Voltaic pile given by Volta to Faraday, 2000

Royal Institution, London, England. A voltaic pile given by Alessandro Volta, its discoverer, to Michael Faraday. A voltaic pile consists of alternating disks of dissimilar metals, with an electrically conducting medium--typically brine-soaked blotting paper--between pairs of disks. A voltaic pile was the first device to produce electricity from a chemical change. Previously only static electricity generators were used.