What is "voltaic pile"

Pile \Pile\, n. [F. pile, L. pila a pillar, a pier or mole of stone. Cf. Pillar.]

1. A mass of things heaped together; a heap; as, a pile of stones; a pile of wood.

2. A mass formed in layers; as, a pile of shot.

3. A funeral pile; a pyre.
   --Dryden.

4. A large building, or mass of buildings.

   The pile o'erlooked the town and drew the fight.
   --Dryden.

5. (Iron Manuf.) Same as Fagot, n., 2.

6. (Elec.) A vertical series of alternate disks of two dissimilar metals, as copper and zinc, laid up with disks of cloth or paper moistened with acid water between them, for producing a current of electricity; -- commonly called Volta's pile, voltaic pile, or galvanic pile.

   Note: The term is sometimes applied to other forms of apparatus designed to produce a current of electricity, or as synonymous with battery; as, for instance, to an apparatus for generating a current of electricity by the action of heat, usually called a thermopile.

7. [F. pile pile, an engraved die, L. pila a pillar.] The reverse of a coin. See Reverse.

   Cross and pile. See under Cross.

   Dry pile. See under Dry.

n. battery consisting of voltaic cells arranged in series; the earliest electric battery devised by Volta [syn: pile, galvanic pile]

The voltaic pile was the first electrical battery that could continuously provide an electric current to a circuit. It was invented by Alessandro Volta, who published his experiments in 1800. The voltaic pile then enabled a rapid series of discoveries including the electrical decomposition ( electrolysis) of water into oxygen and hydrogen by William Nicholson and Anthony Carlisle (1800) and the discovery or isolation of the chemical elements sodium (1807), potassium (1807), calcium (1808), boron (1808), barium (1808), strontium (1808), and magnesium (1808) by Humphry Davy.

The entire 19th century electrical industry was powered by batteries related to Volta's (e.g. the Daniell cell and Grove cell) until the advent of the dynamo (the electrical generator) in the 1870s.

Volta's invention built on Luigi Galvani's 1780s discovery of how a circuit of two metals and a frog's leg can cause the frog's leg to respond. Volta demonstrated in 1794 that when two metals and brine-soaked cloth or cardboard are arranged in a circuit they produce an electric current. In 1800, Volta stacked several pairs of alternating copper (or silver) and zinc discs ( electrodes) separated by cloth or cardboard soaked in brine ( electrolyte) to increase the electrolyte conductivity. When the top and bottom contacts were connected by a wire, an electric current flowed through the voltaic pile and the connecting wire.