Did you know that the roots of modern electricity go way, way back? They go all the way back to 4000 years ago!
In 1936, while excavating ruins in a 2000 year old village near Baghdad, workers discovered what we today call the Baghdad Battery.
The picture above shows what the battery actually consists of: a six inch (or so) clay pot, cylindrical sheet of copper and an iron rod. The edge of the copper cylinder was capped with a crimped in copper disk and sealed both on the top and on the bottom with an insulating layer of asphalt. The top asphalt stopper held in place an iron rod suspended into the center cylinder and showed evidence of corrosion by an acidic agent.
The prevailing theory today is that the batteries were used to electroplate gold and silver onto objects. Incidentally, housed in the same museum were similar batteries un-earthed from Sumerian sites. These dated back to nearly 2500BCE.
Recently, the folks on the Discovery Channel’s MythBusters show tried to debunk the Baghdad battery. They actually proved its powerful capacity when they hooked ten of the batteries together and the result of the mega-battery registered around 4.5 volts. Weak by today’s standards but it would have been a shocker in the ancient world!