The 'Baghdad Battery' (Glossary)

The then Director of the Iraqi Antique Administration Council, Dr. Wilhelm Koenig commissioned some excavations to the south-east of Baghdad in 1936. An unusual clay jar was hereby unearthed, and speculation has been rife since then as to whether this could be an early Battery.

This so-called 'Baghdad Battery' is an approx. 14 cm high clay jar containing a cylinder of Copper sheet and a rod of Iron. It would appear that the jar was originally sealed with asphalt and closed with an acidic fluid. The find was dated at around 200 B.C. Other, similar objects were also found.

Experiments were carried out in 1978 with a replica in the Roemer-Pelizaeus-Museum in Hildesheim, that suggested that the find from Mesopotamia could in fact be an early galvanic cell. Filled with grape juice or diluted vinegar as an Electrolyte, this type of cell was able to generate a Voltage of 0.8 volts. Iron would hereby form on the negative pole of iron and metallic copper on the positive pole of oxidised copper:

It appears astonishing that mankind could have used batteries 2,000 years before the Voltaic pile, but not totally improbable. After all, it's 'only' a refinement of the familiar 'lemon battery' that could easily have been discovered accidentally.

The actual purpose and origins of the battery are still totally in the dark. There are theories about a ceremonial or ritual use, to sterilize drinking water or as a source of energy for the galvanic gold-plating of jewellery. And naturally speculators and conspiracy theorists fill the existing knowledge vacuum with assumptions about electrical lighting systems for temples, for example, or the familiar origin from aliens.

Its value in terms of cultural history is hard to judge. What is true is that mankind had apparently developed batteries before the voltaic pile, which is why sometimes there are calls for corresponding corrections to the text books. But obviously the true potential of the invention was not known at that time, or the cultural parameters did not allow a use or propagation of the knowledge, so that the battery once again sunk back into oblivion. So the predecessor to our batteries of today can rightly be said to be Volta's pile from the year 1800.

© Marc Stenzel

	See also:
		Glossary overview Voltaic pile (Glossary) Historical development of the battery

[Home] [Legal] [Privacy] [GTCB] [Contact] [Search] [Siteview]