COMO Italy Museum Alessandro Volta - a photo on Flickriver

Alessandro Volta, in full Conte Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta, (born February 18, 1745, Como, Lombardy [Italy]—died March 5, 1827, Como), Italian physicist whose invention of the electric battery provided the first source of continuous current.
Volta became professor of physics at the Royal School of Como in 1774. In 1775 his interest in electricity led him to improve the electrophorus, a device used to generate static electricity. He discovered and isolated methane gas in 1776. Three years later he was appointed to the chair of physics at the University of Pavia.
In 1791 Volta’s friend Luigi Galvani announced that the contact of two different metals with the muscle of a frog resulted in the generation of an electric current. Galvani interpreted that as a new form of electricity found in living tissue, which he called “animal electricity.” Volta felt that the frog merely conducted a current that flowed between the two metals, which he called “metallic electricity.” He began experimenting in 1792 with metals alone. (He would detect the weak flow of electricity between disks of different metals by placing them on his tongue.) Volta found that animal tissue was not needed to produce a current. That provoked much controversy between the animal-electricity adherents and the metallic-electricity advocates, but, with his announcement of the first electric battery in 1800, victory was assured for Volta.
Known as the voltaic pile or the voltaic column, Volta’s battery consisted of alternating disks of zinc and silver (or copper and pewter) separated by paper or cloth soaked either in salt water or sodium hydroxide. A simple and reliable source of electric current that did not need to be recharged like the Leyden jar, his invention quickly led to a new wave of electrical experiments. Within six weeks of Volta’s announcement, English scientists William Nicholson and Anthony Carlisle used a voltaic pile to decompose water into hydrogen and oxygen, thus discovering electrolysis (how an electric current leads to a chemical reaction) and creating the field of electrochemistry.

Como, Latin Comum, city, Lombardia regione (region), northern Italy, rimmed by mountains at the extreme southwest end of Lake Como, north of Milan. As the ancient Comum, perhaps of Gallic origin, it was conquered by the Romans in 196 bc and became a Roman colony under Julius Caesar. It was made a bishopric in ad 379. In the 11th century, after struggles with the Lombards and the Franks, it became a free commune. Shortly thereafter (1127), however, it was destroyed by the Milanese for having sided with the emperor Frederick I Barbarossa in his conflict with the Lombard League (an alliance of northern Italian towns). Como made peace with Milan in 1183 and after 1335 fell under the rule of the Visconti family and the Sforzas of Milan. During that period its silk industry and wool trade played an important role in the Milanese economy. Later, the city, following the fortunes of Lombardy, came successively under Spanish, French, and Austrian rule, until it was liberated by the Italian patriot Giuseppe Garibaldi in 1859 and became part of the Italian kingdom.

www.britannica.com/place/Como-Italy

Taken in: Italia / Lombardia / Como (show map)

Taken on: February 1, 2019

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Groups appears in: • Como Lake • Il lago di Como

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