Baghdad Battery
The account
A jar with a copper cylinder and an iron rod would be an electric battery used almost 2,000 years ago.
What investigators found
Replicas produce a small voltage, but no wires or devices are associated with it. Archaeologists think it more likely held sacred scrolls.
The story
In 1936, near Baghdad, in Iraq, a small clay jar about 13 centimeters tall was found. Inside it was a copper cylinder and, in the middle, an iron rod. The Austrian archaeologist Wilhelm König, who worked at the Baghdad museum, suggested in 1938 that it was an electric battery.
The idea spread around the world. If he was right, electricity would have been used about 1,800 years before Alessandro Volta's battery of 1800. Replicas filled with grape juice or vinegar managed to produce a small voltage, less than one volt.
But there are no wires, conductors or devices connected to the jar, and no texts that mention electricity. Its dating is also uncertain, somewhere between the Parthian and Sasanian periods. For most archaeologists, similar objects were used to store sacred scrolls. The "battery" remains one of the favorite curiosities of those who believe in lost technology.