Inventions & Discoveries · Science and discovery

Voltaic pile

1800 · 19th century

The voltaic pile is a stack of paired metal discs separated by brine-soaked cloth or cardboard, the first electrical battery that could continuously provide an electric current; it was invented by the Italian chemist Alessandro Volta, who published his experiments in 1799 and described the device to the Royal Society in London on 20 March 1800. It soon enabled the electrolysis of water, in 1800, and Humphry Davy's isolation of sodium and potassium in 1807. Batteries related to Volta's powered the 19th-century electrical industry until the dynamo arrived in the 1870s.

Voltaic pile
Image: Rama · CC BY-SA 3.0 fr · Wikimedia Commons

On the inventions tree

First known
1800
Where
Italy
Credited to
Alessandro Volta
Led toElectric light1802Electrical telegraph1816Electromagnetic induction1831Solar cell1839

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See also

Cite this entry
APA
The Epoch Institute. (2026). Voltaic pile. In The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/voltaic-pile
MLA
“Voltaic pile.” The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia, The Epoch Institute, 2026, https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/voltaic-pile. Accessed .
Chicago
The Epoch Institute. “Voltaic pile.” The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. 2026. https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/voltaic-pile.
Harvard
The Epoch Institute (2026) ‘Voltaic pile’, The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. Available at: https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/voltaic-pile (Accessed: ).

Last reviewed October 2026Random entry ↻