The transmission of the Voltaic battery

When Alessandro Volta announced the invention of his battery (‘pile’), the news spread very quickly to many parts of Europe and North America through various types of outlets and networks. A great number of investigators succeeded in reproducing Volta’s apparatus and its effects. Often the work was only guided by written reports by Volta and others (even brief newspaper articles) and yet there is very little complaint on record that replication was not possible, contrary to what one might expect from recent discussions of tacit knowledge. Volta’s battery was an easily replicable type of apparatus, as I have confirmed in my own physical replication of it. I consider the material, theoretical and institutional conditions which made Volta’s work so easy to transmit, and I argue that Volta’s work is typical of a certain mode of science that flourished during the period around 1800, but not of all science.