The History of Batteries

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the Voltaic Pile produced a continuous and stable current, and lost little charge over time when not in use, though his early models could not produce a voltage strong enough to produce sparks. He experimented with various metals and found that zinc and silver gave the best results.
Volta believed the current was the result of two different materials simply touching each other—an obsolete scientific theory known as contact tension—and not the result of chemical reactions. Consequently, he regarded the corrosion of the zinc plates as an unrelated flaw that could perhaps be fixed by changing the materials somehow. However, no scientist ever succeeded in preventing this corrosion. In fact, it was observed that the corrosion was faster when a higher current was drawn. This suggested that the corrosion was actually integral to the battery's ability to produce a current. This, in part, led to the rejection of Volta's contact tension theory in favor of electrochemical theory. Volta's ...

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increased the internal resistance of the battery. The other was a phenomenon called local action, wherein minute short-circuits would form around impurities in the zinc, causing the zinc to degrade. The latter problem was solved in 1835 by William Sturgeon, who found that mixing some mercury into the zinc eliminated the local action.
A British chemist named John Frederic Daniell searched for a way to eliminate the hydrogen bubble problem found in the Voltaic Pile, and his solution was to use a second electrolyte to consume the hydrogen produced by the first. In 1836, he invented the Daniell cell, which consisted of a copper pot filled with a copper sulphate solution, in which was ...

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