The Very First Known Battery

The first known battery in the world may have been created in a Parthian settlement called Khujut Rabu, near Baghdad. Known as the Baghdad Battery, the jar was first described in 1938, by a German archaeologist, Wilhelm Konig. It is not entirely clear that the jar was used as a battery, however. It has an asphalt stopper, an iron bar and a copper cylinder, and was filled with some unknown liquid. The Unmuseum suggests the battery may have been used for electroplating.

The Baghdad Battery probably dates from the Parthian (250 B.C.-A.D. 224) or Sassanid (A.D.224-600) periods.