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  • Volta: Science and Culture in the Age of the Enlightenment
  • George Basalla
Volta: Science and Culture in the Age of the Enlightenment. By Giuliano Pancaldi. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 2003. Pp. xv + 381, $35.

Most scientists and their students know that Alessandro Volta (1745-1827) invented the voltaic or wet cell battery early in the 19th century, and they are also aware that the unit of electromotive force (volt) eponymously honors him. Some also may be acquainted with an instrument that appeared before the battery: Volta's electrophorus.This device is often used in laboratories to demonstrate the principles of static electricity. While Volta appears to have been primarily an inventor of electrical devices, he was more than that, and he managed to do significant scientific work in Italy at a time when France or England were more congenial settings for science.

Giuliano Pancaldi, a historian of science at the University of Bologna, answers many questions about the life and times of Volta. This is not a traditional biography of the Italian scientist: Pancaldi, who has read extensively in the relevant manuscript and printed sources, situates Volta in the period in which he lived and practiced science. The social, political, and intellectual life of the Italian states, along with the science and culture of Enlightenment Europe, form the background of Volta's life and scientific contributions. [End Page 146]

Volta, a member of the lower nobility, lived in Austrian-dominated Lombardy. He studied philosophy and literature with the Jesuits at Como but taught himself the physical sciences by reading the classics of 18th-century science. Early in his life, Volta resolved to gain social and cultural recognition by becoming a natural philosopher. Therefore, as a young man he contacted experts in Turin and Paris in his chosen field of studies: electricity.Volta's ambition to attain status as a theoretical natural philosopher was tempered by his success in the experimental side of electricity. His initial aspirations were aided by the scientific literature available to him in Italy and by the access he had to several important figures in the physical sciences in Europe. Italian universities were not strong centers of scientific research, but Italian scientists such as Giambatista Beccaria helped the young Volta to establish himself.

Volta, the would-be theoretician, first gained notice for an electrical instrument he invented. His electrophorus, not an entirely original invention, brought him instant fame, and the device was compared to the Leyden jar in its simplicity and usefulness. The electrophorus consists of a resin "cake," a metal shield, and a second optional metal disc under the cake. When announced in 1775, the electrophorus was hailed as a perpetual carrier of electricity. Pancaldi carefully delineates the technical, social, and personal dimensions of the novel apparatus that marked a turning point in Volta's career. The instrument extended Volta's reputation to England and to one of its great scientific thinkers, Joseph Priestly.

Volta moved more easily now among the top thinkers of Enlightenment Europe and still hoped for acceptance as a theoretician of electricity. Hampered by his ignorance of the calculus, and his obvious success as an inventor of instruments for private and public demonstrations, Volta tried his hand at making accurate measurements of electrical attraction. Nevertheless, his inventions continued to bring him more attention.

It is possible to give a plausible account ofVolta's greatest invention, the battery, even though not all of his laboratory notebook has survived from this period. The process of invention began with Volta's dispute with Luigi Galvani over the latter's idea of a form of electricity that resides in animals. Volta argued that a separate and distinct animal, or Galvanic, electricity did not exist. Instead, he claimed that the so-called animal electricity was generated by different metals in contact with wet substances. At this crucial time in his scientific thinking, he read William Nicholson's paper on the torpedo, a fish capable of generating an electrical shock. Volta drew upon Nicholson's torpedo paper, his own electrical experiments and theories, and his controversy with Galvani to produce the first wet cell.This was a revolutionary invention: the first source of a continuous flow...

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