1. 1800-1991: from the Volta battery to commercial battery chains

1.1 A time of first discoveries

At the dawn of the 19th century, Italian physicist and chemist Alessandro Volta had been studying for many years the phenomena of electricity generation at the terminals of a stack (hence the term "battery") consisting of two metal electrodes (zinc and copper) separated by a cloth impregnated with a salt solution. He laid the first scientific foundations of electrochemistry. A few decades later, Michael Faraday enunciated the first "electrochemical theory" to stand the test of experimental fact, including, among other things, the law that bears his name, according to which the quantity of matter transformed during a reaction is proportional to the quantity of electricity passing through the electrochemical cell. He proposed new terms: electrode, anode,...