The Battery

After doing some research, I discovered that the battery was actually invented about two thousand years ago, although of course not in the same form as it appears today.  The first 'battery' found was a clay pot with an iron rod sticking out of the middle, encased in a tube of a sheet of copper.  This relic had been in a tomb belonging to the Parthian Empire in Baghdad.

Many centuries after that first battery was made, Alessandro Volta made publications about the details of his own battery in the early 1800's.  What he did was add layers of silver and cloth or paper soaked in zinc and salt until he reached the voltage he wanted, called the "Voltaic Pile."
However, despite being the first battery to have a stable electrical current, the Voltaic Pile couldn't last very long.  As the years passed by, a lot of other types of batteries were made:  the carbon-zinc battery that was referred to as a "dry cell" since it didn't need liquid to function; the lead-acid battery; the iron-nickel alkaline cell battery; the nickel-cadmium battery, and so on.  A solar battery was even invented.

Without batteries, life on Earth would be very different.  The vast majority of electronics and light sources wouldn't exist, and we'd probably still be using candles and lanterns to light up our surroundings! All the hard work that inventors have put into making the battery what it is today has certainly paid off.