Volta thought that the electricity was not in the dead frog but in the iron and copper. He experimented and found it to be so: whenever he brought together the iron and the copper, there was electricity; and this electricity made the dead frogs jerk their legs. Volta tried to produce electricity differently from what it had been produced before. Before that they used to get electricity by rubbing glass or sealing-wax. But Volta got electricity by uniting iron and copper. He tried to connect iron and copper and other metals, and by the mere combination of metals, silver, platinum, zinc, lead, iron, he produced electric sparks.

After Volta they tried to increase electricity by pouring all kinds of liquids⁠—water and acids⁠—between the metals. These liquids made the electricity more powerful, so that it was no longer necessary, as before, to rub in order to produce it; it is enough to put pieces of several metals in a bowl and fill it with a liquid, and there will be electricity in that bowl, and the sparks will come from the wires.