Fig. 12: A modification of Volta’s battery
“… an electrical pile formed by a mass of several plates of glass, coated with metal, and of which the opposite faces, parallel to each other, communicate by metallic conductors, fig. 12. An apparatus, indeed, constructed in this manner, being charged with ordinary electricity, presents, both in theory and in fact, an exact representation of the electrical phenomena which the electromotive apparatus produces, whether one of its poles communicates with the ground, or is in a state of insulation; and if it does not exert the same power of decomposition on chemical combinations, it is very probable that this arises from the impossibility of recharging its electrical poles instantaneously and continually, in proportion as they discharge themselves along the substances through which the electrical currents pass; a faculty which the electromotive apparatus possesses of itself, when the humid conductors, which separate its metallic elements, present a sufficiently open passage for the transmission of the electricity” (p. 435).
