Alesssandro Volta

Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta or Alessandro Volta in short was born in February 18, 1745 in Coma, Lombardy, Italy. Being raised in a poor family by his parents who were Filippo Volta and Maria Maddalena Inzaghia along with eight other sisters and brothers, Alessandro Volta was directed to be a religious person. He was sent to Jesuit school which was the most widely known religious group during the time. Although he was educated to become a Jesuit, his interest always leaned toward science. At the age of sixteen, the boy had a wide understanding of English, French, Latin and Italian; he read Dutch and Spanish fluently. It was said in “The Courtesy” by Willie Weinberg that the young Volta was fascinated by the phenomena of electricity and began to go deeply into this subject with a further approach compared to the previous scientists. His first paper was "De vi attractiva ignis electrici" which he wrote in 1769 and another one which was done by the following year. His works visually opened a new pathway for men to reach a new age. When he was twenty-four, he completed his “electrophorus”; it was a device to prove the existence of electrical charges in an object when it is rubbed against certain surface. Unsatisfied with the current goal, he also invented many instruments that allowed people to prove and see the static electricity.

In 1776, Alessandro Volta was interested by the existence of electricity in gases and that drove him into studying chemistry. The muddy bottom of the river on which he was traveling released many bubble and once he tested, they were inflammable. He called it the “Inflammable air from marshlands” which is known as Methane gas today. The discovery of methane led Volta to another interesting idea. He constructed a test tube shape which he called “Volta’s Pistol.” The inner was a mixture of gas and oxygen which gave out sparks when it was ignited .This was not widely known until the invention of car’s engine came to mind. The concept is similar. The use of Volta’s Pistol allowed him to measure the force of explosion of inflammable airs. The instrument slowly became the eudiometer which measures the amount of oxygen in the air. The gas lantern that is lightened up electrically was also Volta’s product using the Pistol method.

At the time Volta was requested by Governor General of Habsburg Lombardy to hold the chair of Experimental Physics at the University of Pavia, and he did so. He married Empress Maria Theresa on the following year and raised three sons. He soon became famous all over Europe. In 1782, Volta produced an instrument which was capable of revealing much weaker electrical current and so he called it micro-electroscope. And to see the corresponding current that was revealed by the electroscope, Volta made the electrometer that allowed him to see how strong the current was. In order to have a solid proof on these experiments, he wrote the Law of Condenser which explained how his theory worked and as well as providing a formula for that (Q=CxT).

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