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Count Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta
(18 Feb 1745 - 5 Mar 1827)
Italian physicist who invented the first battery, able to supply a sustained current of electricity.
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Science Quotes by Count Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta (2 quotes)
...each metal has a certain power, which is different from metal to metal, of setting the electric fluid in motion...
— Count Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta
Le Opere, Vol. 1, 149. In Giuliano Pancaldi, Volta: Science and Culture in the Age of Enlightenment (2005), 190.
The language of experiment is more authoritative than any reasoning: facts can destroy our ratiocination—not vice versa.
— Count Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta
Quoted in Marcello Pera, La Rani Ambigua (1986) as translated by Jonathan Mandelbaum, in The Ambiguous Frog: The Galvani-Volta Controversy on Animal Electricity (1992). (Cited as VO, 7:292, Collezione dell'opere del cavaliere conte Alessandro Volta, Vol. 7, 292). [Note: ratiocination means logical thinking; it is the opposite of taking a wild guess. —Webmaster]
Quotes by others about Count Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta (3)
My Volta is always busy. What an industrious scholar he is! When he is not paying visits to museums or learned men, he devotes himself to experiments. He touches, investigates, reflects, takes notes on everything. I regret to say that everywhere, inside the coach as on any desk, I am faced with his handkerchief, which he uses to wipe indifferently his hands, nose and instruments.
As translated and quoted in Giuliano Pancaldi, Volta: Science and Culture in the Age of Enlightenment (2005), 154.
In the beginning of the year 1800 the illustrious professor [Volta] conceived the idea of forming a long column by piling up, in succession, a disc of copper, a disc of zinc, and a disc of wet cloth, with scrupulous attention to not changing this order. What could be expected beforehand from such a combination? Well, I do not hesitate to say, this apparently inert mass, this bizarre assembly, this pile of so many couples of unequal metals separated by a little liquid is, in the singularity of effect, the most marvellous instrument which men have yet invented, the telescope and the steam engine not excepted.
In François Arago, 'Bloge for Volta' (1831), Oeuvres Completes de François Arago (1854), Vol. 1, 219-20.
The voltaic battery was as an alarm-bell to experimenters in every part of Europe.
In Humphry Davy, 'Historical Sketch of Electrical Discovery' (1810), in John Davy (ed.), The Collected Works of Sir Humphry Davy (1840), Vol. 8, 271.
See also:
- 18 Feb - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Volta's birth.
- Alessandro Volta - Illustration of Volta from Robert Millikan's textbook, A First Course in Physics (1906).
- Alessandro Volta - Enlarged Details of Illustration Border from Robert Millikan's textbook.
- Alessandro Volta - Monument in Pavia, Italy.
- Sketch of Alessandro Volta - biography and image from Popular Science (May 1892).
- Volta: Science and Culture in the Age of Enlightenment, by Giuliano Pancaldi. - book suggestion.
- Booklist for Alessandro Volta.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
