Galvani and Volta Animal Electricity Luigi Galvani Alessandro Volta

Electrical Machinery If a person touches an charge generator, the act of kissing permits the built up charge to discharge into the ground via the lips. Electric kisses became popular. “By the 1780’s electricity had truly become a panacea and even a miracle. In the case of one couple who, after ten years of infertility, regained hope through electricity. Thanks to a few turns of the crank and some shocks in the appropriate parts.”

Galvani’s Experiments In Galvani’s second round of experiments the two conductors were an iron fence and brass skewers used to hang frog legs. When the second round moved inside, muscle contractions were still observed. However, non conductive materials elicited no response. Galvani believed that the materials must be conductive to animal electricity inherent to the organism.

Volta’s Experiments After Galvani’s third round of experimentation, Volta countered by creating electric piles that demonstrated the generation of electric current through the use of dissimilar and similar metals.

Galvani versus Volta While Galvani and Volta were posturing in the scientific community, supporters of the two scientists would also travel and give lectures in an attempt to persuade their side was correct. Galvani’s supporters attempted to persuade the public and held odd demonstrations. For example, a man named Aldini held performances that included the zapping of decapitated animals and the beheaded corpse of a murderer.

Signora Galvani One story places Luigi’s wife as the person to originally discover “animal electricity”. The story claims that while preparing frog legs for dinner, she placed a tin knife on the frogs leg while a static electricity generator was running near by. The result was a contracting in the frog leg that startled Signora Galvani. This story is most likely false. However, Signora Galvani played an influential role in Luigi’s life. When she died Galvani lost zest for the defense of animal electricity. It is likely that she played a role in his experiments as well.