History of inventions. Batteries. History of the creation of the battery Other important dates in the history of battery development

Take a look around. Almost all small-sized electrical devices that surround us in everyday life have a portable power supply in their circuitry - simply put, a battery. Be it a mobile phone, TV remote control, wall or table clock, calculator, etc.

All these devices are inoperative without a battery or accumulator. So let's take a look at the history of the discovery of this little miracle device. The first chemical element was invented at the end of the 18th century by the Italian scientist Luigi Galvani, completely by accident. The scientist conducted research on the reactions of animals to various types of exposure to them.

When he attached two strips of different metals to a frog's leg, he discovered the flow of current between them. Although Galvani did not give a correct explanation of this process, his experience served as the basis for the research of another Italian scientist Alessandro Volta. He revealed that the cause of the current is a chemical reaction between two different metals in a certain environment.

Volta placed two plates in a container with a saline solution: zinc and copper. This device became the world's first autonomous chemical element. Volta subsequently improved his design, creating the famous “ Voltaic pole”(Appendix. Photo).

In 859, the French scientist Gaston Plante created a battery that used lead plates immersed in a weak solution of sulfuric acid. This battery was charged with a direct current source, and then began to generate electricity itself, giving out almost all the electricity spent on charging. Moreover, this could be done many times. This is how the first battery appeared.

2. Questionnaire about batteries in our lives

In order to get an answer to all these questions, I conducted a survey:

I asked parents and high school students to answer the questions in my questionnaire. 32 people were interviewed

Question 1: What guides you when buying batteries?

(Appendix Table 1)

Most respondents pay attention to the manufacturer when purchasing batteries.

Question 2: What devices do you use batteries for?

(Appendix Table 2)

Most people use batteries in remote controls and clocks.

Electric batteries are a very useful thing. If they weren’t there, then the toys would have to be plugged into the outlet and get tangled in the wires; besides, the electric current from the network is not suitable for toys; a special box would also be needed to correct it.

Batteries do not have the same power as the electricity that comes into our homes, but they can be transported from place to place, and can also be used as an emergency source of energy when the network is cut off.

Question 3: What do you do with used batteries?

(Appendix Table 3)

Most people throw away batteries, some use chargers.

Question 4: How can I extend the battery life?

(Appendix Table 4)

Almost half of those surveyed do not know how to extend battery life.

Conclusions from the survey:

1. Electric batteries are a very useful thing. They give toys and other useful things independence and autonomy.

2. Every home has devices that require batteries.

3. When purchasing batteries, the majority of respondents are guided by price and brand.

4. Most people don’t know how to extend the battery life and therefore immediately throw them away.

Battery history.

If you trace the history of batteries, it is obvious that Alessendro Volta was the first to take the step towards their creation, but he did not figure out how to make the galvanic cell he received rechargeable. Another German scientist, Wilhelm Sinsteden, observed the effect of producing direct current by immersing lead plates in sulfuric acid, but did not draw conclusions from this that could be applied in practice.

We owe the creation of the battery to the French. It was the French scientist Gaston Plante who created his prototype in 1859 - a lead-acid battery, which, unlike a galvanic one, could be recharged.

The American inventor of the light bulb, Thomas Edison, became interested in the properties of a rechargeable storage battery. He was the first to come up with the idea of ​​​​using batteries for transport needs and contributed to the start of the production of car batteries. Edison was not only a great scientist, but also a practical thinker. Thanks to him, electricity truly came to serve humanity.

Since then, the essence of the process of storing energy in a lead-acid battery has not changed at all, only the materials used in its production have changed. The old ebonite battery cases have been replaced by modern polypropylene ones. Ebonite is a less impact-resistant material, and polypropylene is much cheaper.

Modern car battery.

A modern car battery is the same lattice porous lead plates (one is lead, the other is lead dioxide), dipped into an electrolyte prepared from a mixture of distilled water and sulfuric acid with many additives that improve its properties. But the latest technologies used in the manufacture of car batteries significantly improve their characteristics. They reduce corrosion, increase the service life of batteries, improve the reception and delivery of electric charge, reduce water loss and shedding of the active mass, and increase the temperature regime by increasing frost resistance. Some additional devices, such as indicators, allow you to monitor the battery charge level.

The most important advantage of modern batteries is an increase in starter current values, which ensures stable engine starting in any temperature conditions, and a longer service life due to reduced self-discharge.

As you probably already guessed, we will talk about such a little thing, of which there are a lot in our everyday life, about the battery. In the modern world, batteries surround us everywhere, be it an e-reader or a watch, a TV remote control or a battery in a mobile phone, we are already very accustomed to their existence and presence that we practically do not notice their existence, which, in fact, is helped by the fact that that they have different sizes.

For us, the battery has become commonplace!

And once upon a time, at the dawn of its appearance, it was a fairly large device and was the only source of electrical energy on the planet available to humanity.

The founder of the battery is rightfully considered the Italian physicist Alessandro Volta (1745 - 1827), who, having studied the numerous works of his compatriot Luigi Galvani (1737-1798), who conducted experiments with “animal electricity”, came to this remarkable discovery.

Having read Galvani’s treatise “on electrical forces in the muscle,” Alessandro Volta noticed that electricity appears exclusively in the presence of two metals. Therefore, he immediately carried out his first experiment, which consisted of putting two coins in his mouth, one on the tongue and the other under, while connecting them with a wire, and felt a salty taste.

This experience prompted him to reflect, the result of which was the continuation of the research he had thus begun, only on a larger scale.

One of these experiments was the installation of more than a hundred metal circles on top of each other, separated by paper and moistened with salt water. The result was not long in coming, Alessandro again, having checked the sensations in his own language, was convinced of the presence of electricity in his device, while noticing that it was constantly present.

After several such experiments, Alessandro Volta made a battery. It consisted of copper and zinc plates connected in series, lowered in pairs into vessels with dilute acid.

True, this device did not immediately receive the name to which we are now so accustomed - battery. Initially, the device was called the “crown of blood vessels,” and at that time it was the largest source of electrical energy.

If we translate it into modern standards, as is now customary, the “crown of vessels” in our time would only be enough to power an ordinary radio receiver.

Subsequently, Alessandro Volta renamed his invention in honor of Luigi Galvani and called it a galvanic cell.

This name, by the way, has survived to this day, even though the device itself has undergone significant changes in design.

The first experiments that showed the possibility of accumulating, i.e. to accumulate electrical energy were produced shortly after the discovery of the phenomena of galvanic electricity by the Italian scientist Volta.

In 1801, the French physicist Gautereau, passing a current through water through platinum electrodes, discovered that after the current through the water was interrupted, it was possible to connect the electrodes together to obtain a short-term electric current.

The scientist Ritter then performed the same experiment, using instead of platinum electrodes electrodes made of gold, silver, copper, etc. and separating them from each other with pieces of cloth soaked in salt solutions, he obtained the first secondary, i.e., capable of releasing the stored in it is electrical energy, element.

The first attempts to create a theory of such an element were made by Volta, Marianini and Bequerel, who argued that the action of the battery depends on the decomposition of salt solutions into acid and alkali by electric current and that these latter then, when combined, give an electric current again.

This theory was shattered in 1926 by the experiments of Deryariv, who was the first to use acidified water in a battery.

Acidified water, when a current passes, obviously decomposes into oxygen and hydrogen, and the element owes its subsequent action to this decomposition. This position was brilliantly proven by Grove by building his famous gas accumulator, consisting of plates immersed in acidified water and surrounded at the top: one with hydrogen and the other with oxygen. However, the battery in this form was very impractical, since storing large quantities of electricity required storing a very large amount of gases, which took up a large volume.

A great practical improvement in the development of batteries was made in 1859 by Gaston Plante, who, as a result of a long series of experiments, came to a type of battery consisting of lead plates with a large surface area, which, when charged with current, were covered with lead oxide, a. releasing oxygen and liquid, they gave off an electric current.

Plante took two strips of sheet lead, laid strips of cloth between them and rolled the strips around a round stick. Then he tied the resulting bundle together with rubber rings and placed it in a vessel with acidified water. When such a battery was repeatedly charged and discharged, an active active layer was formed on the surface of the plates, which participated in the process and gave the element a large capacity. However, the need for a very large number of charges and discharges of the Plante battery to give it some capacity greatly increased the cost of the battery and made it difficult to produce.

The next improvement that brought the battery to its modern form was the use in 1880 by Camille Faure of lattice lead plates, the lattice cells of which were filled with a specially prepared mass, prepared in advance. This process greatly simplified and cheapened the production of batteries, reducing the formation of a battery to a very short process.

Further improvements in the history of lead-acid batteries followed the path of improving Faure's method of filling and forming lattice plates, without making drastic changes to the design of the battery. In parallel with the development of lead batteries, which have a number of major and irremovable disadvantages, such as, for example, high weight per unit of capacity, the impossibility of storing without damage in a discharged state, etc., the development of possibilities for using metals other than lead for the manufacture of batteries was underway.

Edison and Jungner cells are widely used in cases where light weight and easy charging of batteries are required, since they can stand for as long as desired in a discharged state. However, they were unable to displace lead batteries, both due to their high price and due to the low output and low voltage they provide. Thus, iron-nickel batteries have a large place in all portable and mobile installations, while lead batteries have a wide field of application in stationary installations.

Emtsov G. Electric batteries

History textbooks may not be true: humanity may have begun to study electricity much earlier than is generally believed. The existence of the thousand-year-old Baghdad Battery suggests that Volta did not invent the electric battery. Today it is generally accepted that it was the Italian physicist Alessandro Volta who invented the electric battery in 1800. He discovered that when two dissimilar metal probes are placed in a chemical solution, electrons flow between them. This began the work of other scientists on electricity, and this gave a huge impetus to the development of science. But the Baghdad Battery pushes the date back several thousand years.

Components of the Baghdad Battery

People tried to study electricity long before Voltas, about which records were preserved in papyri and wall paintings of Ancient Egypt. However, this is indirect evidence, and few people believed it until in 1938 the German archaeologist Wilhelm Koenig described the so-called Baghdad Jar (also called the Baghdad Battery). This clay vessel with electricity was found in 1936 in the Kujut Rabu area outside Baghdad, when workers were leveling the ground for the railway.

Koenig's merit was that he saw in an oval jug made of bright yellow clay 13 cm high a typical design of batteries, which by that time were widely used. The vessel had everything needed to store energy: a rolled sheet of copper around the perimeter, an iron rod in the center and several pieces of bitumen inside. The latter sealed the upper and lower edges of the copper cylinder. This tight connection suggests that the jug once contained liquid. This hypothesis is confirmed by traces of corrosion on copper. This also gives clues about the type of liquid - vinegar or wine. These natural substances contain acid - a necessary condition for any battery.

Baghdad battery in section

Why batteries if there are no electrical appliances?

Soon, artifacts similar to the Baghdad jar were found near the cities of Seleucia and Ctesiphon. This gave precise knowledge that already several thousand years ago people used electricity. However, why did they need electricity, because they did not have light bulbs, televisions, refrigerators and other electrical appliances?

The exact answer to this question is still unknown, but scientists have some guesses on this matter. For example, Koenig in his articles believed that these power sources were used for galvanizing jewelry. This technological process is used everywhere today: copper plating of wires, gilding of copper and silver jewelry, chrome on steel parts, and the like. Its peculiarity is that under the influence of electric current it is possible to apply a thin and durable coating of one material to another.

This version has the right to life, because it has been tested in practice. Willard Gray, an engineer at the main high-voltage electricity laboratory in the American city of Pittsfield, created an exact copy of an ancient battery based on drawings from Koenig’s article. He filled a clay jug alternately with grape juice and vinegar and obtained a voltage at the metal terminals of about 1.5 V. This is exactly what any standard AA battery gives today.

Design of the Baghdad Bank

Batteries for magic and healing

In addition to the hypothesis about the ancients using batteries for galvanization, there are two more: electrotherapy and magic.

The ancients believed that if an electric current was applied to a sore spot, then it would become numb and stop hurting. There are records of this in the works of ancient Greek and Roman physicians. The Greeks, for example, often used an electric eel for these purposes, which they applied to the inflamed limb and held until the inflamed limb became numb.

Size of the Baghdad Battery compared to a hand

Electricity could also be used to strengthen the religious sphere of citizens’ lives. The priests, for example, collected several Baghdad jars into one powerful battery and attached the leads to a metal statue of the god. Everyone who touched her thought they had received contact with a higher being. Although in fact it was just a weak discharge of current.

The priest further strengthened his faith in his connection with the deity by the fact that he could calmly touch the statue and not receive shocks of electricity. To do this, he wore sandals, which he used to stand on the metal floor under the statue. The shoes served as an insulator and did not allow current to pass through. And ordinary believers most often walked barefoot, which is why this trick worked flawlessly.

Not a battery, but a storage chamber

Theories that the ancients could purposefully use energy in chemical sources do not allow us to say with certainty that this actually happened. The reason for this is the very low power and high weight of such batteries, which makes them useless in practice. For example, an apple can make a regular calculator or a simple wristwatch work. But modern power supplies are much more convenient.

In addition, the fact that the Baghdad bank was actually a battery is refuted by other finds. For example, a find in the same Seleucia contained a papyrus scroll. And the artifact from Ctesiphon had twisted sheets of bronze inside. Therefore, according to some scientists, such vessels were used to store things, and not to generate electricity.

Their version is confirmed by the fact that the bitumen cover was completely sealed and had no terminals for metal contacts for wires. It also did not have holes for filling electrolyte, but such a power source requires frequent replacement.

According to scientists, sacred scrolls made of materials of organic origin - parchment or papyrus - were stored in such vessels. When they decompose, organic acids are released, which explains the presence of traces of corrosion on the copper cylinder inside the clay vessel.

By the way, if the problem of the ancients was to create a source of electricity, today the main task is their disposal with minimal harm to the environment. And MTS helps Ukrainian users with this. The operator has launched a national program with which they will be able to dispose of batteries correctly. You can learn about where to dispose of used batteries.