Applications
On March 20, 1800, Volta wrote to the London Royal Society to describe the technique for producing electric current using his pile. On learning of the voltaic pile, William Nicholson and Anthony Carlisle used it to discover the electrolysis of water. Humphry Davy showed that the electromotive force, which drives the electric current through a circuit containing a single voltaic cell, was caused by a chemical reaction, not by the voltage difference between the two metals. He also used the voltaic pile to decompose chemicals and to produce new chemicals. William Hyde Wollaston showed that electricity from voltaic piles had identical effects to those of electricity produced by friction. In 1802 Vasily Petrov used voltaic piles in the discovery and research of electric arc effects.
Sir Humphry Davy and Andrew Crosse were among the first to develop large voltaic piles. Davy used a 2000-pair pile made for the Royal Institution in 1808 to demonstrate carbon arc discharge and isolate five new elements: barium, calcium, boron, strontium and magnesium.
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