Google celebrates the 270th birthday of Alessandro Volta, the Italian scientist who invented the battery, one of the most ubiquitous and useful inventions of all time, with a Google Doodle.
Born Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta in Como, Italy on Feb. 18, 1745, Volta was a physics professor at the Royal School of Como during the ripe age of discovery that followed Isaac Newton's time.
Prior to inventing the first battery, Volta already had a couple of noteworthy accomplishments under his belt. The university professor had perfected the electrophorus, a device used to generate static electricity, and had discovered and isolated methane gas. He also beat MacGyver to creating a homemade gun filled with methane gas and lit with the electrophorus.
However, the turning point of his career was in 1780, just a year after Volta was appointed chair of the physics department at the University of Pavia. One of his friends and colleagues, the anatomy professor Luigi Galvani, was dissecting frogs when he and Volta noticed the dead frog's legs twitching. Galvani's theory was that animals' bodies have their own electricity-a theory that would inspire Mary Shelley to write Frankenstein decades later-but Volta believed the frog was a conductor and the electricity was caused by two different metals touching the frog's body.
Using his theory, Volta set off to make what is now known as the voltaic pile, a stack of alternating copper and zinc discs that were separated by cloth and cardboard soaked in seawater. He found out that when two metal wires were placed at both ends of the pile, electricity was produced, thus the first battery was made, which sparked off a series of innovations in other fields just weeks after Volta's battery was invented. These include the better understanding of electrolysis and electric arcs.
Mark Holmes, the Google artist who created the Volta Doodle, says he didn't want to settle for a portrait of Volta, especially since not a lot of people know what he looked like. Instead, he wanted to go for something that represented his pioneering contribution to electricity.
"I settled on a simpler layout featuring the battery dead center where it would simply light up the letters in Google. One key idea I wanted to communicate was how the voltage of the battery increased as the stack grew," says Holmes. "Having a basic design, I now needed to add more antiquated texture and detail to make it feel as though it could have been the first advertisement for the world's first battery."
After having demonstrated his invention for Napoleon Bonaparte in 1801, the French leader declared Volta a Count and named him senator for the Kingdom of Lombardy.
