HISTORY OF THE BATTERY

The earliest form of battery, The Baghdad Battery, is believed to date from approximately 250BC. These were found during archeological excavations at Khujut Rabu near Baghdad and later in Egypt. It’s believed that they were used for electroplating and precious metal gilding though some believe they may have been linked to medicinal purposes.

Development of the modern day battery began in the 1780’s when Luigi Galvani discovered that an electric circuit could be created using 2 different metals and a dead frogs’ leg by creating nerve impulses. T he frogs’ leg served as the electrolyte and detector, and the metals as electrodes.

Alessandro Volta furthered this idea in the 1790’s, replacing the materials with zinc, copper and pieces of cardboard soaked in brine between the metals to create the Voltiac Cell. By 1800 Alessandro Volta created the 1 st battery, The Voltiac Pile, this was simply cells linked in series and stacked on each other.

The Daniel Cell was later invented by John Daniel in 1836, this was safer and less corrosive than the Voltiac Cell, using copper sulphate and zinc sulphate as the electrodes.

In 1859 Gaston Plante created the lead acid battery, the battery still used today on many of our vehicles. This was the 1 st rechargeable battery and though heavy could produce a very high current. Emile Alphonse Faure later improved the lead acid battery in 1881 by using a mixture of lead oxides, developing a faster reacting and more efficient battery.

Georgee Leclanche, in 1866, created the carbon-zinc wet cell battery. The Leclanche Cell consisting of a manganese dioxide and carbon positive terminal with zinc for the negative submersed in ammonium chloride. Over the next few years the Leclanche Cell became very popular for use in telegraph equipment.

The lead acid battery remains relatively unchanged, calcium was added to the positive and negative terminals in the 1970’s resulting in less gassing and creating a ‘maintenance free’ automotive battery. These calcium lead acid batteries could also be charged at a higher rate than previous lead acid batteries.

Although valve regulated lead acid (VRLA) or sealed lead acid batteries ( SLA), as they are often known, were invented around the turn of the century they have only become increasingly common use over the past 20 – 30 years due to the increase in technology. More recently Gel and AGM (absorbent glass matt) have also become increasingly popular, providing us with spill-proof deep cycle batteries.