In ancient times, humans may have been constantly studying and experimenting with such things as electricity. 1932 a pottery bottle thought to be thousands of years old was found near Baghdad, Iraq. It has an iron bar inserted in a copper cylinder-it may be used to store static electricity, but the secret of the bottle may never be revealed. Whether the ancestors who made this pottery bottle knew about static electricity or not, it is certain that the ancient Greeks did. They know that if you rub a piece of amber, you can attract light objects. 1In the forties and fifties of the 8th century, the improvement of power generation devices and the study of atmospheric electrical phenomena attracted physicists' extensive interest.

1745 Krister of Prussia used wires to lead the electricity generated by friction into a glass bottle with nails. When he touched the nail with his hand, he was hit hard.

Perhaps inspired by this discovery, Mei Sen Brock of Leiden University in the Netherlands invented the "Leiden bottle" for collecting charges in 1746. He wants to find a way to save electricity, because he sees that the electricity he collects can easily disappear in the air. One day, he hung a bucket in the air, connected the motor, led it out of the bucket with a copper wire and immersed it in a glass bottle filled with water. He asked an assistant to hold a glass bottle in one hand, while Mei Sen Brock shook the motor vigorously. At this time, his assistant accidentally hit the other person's hand with a barrel. He suddenly felt a strong electric shock and cried. Mei Sen Brock then switched places with his assistant and asked him to shake the motor. He held the water bottle in one hand and touched the bucket in the other.

1780, when Italian anatomist luigi galvani dissected a frog, he accidentally touched the frog's thigh with different metal instruments in his hand, and the muscles of the frog's leg twitched immediately, as if stimulated by electric current, but if only one metal instrument was used to touch the frog, there would be no such reaction. Galvani believes that this phenomenon is caused by a kind of electricity generated in animals, which he calls "bioelectricity".

Galvani's discovery aroused great interest of physicists, who competed to repeat the experiment of flail Vanni, trying to find a way to generate electricity. After many experiments, Italian physicist Volt thought that Galvani's "bioelectricity" was incorrect, and the frog's muscles worked. To prove his point, Volt immersed two different kinds of metal sheets in different solutions for experiments. It is found that as long as one of the two kinds of metal sheets reacts with the solution, an electric current can be generated between the metal sheets.

1799, Italian physicist Volt immersed a zinc plate and a tinplate in salt water, and found that there was current flowing in the wire connecting the two metals. So he put many pieces of flannel or paper soaked in salt water between zinc and silver, and then folded them flat. When you touch both ends with your hands, you will feel a strong current stimulus. In this way, Volt successfully made the world's first battery-"Volt reactor". This "volt stack" is actually a series battery pack. It became the power supply for early electrical experiments and telegrams.

1836, Daniel of England improved the "buried pile". He used dilute sulfuric acid as electrolyte to solve the problem of battery polarization, and made the first unpolarized zinc-copper battery with current balance. After that, the voltage of these batteries decreased with the extension of service time.

When the battery voltage drops after a period of use, the battery voltage rises. Because this kind of battery can be used repeatedly, it is called "storage battery".

However, no matter what kind of battery needs to be filled with liquid between two metal plates, it is very inconvenient to carry, especially the liquid used by the battery is sulfuric acid, which is very dangerous when moving.

Also in 1860, Reckling invented the precursor of the battery (carbon-zinc battery) which is widely used in the world. Its negative electrode is an alloy rod of zinc and mercury (the negative electrode of zinc volt prototype battery, which is proved to be one of the best materials for negative electrode), while its positive electrode is a mixture of crushed manganese dioxide and carbon in a porous cup. A carbon rod is inserted into this mixture as a current collector. Both the negative electrode rod and the positive electrode cup are immersed in ammonium chloride solution as electrolyte. This system is called "wet battery". Reclin's battery is simple but cheap, so it was not replaced by the improved "dry battery" until 1880. The negative electrode was improved into a zinc can (that is, the shell of the battery), and the electrolyte became paste instead of liquid. Basically, this is what we now know as a carbon-zinc battery.

1887, Englishman Hellesen invented the earliest dry battery. The electrolyte of dry battery is paste-like, does not leak and is easy to carry, so it has been widely used.

1890, Thomas Edison invented the rechargeable iron-nickel battery.