Alessandro Volta

Count Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Gerolamo Umberto Volta (18 February 1745 – 5 March 1827) was an Italian physicist known especially for the invention of the battery in the 1800s. Volta was born in Como, Italy on 18 February 1745. In 1774, he became a physics professor at the Royal School in Como. A year later, he improved and popularized the electrophorus, a device that produced a static electric charge. His promotion of it was so extensive that he is often credited with its invention, even though a machine operating in the same principle was described in 1762 by Swedish professor Johan Wilcke. In the years between 1776-78, Volta studied the chemistry of gases. He discovered methane after reading a paper by Benjamin Franklin...