The Baghdad Battery
Ancient Electricity ?
The one we know today as the Baghdad Battery is a small amphora found in Khujut Rabu in 1936, in an archaeological site near the Iraqi capital. About 15 centimeters high, it contains a small copper cylinder 9 centimeters long and 2.6 centimeters in diameter, closed at the ends by two bitumen plugs; inside is an iron bar. It dates from around 200 BC, when the Parthian people lived in the region. Although similar containers were often used for the conversation of papyri, Wilhelm Konig, an Austrian archaeologist, immediately noticed the resemblance of this object with another already quite widespread in the 1930s: the carbon zinc battery.
How could these people have known electricity from the 2nd century BC? It is difficult to assert anything in this matter, because, indeed, any object comprising two different metals immersed in an acid solution can function as a battery.
Laboratory tests
This Baghdad Battery can only produce discontinuous electric power and very low power, because it does not have some details specific to our current batteries. If researchers tested different substances, only copper sulphate gives good results, although of short duration. Some are convinced that the ancients had surprisingly advanced technological knowledge, inherited from civilizations like that of the survivor of Atlantis. However, they only knew how to use them summarily. But if that were the case, what could be the use of such an object by the Parthians?
Today, the low-voltage current that could be produced by the Baghdad Battery is used for the plating of gold, a process which makes it possible to create a thin sheet of the precious metal and to perfectly cover an object with it. Many precious objects have been discovered in archaeological sites around the world, the exact details of which remain a mystery. This does not prove, however, that they are the result of this process. In addition, nothing was found next to the amphora that would conduct electricity from the battery to the possible object to work.
The amphora used for the sacred papyrus could contain metal statuettes bearing the image of the deities. Now, how is it that the iron rod found in the Baghdad Battery is corroded as if it had been in contact with acids? Could it be, as some claim, that these ancient peoples had knowledge of electricity without knowing how to use it?
Of course, the mystery of the Baghdad Battery remains intact. What if, among those who think that these objects were brought by extraterrestrials and purely rational scientific theories, the truth was still elsewhere?
Battery operation
In a battery, two different reactions take place near the electrodes and produce energy. These reactions which release the electrons take place between the electrodes and the substances dissolved in the liquid where these are immersed. A battery has two poles, one positive, the other negative. The electrons, usually located at the bottom of the battery, do not activate if the poles are not connected. When we place a battery in any device, its two poles connect to the circuits of that device, which releases electrons and produces electrical energy.
