An Encyclopedia of the History of Technology part 38. This one of a kind encyclopedia presents the entire field of technology from rudimentary agricultural tools to communication satellites in this first of its kind reference source. Following an introduction that discusses basic tools, devices, and mechanisms, the chapters are grouped into five parts that provide detailed information on materials, power and engineering, transportation, communication and calculation, and technology and society, revealing how different technologies have together evolved to produce enormous changes in the course of history | PART TWO POWER AND ENGINEERING discovered was in the muscle Volta showed that it was the result of contact between the two different metals. Volta announced his discovery in a letter to the President of the Royal Society in London and the letter was published. Accompanying the letter was a drawing of pairs of metal discs interleaved with pieces of leather or card soaked in salt water. He referred to the discs as making a pile colonne in the original French of the letter and the term Volta s pile has remained. The first mass-produced battery was designed by William Cruickshank a lecturer at the Royal Military Academy Woolwich soon after 1800. He soldered together pairs of copper and zinc plates and set them in wax in grooves across a wooden trough. The trough was then filled with acid. Michael Faraday used Cruickshank batteries in his early electrical researches and in his book Chemical Manipulation published in 1828 he went into detail about the right acid to use. He recommended one volume of nitric acid three volumes of sulphuric acid mixed with water to make one hundred volumes. The availability of a steady electric current opened up new possibilities for research. Many people studied the properties of an electric current especially its chemical properties. Among the first was Humphry Davy. Born in Penzance Davy was first apprenticed to a surgeon-apothecary but he was released from his apprenticeship to take a post as assistant at the Pneumatic Institution in Bristol a body devoted to the study of the physiological properties of gases. Davy s main work there was a study of the effect of breathing nitrous oxide laughing gas which Davy said gave him a sensation similar to that produced by a small dose of wine . Davy s future lay not in Bristol but at the new Royal Institution founded in 1799 in London where in 1801 he was offered a post as lecturer. The purpose of the Royal Institution was to encourage the diffusion of scientific knowledge and the general .
