voltaic Pile had issues. It was heavy. It leaked. The brine would dry out, and the whole thing would stop working after an hour or two. It wasn't something you could put in a pocket. It was a lab toy, but it was the first time humans had tamed electricity into a portable, usable form.
Was there a battery 2,000 years ago?
Here is where things get weird. In 1936, workers near Baghdad found a clay jar containing a copper cylinder and an iron rod. It looks suspiciously like a battery. This "Baghdad Battery" dates back to the Parthian or Sassanid periods (roughly 250 BCE to 225 CE).
Some researchers, like Wilhelm König, suggested these were used for electroplating gold onto silver. If you fill that jar with grape juice or vinegar, it actually produces a small voltage.
Is it a battery? Maybe.
💡 You might also like: Elon Musk Flight Tracker: Why You Can’t Find His Jet Anymore
Most archaeologists are skeptical. There are no wires found near them. No traces of actual electrical use. It's more likely they were storage jars for scrolls. But the mystery persists because the physics works. If the ancient Parthians did invent the battery, the knowledge was lost to time, leaving Volta to "reinvent" it nearly two millennia later.
Refining the Mess: Daniell, Grove, and Planté
Volta’s pile was a proof of concept, but it was a bit of a disaster for practical use. The history of who invented the battery has to include John Frederic Daniell. In 1836, he invented the Daniell Cell. He used a porous pot and two different electrolytes to stop the corrosion issues that plagued Volta's design. This was the first battery that could actually power telegraphs.
Imagine trying to run the internet on something that leaked acid every twenty minutes. That’s what the early 1800s were like.
Then came William Robert Grove in 1839. He made a battery that was way more powerful, but it had a nasty habit of emitting poisonous nitrogen dioxide fumes. You’d get a great charge, but you might die in the process. Not a great trade-off.
The real game-changer happened in 1859. Gaston Planté, a French physicist, figured out how to make a battery that you didn't have to throw away. He invented the lead-acid battery. This was the first rechargeable battery. Even today, over 160 years later, we still use a version of Planté’s lead-acid design to start our gas-powered cars. It’s heavy, it’s full of lead, but it’s incredibly reliable at delivering a huge burst of power.
The Dry Cell: Batteries Become Portable
Up until the late 1880s, batteries were "wet." They were jars of liquid. If you tipped them over, you had a chemical spill and a dead device.
Carl Gassner changed that in 1886. He developed the first "dry cell" battery. He used a zinc container as both the negative terminal and the outer shell, filling it with a paste of ammonium chloride. It didn't spill. It was portable. This led directly to the flashlights and consumer electronics we know today.
Around the same time, a guy named Columbia (the National Carbon Company, which later became Eveready) started mass-producing these. Suddenly, you didn't need to be a scientist with a lab to use electricity. You just needed to go to the store.
The Lithium-Ion Revolution
We can't talk about who invented the battery without mentioning the modern era. The batteries in your iPhone or your Tesla are a world away from Volta’s salty cardboard.
The lithium-ion battery was a team effort.
- Stanley Whittingham started the work in the 1970s using titanium disulfide.
- John Goodenough (the best name in science history) improved it in 1980 by using a cobalt-oxide cathode, which doubled the voltage.
- Akira Yoshino made it safe for consumers in 1985 by removing the volatile pure lithium metal.
These three won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2019. Their invention is why you can carry a supercomputer in your pocket without it weighing ten pounds or exploding (usually).
👉 See also: How Do You Make a Movie with Pictures Without It Looking Like a Bad Slideshow
Why This Matters Today
Understanding who invented the battery isn't just a history lesson. It’s about understanding energy density and the limits of chemistry. We are currently hitting a wall with lithium-ion. We need more range for cars and longer life for our phones.
Scientists are now looking at "solid-state" batteries. These replace the liquid electrolyte with solid material, making them safer and faster to charge. We’re also seeing a return to "flow batteries" for storing solar power for entire cities. It’s funny—in some ways, we are going back to the large, stationary "tanks" of electricity that Volta and Daniell worked on, just on a much more massive scale.
Actionable Insights for the Modern Battery User
If you want to respect the legacy of Volta and Goodenough, you should probably stop killing your batteries prematurely. Modern lithium-ion batteries are picky.
- Avoid the 0% and 100% extremes. Lithium-ion batteries hate being totally empty or totally full. Try to keep your phone between 20% and 80% to maximize the lifespan of the chemistry.
- Heat is the enemy. If your phone gets hot while charging, take the case off. Heat causes the internal structures that Goodenough and Yoshino perfected to break down prematurely.
- Fast charging has a cost. It’s convenient, but it generates more heat and stress on the battery cells. Use a slow charger overnight if you aren't in a rush.
- Recycle. Batteries contain materials like cobalt and lithium that are environmentally "expensive" to mine. Most big-box tech stores have bins for old batteries. Don't toss them in the trash; they can leak and cause fires in garbage trucks.
The battery wasn't "invented" in a day. It was built through 200 years of arguments, accidental frog twitches, and chemical leaks. From Volta’s messy pile to the sleek cells in an EV, the journey of the battery is basically the story of how we learned to bottle lightning.
Check your device's battery health settings today. Most modern smartphones have a "Battery Health" section in the settings menu that tells you exactly how much the capacity has degraded. If you're below 80%, it’s usually time for a replacement rather than a new phone. This simple check saves money and reduces the demand for the raw minerals that make these inventions possible.