Was the ‘Baghdad battery’ really two cells?
A new study suggests it had an ‘outer’ cell that reacted with air to supply a higher voltage. But was it a battery at all?
A new study of the roughly 2000-year-old artefact known as the Baghdad battery suggests it was not just a single electrochemical cell – and that when built properly it had much more power than previously thought.
The research does not convince some archaeologists who have studied the object, however, with one telling Chemistry World that it may not have been a battery at all.