Giuseppe Zamboni
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Giuseppe Zamboni was an Italian Roman Catholic priest and physicist who invented the Zamboni pile or "dry" pile.
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[edit] Biography
He was born at Venice (or depending on the source Verona), in northern Italy), June, 1776.
Shortly after completing his studies in the seminary at Verona, abbate Zamboni was appointed to the chair of physics in the lyceum of that city.
He died in Venice on July 25, 1846.
[edit] Invention
Zamboni is known to students of physics for an improved of the dry pile which he invented in 1812. It consists of a number of paper discs coated with zinc foil on one side and manganese dioxide on the other; the moisture of the paper serves as a conductor.
By pressing a large number of such discs together in a glass tube, an electromotive force can be obtained that is sufficient enough to deflect the leaves of an ordinary electroscope. By bringing the terminal knobs of the pile near each other and suspending a light brass ball between them, Zamboni devised what was called an electrostatic clock. The device is so named because the ball oscillating between the knobs looks like a pendulum.
In the Clarendon Laboratory at Oxford University, the terminals of such a pile are fitted with bells that have been continuously ringing for the last fifty years. The Zamboni pile is not a hypothetical perpetual motion device, as all action stops when the zinc is completely oxidized or the manganese exhausted.
[edit] Writings
Among Zamboni's works are: "Della pila elettrica a secco" (Venice, 1812); "L'elettromotore perpetuo" (Venice, 1820); "Descrizione d'un nuovo galvanometro" (Venice, 1833).
[edit] Sources and references
- This article incorporates text from the public-domain Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913. [1]
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