Scarce first printing of one of the most important contributions
to science and technology of the nineteenth century:
Volta’s invention of the electrical battery 

“Volta’s greatest contribution to science began with the discovery by Luigi Galvani in 1791 that the muscles in dead frogs contract when two dissimilar metals (brass and iron) are brought into contact with the muscle and each other. Volta successfully repeated Galvani’s experiments using different metals and different animals, and he also found that placing the two metals on his tongue produced an unpleasant sensation. The effects were due to electricity and in 1792, Volta concluded that the source of the electricity was in the junction of the two metals and not, as Galvani thought, in the animals … In 1796, Volta set out to measure the electricity produced by different metals, but to register any deflection on the electrometer he had to increase the tension by multiplying that given by a single junction. He soon hit upon the idea of piling discs of metal on top of each other and found that they had to be separated by a moist conductor to produce a current … Volta’s discovery was a sensation, for it enabled high electric currents to be produced for the first time. It was quickly applied to produce electrolysis, resulting in the discovery of several new chemical elements, and this led throughout the 1800s to the great discoveries of electromagnetism and electronics that culminated in the invention of the electrical machines and electronic devices that we use today” (The Hutchinson Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Vol. II, p. 941).  

“The voltaic pile revolutionized the theory and practice of electricity, so that within one hundred years of Volta’s invention more progress was made than in the two thousand four hundred years between the tentative experiences of Thales and the publication of Volta’s letter addressed to Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society. The pile consisted of a series of copper and zinc discs separated by pieces of cloth, paper, or paste-board soaked in a saline or acid fluid. Suitable connexion to an electroscope showed that (like a frictional machine) the pile produced an electric charge: but Volta demonstrated also that the action was continuous where an unbroken circuit permitted the flow of what he called, in a gracious gesture, the galvanic fluid" (PMM). PMM 255. Text in French, as issued. With one folding engraved plate of illustrations of electrical apparatus. A little light browning and spotting, a very good copy bound in marbled wrappers. Only three recorded copies on the market in the last 25 years. Scarce.