Alessandro Volta. Coloured artwork of Count Alessandro Giuseppe Volta (1745-1827). His invention, the electric battery , consisted of alternating disks of silver and zinc with brine- soaked card between them. Volta first announced his discovery in 1800 in a letter to the Royal Society in Britain. He held professorships at the universities of Como and Pavia, Italy. He became interested in electricity in 1786 after seeing the work of Galvani. The unit of electrical potential, the volt (V), is named after him.