Battery Technology Changed the World…and Then It Stalled

Batteries don't get the credit they deserve. They're hidden inside gadgets, making it easy to forget the huge role they've played in helping us harness electricity. Believe it or not, batteries were our first source of electricity before we even had any idea what electricity was (let alone how to build electric grids and infrastructure).

The first battery was invented in the early 1800s and has changed our world since then. It paved the way for many technological advancements. Without the ability to store energy for long periods of time, smartphones, laptops, and long-range electric vehicles wouldn’t be possible. 

Looking to the future, battery technology could play a huge role in reducing our use of fossil fuels. Sources like solar panels and wind turbines need to save all that weather-dependent energy somewhere. Unfortunately, battery components are made of limited materials that aren't easy to recycle. As a result, they may wind up being the bottleneck to achieving sustainable and abundant energy—that’s why efforts to study and evolve them are so important. 

Read on to learn more about how batteries were invented, what’s happening today in battery innovation, and where the technology needs to go for a renewable energy future.

The History of the Battery

Batteries got their start in a rather odd way. In 1786, an Italian physician and biologist named Luigi Galvani was dissecting a frog. When he placed his scalpel to the frog’s leg, he was surprised to find the muscles came to life and the entire limb began to twitch. Earlier in his career, Galvani discovered that nerve impulses were electrochemical in nature. 

At the time, the scientific community was only in the very early innings of discovering the true nature of electricity. One important milestone was Benjamin Franklin’s realization that lightning and static electricity were of the same medium. The discovery made Franklin quite a celebrity in European scientific circles, even if his dangerous experiments made him a rather suspect character at home in America. 

Despite these advancements, we still didn’t understand exactly what electricity was (or how to produce it).  It was one of the biggest scientific questions of the era. Thus, when Galvani’s scalpel induced an electrochemical impulse in the frog leg, a lightbulb went off for him. 

Galvani thought electricity was a substance inside the frog triggered by the metal scalpel. He published these findings in a 1791 paper called “Commentary on the Effect of Electricity on Muscular Motion,” which was circulated amongst the scientists of the day. Eventually, his paper made its way to a professor of physics named Alessandro Volta.

The science behind frog legs (and batteries)

Volta was unconvinced by Galvani’s explanation—he thought it highly improbable that the source of electricity was a latent fluid trapped inside biological tissue. After re-creating Galvani’s experiment, Volta realized that the frog leg was not the true source of the electricity, but rather a conduit for it. 

The real source of electricity came from the interaction of two disparate metals, the scalpel, and a metal plate, being put into close proximity. The metal plate holding the frog transferred its electrons through the frog leg to the metal in the scalpel. This exchange of electrons created a current which interacted with the frog’s nerves, making its legs twitch. 

Volta wanted to test this hypothesis without using a frog as a conduit. He took two coins made of different metals and placed them on either side of his tongue. Instantly, he could feel a tinge of electric current pass between them. Next, he took plates of silver and zinc, separated by cardboard soaked in salt water, and stacked them. With one finger touching the plate of zinc at the bottom and another finger touching the plate of silver at the top, Volta could feel a tiny electric shock. 

The ‘voltaic pile’ he erected produced an electrical current…it was the first battery ever made. 

Volta’s invention predated knowledge of the atomic structure, so he merely chalked the production of electricity up to some chemical reaction created by the interaction of different metals. This wasn’t far off from the truth.

Converting chemical energy into electric energy

All atoms are inherently endowed with electric energy because they’re composed of charged particles, including protons and electrons. Today, we know that an atom’s structure determines how much electrochemical potential it has. 

Atoms that have a complete outer shell of electrons, like the noble gases, are typically very stable and non-reactive. These elements have low electrochemical potential. Atoms with incomplete electron shells are the opposite. They have more electrochemical potential because they want to react with surrounding atoms to reach a more stable structure. In Volta’s battery pile, zinc atoms were more reactive and willing to give up electrons, whereas the silver atoms were the opposite. 

Volta found the key to creating an electric current inside the voltaic pile. He placed a solution that could shuttle these electrons between the two metals (the salt-water-soaked cardboard). With some experimentation, he noted that the strength of the current could be increased by stacking a larger pile of zinc and silver plates.

This structure is the basis of all batteries: a reactive material willing to give up electrons on one end (called an anode), and a material willing to accept electrons on the other end (a cathode). The trick is to get the electrons from the anode to flow to the cathode, thus creating a current.

The issue is that the atoms in the anode and cathode are locked in solid structures, meaning they can’t move freely. To solve this, a solution called an electrolyte is placed as an intermediary between the two. It contains free-floating ions that act as a shuttle for electrons, picking them up at the anode end and delivering them to the cathode end.

Volta’s battery was the first way we learned to convert chemical energy directly into electric energy. That’s how the battery became known as a reliable source of electricity before we even knew what electricity was. Predating the energy grid and power stations, batteries were fueling all kinds of early electric devices (from the first electric motors to the telegraph). 

Early ideas for electrifying houses: Battery “milkmen” and more

The only issue was that early batteries were pretty inconvenient. They looked like jars with two metal rods stuck inside, the anode and the cathode, and were filled with a liquid, acidic electrolyte. By connecting a wire to the cathode end, you could power anything from a doorbell to a lightbulb, but when all the electrolytes in the solution were used up, the battery would stop producing a current. Then, you would have to service the battery by dumping out the acid and refilling the jar with more electrolyte solution. 

Being a ‘battery man’ was a real occupation at the time. Every major telegraph company, like Western Union, hired people whose sole job was to maintain and service the company’s massive, gurgling, acidic batteries powering the telegraph network.

In his book “The Battery,'' Henry Schlesinger writes about the debates that early engineers had regarding what kind of infrastructure might be required to electrify households. It wasn’t yet clear that each country would build a massive electrical grid connecting every home to giant power stations. 

Instead, many assumed each home would need their own batteries, refilled on a regular basis (much like milkmen used to deliver bottles of milk). It wasn’t a stretch of the imagination to think households would put out their empty battery jars every couple of days to get a fresh supply. 

Another strange, creative idea engineers floated was to install a giant subterranean battery under each home. Its electrolyte could be dispensed and replenished in the same way that rural homes handle the contents of their septic tanks. The process of draining and refilling these batteries with corrosive, liquid substances was not ideal.