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.

• Electricity and the ancients

Humanity’s first encounters with electricity likely came from lightning and, strangely enough, from electric fish. Ancient Egyptian sources mention electric fish called the “Thunderer of the Nile” (possibly the electric catfish, Malapterurus electricus. Roman authors such as Pliny the Elder also knew that shocks from the fish could numb you, and that shocks could travel along certain objects. Also, Roman physician Scribonius Largus reported an early forerunner of electroshock therapy using electric fish.

The first person known to have noticed the effects of static electricity was Thales of Miletus, who lived c. 640-546 BC. He observed the strange effects when he rubbed amber on silk; bits of straw and grass were attracted to the amber. He also attempted to find the force powering the lodestone, a powerful natural magnet. Thales reasoned that only living things could act, and therefore, the amber, the silk and the lodestone must be alive. Thales’s experiments gave us a critical word in the vocabulary of electricity and atomic theory: “elektron,” which means amber in Greek.

Today we know that electricity is the movement of subatomic particles along a current, but it was the Greek philosopher Democritus (ca. 460 BC - ca 370 BC) who laid the foundations for modern atomic theory. He hypothesized that all matter could broken down to units that could not be divided or destroyed. He called these units “atoma.” Although Democritus’s ideas were flawed—for one thing, atoms are not indestructible—they were immensely ahead of their time. It would be two thousand years before great strides were again made in atomic theory.

Did the ancient Mesopotamians invent the battery 2,000 years before the Europeans? Archeologists continue to debate that possibility based on artifacts nicknamed “Baghdad batteries.” In 1936, clay jars with iron rods encased in copper in their mouths were found near Baghdad. There are signs of corrosion on the inside of the jars, leading some to conjecture the presence of an acidic electrolyte. The original archeologist dated the jars to between 200 and 300 BC, but modern archeologists question the methodology of the dig in which the jars were found. If the jars are in fact batteries, what were they used for?

Some conjecture that priests may have shocked themselves or worshippers with the jars as part of a religious ritual. Perhaps the jars were used for medical treatment, as the Romans used electric fish. Another possibility, viewed by least likely by archeologists, is that the batteries were used to electroplate jewelry. The least exciting conjecture is that the jars could have simply been used for storage—they are very similar to jars containing scrolls that were found nearby.

• The Middle Ages

The wet compass—a magnetized needle floating in water—was developed in China around the year 1000. The first mention of the compass in Europe comes from a work by an Englishman named Alexander Neckam in 1180.

In 1269, a French scholar named Petrus Peregrinus of Marincourt wrote a letter that details magnetic laws of polarity and includes a plan to build a dry compass. Because Peregrinus placed emphasis on experimentation rather than thought, he was later celebrated as the first experimental scientist by Roger Bacon, one of the earliest practitioners of the empirical method. But until the development of the scientific method during the Age of Enlightenment, there were few further advances in the nature of electricity.