VOLTAIC ELECTRICITY.
On January 31, 1793, Volta announced to the Royal Society his discovery of the development of electricity in metallic bodies. Galvani had given the name of Animal Electricity to the power which caused spontaneous convulsions in the limbs of frogs when the divided nerves were connected by a metallic wire. Volta, however, saw the true cause of the phenomena described by Galvani. Observing that the effects were far greater when the connecting medium consisted of two different kinds of metal, he inferred that the principle of excitation existed in the metals, and not in the nerves of the animal; and he assumed that the exciting fluid was ordinary electricity, produced by the contact of the two metals; the convulsions of the frog consequently arose from the electricity thus developed passing along its nerves and muscles.
In 1800 Volta invented what is now called the Voltaic Pile, or compound Galvanic circle.
The term Animal Electricity (says Dr. Whewell) has been superseded by others, of which Galvanism is the most familiar; but I think that Volta’s office in this discovery is of a much higher and more philosophical kind than that of Galvani; and it would on this account be more fitting to employ the term Voltaic Electricity, which, indeed, is very commonly used, especially by our most recent and comprehensive writers. The Voltaic pile was a more important step in the history of electricity than the Leyden jar had been—Hist. Ind. Sciences, vol. iii.
No one who wishes to judge impartially of the scientific history of these times and of its leaders, will consider Galvani and Volta as equals, or deny the vast superiority of the latter over all his opponents or fellow-workers, more especially over those of the Bologna school. We shall scarcely again find in one man gifts so rich and so calculated for research as were combined in Volta. He possessed that “incomprehensible talent,” as Dove has called it, for separating the essential from the immaterial in complicated phenomena; that boldness of invention which must precede experiment, controlled by the most strict and cautious mode of manipulation; that unremitting attention which allows no circumstance to pass unnoticed; lastly, with so much acuteness, so much simplicity, so much grandeur of conception, combined with such depth of thought, he had a hand which was the hand of a workman.—Jameson’s Journal, No. 106.