The latest and greatest, state-of-the-art iPhone features a battery that can support over 30 hours of video playback.

That’s cool. But engineers in the early 1800s once created a small battery that still, to this day, has not run out. It’s the world’s longest lasting battery, and it’s also a bit of a mystery to modern scientists.

London ‘instrument makers’ create battery inspired by Italian physicist

In 1825, manufacturing company Watkins and Hill created a battery inspired by the work of 19th-century Italian physicist and priest Giuseppe Zamboni. Zamboni had developed a method of creating batteries called “dry piles,” or tall stacks of extremely thin layers of tin foil separated by layers of paper.

They’re called dry piles because, unlike many modern batteries, they don’t contain any liquid. This early battery design could generate an extremely high voltage but a very low current. That means that the large power potential of the battery flows out slowly, creating a battery........

© Upworthy