Name/Title
Zamboni's ApparatusEntry/Object ID
2013.3.91Description
Description from L.A. Brown's 1959 catalog: "Probably the instrument which Dr. Peter purchased of Deleuil in Paris in 1839 for 60 francs. Zamboni invented a dry voltaic pile (or battery) in 1812. He constructed it of discs of paper rubbed over on one side with peroxide of manganese and coated on the other side with thin tin or silver leaf (Brande and Cox, A Dictionary of Science, Literature and Art, 3 vols. Rev. 1875). The resulting battery does not generate a shock but does generate a small current. D. Lardner (Handbook of Natural Philosophy, Phila., 1853) in discussing dry piles makes the following statement, "In such a pile, neither evaporation nor chemical action taking place, the elements could suffer no change; and the quantity and intensity of the electricity evolved would be absolutely uniform and invariable, and its action would be perpetual."
The battery base of the apparatus shown is slightly more than seven inches on the side and it contains four sections of the pile with each section about five inches long. The pile, in cross sections, is roughly the diameter of a quarter of a dollar. Above the base a horizontal wire is suspended by a very fine filament. This wire has a small knob at one end and a flattened disc at the other. The disc moves slowly from one pole to the other. This motion has not ceased in the twenty-seven years we have seen the apparatus and probably not for the one hundred and twenty years since its purchase."Collection
Moosnick Museum - Scientific Apparatus