History Of The Battery
The story of the battery begins in 1800 when it was invented by Italian physicist Count Alessandro Volta. The first battery was a pile of copper zinc discs. These were layered in between with cardboard disks that had coating of salt or acidic solution. |
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Volta’s battery served only experimental purposes. In the year 1836, an English chemist, John F. Daniell worked on the first design of the battery and sought a way to reduce its corrosion. Daniell’s model was used in telegraph networking. 1859 saw the invention of the rechargeable battery. This was a lead-acid cell invented by Gaston Plante. It was a very heavy battery but could power multiple circuits due to its low internal resistance. In 1868, George Leclanche, a French chemist designed a ‘wet’ cell. German scientist, Dr Carl Gassner made the first ‘dry’ cell in 1888. This cell is like the carbon zinc batteries in use nowadays.
Commercial utilization of cells began in 1896. National Carbon Company manufactured Colombia, a dry cell and sold it in the markets. This company was later renamed Eveready. Today it is known as Energizer. Conrad Huber, who was the founder of this company, gave the world an electric hand torch that used the dry cells for running. The nickel-cadmium battery came out in 1899. It was the first alkaline battery. These were expensive but were an improvement over the lead-acid ones. Nickel-iron batteries were also experimented upon. However, they were found to be inferior in quality to the nickel-cadmium batteries. Hence they were abandoned altogether.
By 1955, zinc carbon batteries were enjoying immense popularity. But they had a drawback- low battery life. Eveready asked their employee, Lewis Urry, to make changes in the composition of lead-acid and make it last longer. Urry instead made changes in the chemical composition of alkaline batteries. These lasted longer and were no more expensive. In 1970s and 1990s lithium and lithium-ion batteries became popular. Today, mobile phone technology and palm computers make use of it because of its property to mould into any shape and size.
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Life has become impossible without the use of batteries. They are in all major electric appliances and products that we have today. A battery works on the mechanism of electrochemical changes. This involves change of chemical energy into electrical energy. 
