Luigi Galvani investigated the effect of static charges on frog’s legs. He discovered that the muscles in the leg could be made to twitch if two different metals formed a circuit with the muscle tissue. He incorrectly concluded that the tissues produced an electric fluid that moved between the nerves and the muscles.
Alessandro Volta showed that electricity could be generated by creating a stack of two different metal coins separated by cardboard disks soaked in brine. This stack became known as Volta’s Pile. Volta incorrectly thought that it was the contact between the two metals that generated the electricity.
Humphrey Davy used improved versions of Volta’s Pile to pass electric currents through water and various molten salts. He noticed that the electrical energy caused the decomposition of the salts through which it was passed. He correctly concluded that the electric charges were generated by chemical changes.
Michael Faraday continued Davy’s experiments to develop laws regarding the quantity of electric charge as well as the mass of products formed in electrolytic decomposition reactions. He measured charge by the amount of oxygen released by a sulfuric acid electrolytic cell connected in series with the test cell.