Italian physicist, professor at Pavia. Volta established that the animal electricity observed by Luigi Galvani, 1737–1798, in experiments with frog muscle tissue placed in contact with dissimilar metals, was not due to any exceptional property of animal tissues but was also generated whenever any wet body was sandwiched between dissimilar metals. This led him to develop the first voltaic pile, or battery, consisting of a large stack of moist disks of cardboard (electrolyte) sandwiched between disks of metal (electrodes).