Fig. 11: Apparatus made of Volta’s battery and condensatore

“On a solid table, fix with screws a parallelepiped of wood AB, fig. 11, covered with tin foil. The extremity A of this parallelepiped carries a cone of metal, truncated, well polished, and on which the pile is laid. The other extremity B carries an upright and moveable stick of metal TT, terminated by a metal plate, to which the foot of the condenser is firmly fixed by a metal screw. This instrument may then be adjusted to the height of the pile, with which the experiments are made without altering the proper condition of the communications. The plates made use of are all of the same dimensions, and each plate of zinc is strongly attached, but not soldered, to the corresponding plate of copper, so that the contact is in this manner always completely established between them. We have only, then, to dispose the pairs above each other; and when the plates are new, those pairs may be reckoned identically the same. As they are also perfectly plane, the pile may be easily enough erected by placing them above each other, without any lateral support, and by this method we also avoid that kind of communication between the poles of the pile, which arises, to the great injury of the apparatus, from the imperfect insulation of these supports” (p. 434).