The beginning of the nineteenth century brings us at last to the question: who invented the battery? The short answer is that in 1799, an Italian named Alessandro Volta, created the first device recognizable as the modern battery.

The long answer is all of the history of electricity that you’ve read up to this point, as well as the work of Luigi Galvani.

To understand how Volta made his discovery, it’s necesssary to understand the state of the electrical theory in the late eighteenth century. The theory had been limited to electrostatics before Benjamin Franklin’s experiments revealed current electricity. In explaining the origin of electricity, scientists followed their national prejudices. British scientists adhered to the single fluid theory advanced by Franklin. The French, additionally influenced by the physics advances of Pierre Simon LaPlace (1749-1827),  adhered to Coulomb’s two-fluid theory. The Italians opposed Coulomb’s theory. But in the late 1700s, the revolutionary experiments of Luigi Galvani (1737-1798), a physician, anatomist and professor at the University of Bologna, would bolster the world’s knowledge of current electricity, creating a platform that Alessandro Volta would build on.
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• From the Scientific Revolution to Volta and Galvani

Scientific thought dating back to Aristotle was heavily focused on reasoning and thought experiments; hence the name “natural philosophy.” The scientific method as we know it today did not exist until thinkers like Immanuel Kant, David Hume, Sir Francis Bacon and Roger Bacon outlined its steps. Natural philosophy advanced to the scientific method known today with the advent of empiricism; the process of observing a problem, hypothesizing an answer and conducting experiments to test the hypothesis finally allowed science to move beyond its medieval stagnation.
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The history of the battery and the history of electricity are inextricably linked. Because of the close link between magneticism and electricity, the history of magneticism gets dragged in as well. Both electricity and magneticism result from the movement of subatomic particles; electricity has the power to create magneticism and vice versa.

It wasn’t one scientist laboring in isolation who perfected the process of “storing electricity” in an electrochemical cell. American readers may think of Ben Franklin and his kite, while will Italians may think of Alessandro Volta, who built the first battery (laying aside the question of Baghdad batteries for the moment). Each scentist contributed, but none could have done it without the foundation laid by other thinkers. As Sir Isaac Newton said, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” That could be the motto for every scientist in history.
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