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Person

Alessandro Volta

A portrait depicts a man with gray hair, dressed in a black coat over a dark vest and white cravat, seated against a warm-toned background.

Physicist at the University of Pavia (1745–1827) who attacked Galvani's animal-electricity claim and, in trying to disprove it, built the first true battery in 1800. He demonstrated that current arose from dissimilar metals in an electrolyte, not from the tissue between them. The unit of electric potential, the volt, was named in his honour by international convention in 1881.

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