Page:A history of the theories of aether and electricity. Whittacker E.T. (1910).pdf/92

 Scarcely more than a year after the death of Galvani, the new science suddenly regained the eager attention of philosophers. This renewal of interest was due to the discovery by Volta, in the early spring of 1800, of a means of greatly increasing the intensity of the effects. Hitherto all attempts to magnify the action by enlarging or multiplying the apparatus had ended in failure. If a long chain of different metals was used instead of only two, the convulsions of the frog were no more violent. But Volta now showed that if any number of couples, each consisting of a zinc disk and a copper disk in contact, were taken, and if each couple was separated from the next by a disk of moistened pasteboard (so that the order was copper, zinc, pasteboard, copper, zinc, pasteboard, &c.), the effect of the pile this formed was much greater than that of any galvanic apparatus previously introduced. When the highest and lowest disks were simultaneously touched by the fingers, a distinct shock was felt; and this could be repeated again and again, the pile apparently possessing within itself an indefinite power of recuperation. It thus resembled a Leyden jar endowed with a power of automatically re-establishing its state of tension after each explosion; with, in fact, "an inexhaustible charge, a perpetual action or impulsion on the electric fluid."

Volta unhesitatingly pronounced the phenomena of the pile to be in their nature electrical. The circumstances of Galvani's original discovery had prepared the minds of philosophers for this belief, which was powerfully supported by the similarity of the physiological effects of the pile to those of the Leyden jar, and by the observation that the galvanic influence was conducted only by those bodies—e.g. the metals—which were already known to be good conductors of static electricity. But Volta now supplied a still more convincing proof. Taking a disk of copper and one of zinc, he held each by an insulating handle and applied them to each other for an instant. After the disks had been separated, they were brought into contact with a deli-