units of measurement for electrical potential or voltage, named after an Italian scientist.
From Alessandro Volta, an 18th-century Italian physicist who invented the electric battery. The unit was named in his honor at an 1881 international conference on electrical standards.
Alessandro Volta created the first battery called the 'voltaic pile' in 1800—it was literally a stack of copper and zinc disks separated by cardboard soaked in salt water, and it proved electricity could be created chemically rather than just observed in lightning.
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