Mysterious Facts About Ancient Baghdad Battery - Strange Artifacts
Kaushik Biswas
2016-05-15
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The Baghdad Battery, sometimes referred to as the Parthian Battery, is the common name for a number of artifacts created in Mesopotamia, during the Parthian or Sassanid periods (roughly 250 BC to AD 250), and probably discovered in 1936 in the village of Khuyut Rabbou'a, near Baghdad, Iraq. These artifacts came to wider attention in 1938 when Wilhelm König, the German director of the National Museum of Iraq, found the objects in the museum's collections. In 1940, König published a paper speculating that they may have been galvanic cells, perhaps used for electroplating gold onto silver objects. This interpretation is generally rejected today. It is frequently cited by believers in extraterrestrial visitation, ancient astronaut theories and advocates of pseudoarchaeology theories, in particular, a chapter on the batteries appeared in Erich von Däniken's discredited book Chariots of the Gods?, leading to the theory being publicly described as a myth, and considered impossible or irrelevant. Along with other theories and explanations presented by von Däniken, it is considered by the mainstream archaeological academy as fringe science or even charlatanism, assuming von Däniken knows his presentations are skewed and mostly not true, but still advocating the theories for money or fame. Von Däniken, and other fringe science theorists further claimed that electricity was used in ancient times, for lighting the tower of Alexandria, the tunnels of the Egyptian pyramids and for other sites and uses, besides coin plating. If correct, the artifacts would predate Alessandro Volta's 1800 invention of the electrochemical cell by more than a millennium.
In March 2012, Professor Elizabeth Stone, of Stony Brook University, an expert on Iraqi archaeology, returning from the first archaeological expedition in Iraq after 20 years, stated that she does not know a single archaeologist who believed that these were batteries.
The artifacts consist of terracotta pots approximately 130 mm (5 in) tall (with a one-and-a-half-inch mouth) containing a copper cylinder made of a rolled-up copper sheet, which houses a single iron rod. At the top, the iron rod is isolated from the copper by bitumen plugs or stoppers, and both rod and cylinder fit snugly inside the opening of the jar, which bulges outward toward the middle. The copper cylinder is not watertight, so if the jar were filled with a liquid, this would surround the iron rod as well. The artifact had been exposed to the weather and had suffered corrosion, although mild given the presence of an electrochemical couple. This has led some to believe that wine, lemon juice, grape juice, or vinegar was used as an acidic electrolyte solution to generate an electric current from the difference between the electrode potentials of the copper and iron electrodes.
König thought the objects might date to the Parthian period (between 250 BC and AD 224). However, according to St John Simpson of the Near Eastern department of the British Museum, their original excavation and context were not well-recorded (see stratigraphy), so evidence for this date range is very weak. Furthermore, the style of the pottery is Sassanid (224-640).
Most of the components of the objects are not particularly amenable to advanced dating methods. The ceramic pots could be analysed by thermoluminescence dating, but this has not yet been done; in any case, it would only date the firing of the pots, which is not necessarily the same as when the complete artifact was assembled.
Copper and iron form an electrochemical couple, so that, in the presence of any electrolyte, an electric potential (voltage) will be produced. This is not a very efficient battery as gas is evolved at an electrode, the bubbles forming a partial insulation of the electrode so that although several volts can be produced in theory by connecting them in series, their internal resistance from the formation of the gas bubbles becomes so great that it severely limits the electrical current that can be produced from such a simple wet cell.
Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad_Battery
http://www.unmuseum.org/bbattery.htm
http://www.smith.e
The Baghdad Battery, sometimes referred to as the Parthian Battery, is the common name for a number of artifacts created in Mesopotamia, during the Parthian or Sassanid periods (roughly 250 BC to AD 250), and probably discovered in 1936 in the village of Khuyut Rabbou'a, near Baghdad, Iraq. These artifacts came to wider attention in 1938 when Wilhelm König, the German director of the National Museum of Iraq, found the objects in the museum's collections. In 1940, König published a paper speculating that they may have been galvanic cells, perhaps used for electroplating gold onto silver objects. This interpretation is generally rejected today. It is frequently cited by believers in extraterrestrial visitation, ancient astronaut theories and advocates of pseudoarchaeology theories, in particular, a chapter on the batteries appeared in Erich von Däniken's discredited book Chariots of the Gods?, leading to the theory being publicly described as a myth, and considered impossible or irrelevant. Along with other theories and explanations presented by von Däniken, it is considered by the mainstream archaeological academy as fringe science or even charlatanism, assuming von Däniken knows his presentations are skewed and mostly not true, but still advocating the theories for money or fame. Von Däniken, and other fringe science theorists further claimed that electricity was used in ancient times, for lighting the tower of Alexandria, the tunnels of the Egyptian pyramids and for other sites and uses, besides coin plating. If correct, the artifacts would predate Alessandro Volta's 1800 invention of the electrochemical cell by more than a millennium.
In March 2012, Professor Elizabeth Stone, of Stony Brook University, an expert on Iraqi archaeology, returning from the first archaeological expedition in Iraq after 20 years, stated that she does not know a single archaeologist who believed that these were batteries.
The artifacts consist of terracotta pots approximately 130 mm (5 in) tall (with a one-and-a-half-inch mouth) containing a copper cylinder made of a rolled-up copper sheet, which houses a single iron rod. At the top, the iron rod is isolated from the copper by bitumen plugs or stoppers, and both rod and cylinder fit snugly inside the opening of the jar, which bulges outward toward the middle. The copper cylinder is not watertight, so if the jar were filled with a liquid, this would surround the iron rod as well. The artifact had been exposed to the weather and had suffered corrosion, although mild given the presence of an electrochemical couple. This has led some to believe that wine, lemon juice, grape juice, or vinegar was used as an acidic electrolyte solution to generate an electric current from the difference between the electrode potentials of the copper and iron electrodes.
König thought the objects might date to the Parthian period (between 250 BC and AD 224). However, according to St John Simpson of the Near Eastern department of the British Museum, their original excavation and context were not well-recorded (see stratigraphy), so evidence for this date range is very weak. Furthermore, the style of the pottery is Sassanid (224-640).
Most of the components of the objects are not particularly amenable to advanced dating methods. The ceramic pots could be analysed by thermoluminescence dating, but this has not yet been done; in any case, it would only date the firing of the pots, which is not necessarily the same as when the complete artifact was assembled.
Copper and iron form an electrochemical couple, so that, in the presence of any electrolyte, an electric potential (voltage) will be produced. This is not a very efficient battery as gas is evolved at an electrode, the bubbles forming a partial insulation of the electrode so that although several volts can be produced in theory by connecting them in series, their internal resistance from the formation of the gas bubbles becomes so great that it severely limits the electrical current that can be produced from such a simple wet cell.
Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad_Battery
http://www.unmuseum.org/bbattery.htm
http://www.smith.e
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