You’re probably holding a battery right now. It might be the lithium-ion slab tucked inside your smartphone or the coin-cell powering your watch. We take them for granted. But the question of who was the inventor of the battery isn’t as straightforward as a single name on a patent. While most textbooks point directly to Alessandro Volta in 1800, the reality is a bit messier, full of accidental discoveries, public feuds, and a very confused frog.
It started with a twitch.
The Frog Leg Incident
In the late 1700s, an Italian physician named Luigi Galvani was messing around with dissected frog legs in his lab. He noticed something weird. When he touched the frog’s nerve with a scalpel during a static electricity spark, the leg kicked. It looked alive. Galvani was convinced he’d discovered "animal electricity." He thought the life force itself was stored in the tissues of living creatures.
His friend, Alessandro Volta, wasn't buying it.
Volta was a physicist, and he had a hunch that the frog was just acting as a conductor. He suspected the electricity came from the two different metals Galvani was using—usually iron and brass. This sparked one of the greatest scientific rivalries in history. Volta spent years trying to prove that you didn't need a dead frog to make a spark. You just needed the right materials.
He was right.
By 1800, Volta had built the "Voltaic Pile." This was the first device that could provide a steady, continuous flow of electricity. Before this, we only had Leyden jars, which basically just dumped all their stored static energy at once in a single, painful zap. Volta’s invention changed everything because it meant scientists could finally study a constant current.
How the first battery actually worked
The Pile was pretty primitive. Volta stacked alternating discs of zinc and copper. Between each pair of metal discs, he placed a piece of cardboard soaked in saltwater (brine).
It worked because of a chemical reaction. The salt water acted as an electrolyte. When you connected a wire to the top and bottom, electrons flowed. It was bulky. It leaked. It was honestly a bit of a mess. But it was the first real battery.
The Problem with the Pile
Despite its brilliance, the Voltaic Pile had some massive flaws. First, it was dangerous. The weight of the metal discs would squeeze the brine out of the cardboard at the bottom of the stack, causing short circuits. Also, it didn't last long. Hydrogen bubbles would form on the copper plates, which basically "choked" the battery and stopped the flow of power.
We call this polarization. It’s why those early scientists were constantly taking their batteries apart and cleaning them.
John Frederic Daniell and the fix
If Volta invented the battery, John Frederic Daniell made it actually useful. In 1836, he came up with the Daniell Cell. He used two different electrolytes: copper sulfate and sulfuric acid. This setup prevented the hydrogen bubbles from forming.
This was the battery that powered the telegraph.
Think about that. The entire first era of global communication—the "Victorian Internet"—was running on Daniell’s tech. If you’ve ever seen those old glass jars in an antique shop with copper coils inside, you’re looking at the evolution of the battery. We moved from a stack of wet coins to a sophisticated chemical system.
What about the Baghdad Battery?
We can't talk about who was the inventor of the battery without addressing the elephant in the room: the Baghdad Battery.
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In the 1930s, a German archaeologist named Wilhelm König found some clay jars near Baghdad. Inside were copper cylinders and iron rods. Some people claim these are 2,000-year-old batteries used for electroplating jewelry.
It's a cool story.
But most modern scientists are skeptical. There were no wires found. No remains of acidic liquids like lemon juice or vinegar that would've been needed as an electrolyte. While Discovery Channel's MythBusters proved you could generate a small voltage with a replica, there’s zero evidence the Parthians actually used them that way. They were likely just storage jars for scrolls.
The jump to the dry cell
For a long time, batteries were "wet." They were literal jars of acid. If you tipped one over, you were having a very bad day.
That changed in the 1880s. Carl Gassner, a German scientist, figured out how to make a "dry" cell. He used a paste instead of a liquid. This made batteries portable. Suddenly, you could have a flashlight that didn't spill acid on your shoes.
This leads us to the names we recognize today.
- Columbia: The first mass-produced dry cell battery (1896).
- Ever Ready: Which later became Eveready and Energizer.
- Thomas Edison: Who tried (and mostly failed) to make an electric car battery in the early 1900s using nickel-iron.
Edison’s nickel-iron battery was actually incredibly durable. Some of them still work today! But they were expensive and slow to charge, so the lead-acid battery (the kind still in your gas car today) won the market.
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Lithium-Ion: The Modern Revolution
We skipped a few steps, but the biggest leap since Volta happened in the 1970s and 80s.
During the oil crisis, Exxon researcher M. Stanley Whittingham started looking for ways to store energy for electric vehicles. He used lithium because it’s incredibly light and wants to give up its electrons very easily. But his early versions were literal fire hazards.
John Goodenough and Akira Yoshino later refined the chemistry, making it stable and rechargeable. These three shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2019.
Your phone, your laptop, and that Tesla driving down the street all exist because of these three guys. They solved the problem of energy density. We can now pack a massive amount of power into a tiny, lightweight space.
Why it matters who did it first
Understanding who was the inventor of the battery helps us see that technology is never a "Eureka!" moment in a vacuum. It’s a relay race.
- Galvani noticed the twitch.
- Volta realized it was the metal, not the frog.
- Daniell made it steady.
- Gassner made it portable.
- Goodenough made it powerful.
Every time you plug in your phone, you’re using 250 years of trial and error.
Actionable insights for the curious
If you want to dive deeper into how batteries shape our world today, here is what you should actually do:
- Check your home storage: If you have old alkaline batteries (AA, AAA) leaking white crusty stuff, that’s potassium carbonate. Don’t touch it with bare hands; it’s a mild caustic. Clean it up with vinegar or lemon juice to neutralize the base.
- Maximize your phone's lifespan: Lithium-ion batteries hate heat and "extreme" states. Try to keep your phone between 20% and 80% charge. Leaving it at 100% on a hot charger all night is the fastest way to degrade the chemistry Goodenough worked so hard to perfect.
- Look into Solid-State: The "next" inventor of the battery is likely working on solid-state tech. These replace the liquid electrolyte with a solid ceramic or polymer. They charge faster and don't catch fire. Companies like QuantumScape are currently leading this charge.
- Visit a museum: If you’re ever in Milan, the Museo Nazionale Scienza e Tecnologia has actual relics from Volta’s lab. Seeing the original Pile in person makes you realize how lucky we are to not be lugging around stacks of brine-soaked cardboard.
The battery isn't a finished invention. It’s still evolving. From frog legs to solid-state crystals, the journey is honestly just getting started.