Volta 100 years later or the state of art of Volta’s battery in physics textbooks at the end of the 19th century

Abstract

This paper provides some differences found in didactic textbooks with regard to batteries at the end of the 19^th century up to the present. In several situations the everyday use of batteries eclipses the nature of electricity in motion. This occurs because of the superficial scientific treatment in “didactic” physics textbooks, which show a lack of the powerful motivation they used to have in the last decade of the 19^th century when the machine revolution was based upon electrical current, and the machines were the precursors of the new century’s modernization.