Text 1. Generating an electric current

The first method used in producing an electric current was chemical in nature. Credit for its discovery is given to an Italian physician named Aloisio Galvani One day while engaged in dissecting a frog, Galvani noticed the leg muscles contract whenever a nearby electric machine was in operation. Further investigation showed the same twitching effect to be obtained by simply connecting the nerve and muscle of the leg to dissimilar metals. But no such result was obtained if only one metal was used or if non-conductors were employed. There were obviously two possible sources of the phenomenon. Hither the current was set up at the junction of the two metals or it was a property of the animal tissues. Galvani favoured the latter view and in 1791 announced his discovery, attributing the current to what he called "animal electricity". The scientist is known to become so prejudiced in favour of his animal magnetism theory that it was quite impossible for him to view objectively later evidence which definitely contradicted it and finally caused it to be discarded.

Another Italian, Alessandro Volta, a professor of physics in the University of Pavia, established the true source of the electric current. He demonstrated that it could be produced by the action of dissimilar metals without the presence of animal tissue of any sort.

In the course of his experiments in 1800 he developed the first electric battery, a device known as a voltaic pile. Although he tried a number of different materials he found that the best results were obtained when he used silver and zink as the two metals. The pile consisted of a series of small discs of these and of cardboard, the latter having been soaked in a salt solution. Then he piled the discs up one on another in the order silver, zink, cardboard, and so forth, ending with zinc. By connecting wires to the top and bottom discs he was able to get continuous electric currents which were of substantial size.

All the essentials of a modern electric cell or battery were presented in the voltaic pile. Developments since (hat time have been largely directed toward making cells more convenient to use and toward eliminating various undesirable chemical reactions.

Примечания:

credit for its discovery is given - честь его открытия принадлежит

twitching effect - эффект сокращения мышц

animal tissues - живая ткань