Strangest Mysteries of the World and Beyond !

Baghdad Battery

Baghdad Battery:

   

We all have heard of batteries. Today batteries can be found in any grocery, drug, convenience and department store you come across. Well, here's a battery that's 2,000 years old! (Astounding, isn’t it?)

What is this battery?

Known as the Baghdad Battery. 

In 1936, while excavating ruins of a 2000-year-old village near Baghdad, workers discovered mysterious small vase. A 6-inch-high pot of bright yellow clay dating back two millennia contained a cylinder of sheet-copper 5 inches by 1.5 inches. The edge of the copper cylinder was soldered with a 60-40 lead-tin alloy comparable to today's solder. The bottom of the cylinder was capped with a crimped-in copper disk and sealed with bitumen or asphalt. Another insulating layer of asphalt sealed the top and also held in place an iron rod suspended into the center of the copper cylinder. The rod showed evidence of having been corroded with an acidic agent.

According to most texts the "voltic pile," or electric battery, was invented in 1800 by the Count Alassandro Volta. Volta had observed that when two dissimilar metal probes were placed against frog tissue, a weak electric current was generated. Volta discovered he could reproduce this current outside of living tissue by placing the metals in certain chemical solutions. For this, and his other work with electricity, we commemorate his name in the measurement of electric potential called the volt.

The little jar in Baghdad suggests that Volta didn't invent the battery, but reinvented it. The jar was first described by German archaeologist Wilhelm Konig in 1938. It is unclear if Konig dug the object up himself or located it within the holdings of the museum, but it is known that it was found, with several others, at a place called Khujut Rabu, just outside Baghdad.

The jars are believed to be about 2,000 years old and consist of an earthenware shell, with a stopper composed of asphalt. Sticking through the top of the stopper is an iron rod. Inside the jar the rod is surrounded by a cylinder of copper. Konig thought these things looked like electric batteries and published a paper on the subject in 1940.

World War II prevented immediate follow-up on the jars, but after hostilities ceased, an American, Willard F. M. Gray of the General Electric High Voltage Laboratory in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, built some reproductions. When filled with an electrolyte like grape juice, the devices produced about two volts.

If they were batteries, though, who made them and what were they used for? Right, I mean this is definitely the foremost question.

It is said, Khujut Rabu was a settlement of a people called the Parthians. While the Parthians were excellent fighters, they had not been noted for their technological achievements and some reseachers have suggested they obtained the batteries from someone else. A few people have even suggested that this someone else was a space traveler that visited Earth during ancient times.

As romantic a notion as this is, there is nothing about the Baghdad batteries that is high-tech. All the materials used are common in origin and the manufacture was well within the ability of many of the peoples of that era. What is surprising about the jars is that somebody figured out how to put the right materials together in the right way to make a device that has a function which was not obvious. It is likely that the batteries (if that is what they are) the result of an isolated and accidental development.

 It more seems like a chain of events.

It is suggested that they were used to electroplate items (a feat recently duplicated on the show Discovery Channel show Mythbusters). The electroplating process uses a small electric current to put a thin layer of one metal (such as gold) on to the surface of another (such as silver).

This idea is appealing because at its core lies the mother of many inventions: money.

In the making of jewellery, for example, a layer of gold or silver is often applied to enhance its beauty in a process called gilding.

Also, some have suggested the batteries may have been used medicinally.

The ancient Greeks wrote of the pain killing effect of electric fish when applied to the soles of the feet.

 The Chinese had developed acupuncture by this time, and still use acupuncture combined with an electric current. This may explain the presence of needle-like objects found with some of the batteries.

But this tiny voltage would surely have been ineffective against real pain, considering the well-recorded use of other painkillers in the ancient world like cannabis, opium and wine.

 Or was it used in Magical rituals:

 It is said that to the uninitiated, science cannot be distinguished from magic. "In Egypt we know this sort of thing happened with Hero's engine," Dr Craddock says.

Hero's engine was a primitive steam-driven machine, and like the battery of Baghdad, no one is quite sure what it was used for, but are convinced it could work.

If this idol could be found, it would be strong evidence to support the new theory. With the batteries inside, was this object once revered, like the Oracle of Delphi in Greece, and "charged" with godly powers?

Even if the current were insufficient to provide a genuine shock, it may have felt warm, a bizarre tingle to the touch of the unsuspecting finger. (Quite an enigma)

At the very least, it could have just been the container of these articles, to keep their secret safe.

Perhaps it is too early to say the battery has been convincingly demonstrated to be part of a magical ritual. Further examination, including accurate dating, of the batteries' components are needed to really answer this mystery.

Where can we see this battery? If we want to, where is it placed?

They have been placed in the Baghdad Museum, with others which were unearthed in Iraq, all dated from the Parthian occupation between 248 BCE and 226 CE.

 Definitely, a worthwhile visit,eh!