The Battery: How Portable Power Sparked a Technological Revolution

by Henry Schlesinger

Overview

In the tradition of Mark Kurlansky's Cod and David Bodanis's E=MC2, The Battery is the first popular history of the technology that harnessed electricity and powered the greatest scientific and technological advances of our time.

What began as a long-running dispute in biology, involving a dead frog's twitching leg, a scalpel, and a metal plate, would become an invention that transformed the history of the world: the battery. From Alessandro Volta's first copper-and-zinc model in 1800 to twenty-first-century technological breakthroughs, science journalist Henry Schlesinger traces the history of this essential power source and demonstrates its impact on our lives.

Volta's first battery not only settled the frog's leg question, it also unleashed a field of scientific research that led to the discovery of new elements and new inventions, from Samuel Morse's telegraph to Alexander Graham Bell's telephone to Thomas Edison's incandescent lightbulb. And recent advances like nanotechnology are poised to create a new generation of paradigm-shifting energy sources.

Schlesinger introduces the charlatans and geniuses, paupers and magnates, attracted to the power of the battery, including Michael Faraday, Guglielmo Marconi, Gaylord Wilshire, and Hugo Gernsback, the publisher and would-be inventor who coined the term "science fiction." A kaleidoscopic tour of an ingenious invention that helped usher in the modern world, The Battery is as entertaining as it is enlightening.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780061985294
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	01/17/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	324
Sales rank:	594,622
File size:	898 KB

About the Author

Henry Schlesinger is a journalist and author specializing in science and emerging technologies. He is the coauthor of Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA's Spytechs, from Communism to Al-Qaeda, and lives in New York City.

Table of Contents

Introduction History in Real Time vii

1 A World without Science 1

2 The Death of Superstition 10

3 The Tale of the Frog 39

4 Science, Showmanship, and the Voltaic Pile 51

5 Not a Gentleman of Science 69

6 What Hath God Wrought? 97

7 Finally, Something Useful 131

8 Power and Light 141

9 Genius by Design 169

10 Victorian Age of Discovery 176

11 Without Wires 184

12 Mass-Marketing Miracles 198

13 What Will They Think of Next? 213

14 Distance Dies in the Parlor 217

15 The Endless Frontier 225

16 See It! Hear It! Get It! 251

17 Smaller and Smaller 262

18 Always On 270

19 Lab Reports 274

Epilogue Bring on the Future 279

Appendix Those Troublesome Baghdad Batteries 283

Selected Bibliography 289

Index 297

What People are Saying About This

Richard Zacks

Just as a cracker-size battery powers a cell phone for days, so does Schlesigner’s wit enliven an unlikely topic—The History of the ever-shrinking, ever more potent Battery.”

Michael Belfiore

Henry Schlesinger’s fascinating and supurbly researched history of the battery is the story of civilization as we know it. The Battery illuminates in compellingly rich detail the scientists and entrepreneurs responsible for so much of the technology we take for granted today.

Editorial Reviews

Obscured by the handheld electronic devices that pervade our high-tech culture is the battery that powers them all. Technology journalist Schlesinger provides an illuminating historical account of a device whose enormous influence has been downplayed or misunderstood. The term “battery” is attributed to Benjamin Franklin, who arranged Leyden jars in a manner akin to a battery of cannon. But possible early electrochemical batteries—the centuries-old Baghdad batteries—discovered by archeologists in the 1930s remain controversial, as the appendix details. Schlesinger (Spycraft) discusses the battery's evolution from the Italian Alessandro Volta's early 19th-century copper and zinc model through 21st-century advances in nanotechnology. In 1800 Volta constructed his famous “pile” of metal discs; touching each end generated a shock that could then be repeated. Yet the process remained mysterious for decades. While electric outlets replaced batteries in much of the 20th century, that process has recently been reversed, as laptop users surely appreciate. Combining enormous learning with a lively and entertaining style, this book deserves a wide general readership. 30 b&w line drawings. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

An irresistibly entertaining history of electricity from the point of view of the humble battery. A battery is a container in which a chemical reaction produces an electric current. Electricity was a mysterious but familiar phenomenon in 1800 when Alessandro Volta built his "pile," stacking dozens of metal discs, each separated by a brine-soaked cloth. Touching each end produced a shock, which was repeated with each touch. This first battery was a dazzling breakthrough, writes science writer Schlesinger (co-author: Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA's Spytechs, from Communism to al-Qaeda, 2008), because all previous electrical phenomena only produced a single jolt. A device that produced a steady current delighted both scientists and the general public-doctors proclaimed its curative properties, Mary Shelley used it to animate Frankenstein. Improvements occurred steadily, but it was not until the 1840s that commercial success and the "technological revolution" occurred with the telegraph, which was entirely powered by batteries until the century's end. By 1900 breakthroughs transformed batteries from complex contraptions requiring constant attention to easily recharged wet cells and the universal, disposable dry cell. Beginning with the flashlight-invented in 1898-battery-powered gadgets became household necessities, but Schlesinger reminds readers that several decades of the 20th century passed before electric outlets replaced batteries in telephones, radios and phonographs. Ironically, during the past few decades, the vastly lower power consumption of integrated circuits has reversed this process, and batteries are now taking back these roles as well as powering our increasinglyminuscule computers, tools and toys. Schlesinger's modest technical explanations may not satisfy sophisticated science buffs, but he delivers high-quality popular-science writing.

Kirkus Reviews

Just as a cracker-size battery powers a cell phone for days, so does Schlesigner’s wit enliven an unlikely topic—The History of the ever-shrinking, ever more potent Battery.” — Richard Zacks, author of "An Underground Education" and best-seller "The Pirate Hunter"

Henry Schlesinger’s fascinating and supurbly researched history of the battery is the story of civilization as we know it. The Battery illuminates in compellingly rich detail the scientists and entrepreneurs responsible for so much of the technology we take for granted today. — Michael Belfiore, author of The Department of Mad Scientists: How DARPA Is Shaping Our World, from the Internet to Artificial Limbsre

From the Publisher

Just as a cracker-size battery powers a cell phone for days, so does Schlesigner’s wit enliven an unlikely topic—The History of the ever-shrinking, ever more potent Battery.

Richard Zacks

Henry Schlesinger’s fascinating and supurbly researched history of the battery is the story of civilization as we know it. The Battery illuminates in compellingly rich detail the scientists and entrepreneurs responsible for so much of the technology we take for granted today.

Michael Belfiore