[Colin] tells us it all started with [Benjamin Franklin]’s battery of capacitors ... [Alessandro Volta] introduces his voltaic pile. Once scientists latched onto the idea of a stable reaction ...

But it was Italian inventor Alessandro Volta (1745–1827) who created the first electric battery after studying these animals. His 1799 voltaic pile consisted of copper and zinc discs separated ...

For example, when referring to Davy's early accounts of his experiments on taking spark discharges from a voltaic pile between electrodes ... lighting so long as a battery of voltaic cells was ...