{"version": "1.0", "type": "rich", "title": "Alessandro Volta's Electric Eels", "author_name": "kontextmaschine", "author_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "provider_name": "kontextmaschine", "provider_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "url": "https://kontextmaschine.com/post/715525052480798720/", "html": "

literallymechanical:

Alessandro Volta’s Electric Eels

Okay so, it turns out that your cell phone battery is a basically a homunculus of an electric fish.\u00a0

These are the same thing. Let me explain.

@fishteriously, a paleoichthyologist, told me that Alessandro Volta invented the electric battery after studying electric eels and rays.\u00a0 This sounded like a fun science factoid!\u00a0 I wanted to know more!\u00a0 I saw the claim repeated on any number of pop science articles from the last century or so, but none that quoted from primary sources.

The voltaic pile is one of the most important inventions, ever, of all time.\u00a0 Before Volta, electricity could be stored in Leyden jar capacitors, which would discharge in a single, brief burst. Volta’s pile was the first method of producing a continuous electric current, which launched the modern era of electricity as we know it. His explanation for how it worked was incorrect, but it was still a massive breakthrough.

Batteries use the same principle to this day, just with different materials (e.g. cobalt oxide, graphite, and lithium salts rather than silver, zinc, and brine).

But is it a fish?

This is Volta’s first schematic of a battery, or “voltaic pile” \u2013 at the time, “battery” referred to a bunch of Leyden jars linked in series, the term wouldn’t come to refer to piles until later. “Z” and “A” stand for zinc and silver (“argentum”), with brine-soaked paper disks between. It does look a bit like an eel?

But is it a fish?

Surely, if Volta modeled the pile after electric fishes, I\u2019d be able to find a citation!\u00a0 Wikipedia is usually a good place to start when hunting primary sources, but no luck.\u00a0 No mention of fish at all.\u00a0 I trust fishteriously more than wikipedia, however, so I went digging.\u00a0 Looks like Volta first reported his discovery in a Letter to the Royal Society in 1800.

Found the letter!

Aw beans, it\u2019s in French.\u00a0 I haven\u2019t studied French since high school.

BUT WAIT. WHAT WAS THAT.

Okay so now I NEEDED to read the letter in English. I found an English-language summary published by the Royal Society, but it looks like the only English translation of the full letter was in the appendix an out-of-print book called \u201cAlessandro Volta and the Electric Battery.\u201d

So I bought a used copy. Let’s see what Volta has to say about this:

“To this apparatus … I have constructed it, in its form to the natural electric organ of the torpedo or electric eel, &c, than to the Leyden flask and electric batteries [battery = linked Leyden flasks], I would wish to give the name of artificial electric organ.”

Yes! The voltaic pile was explicitly modeled after electric fishes \u2013 torpedo rays and electric eels.\u00a0 Fishteriously was 100% correct. Volta never even calls it a “pile,” it is always “artificial electric organ.” A significant portion of the letter is devoted to electric eels and torpedo rays, in fact.

But also, the rest of the letter is bonkers.

He wrote pages on painful experiments with the artificial electric organ \u2013 touching it, poking it into his eyes and ears, making other people touch it, generally just shocking the ever loving hell out of himself over and over. He routinely shocks himself so hard that he has to take breaks. And of course, he licks it.

But that’s not the best part:

He says that the artificial electric organ can be turned sideways and submerged in liquid…

“…by which means these cylinders would have a pretty good resemblance to the electric eel … they might be joined together by pliable metallic wires or screw springs, and then covered with a skin terminated by a head and tail properly formed, &c.”

There you have it. One of the most important scientific discoveries of all time, and it includes a crafts project for building an authentic electric eel puppet.

In summary, next time you charge your phone, take a moment to thank the soul of the electric fish inside of it.

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