Experimental galvanic battery

Kenneth Treasurer Kemp (1805-42) was a private lecturer in practical chemistry in Edinburgh during the late 1820s. He had a research interest in electricity, and started to supply instruments and apparatus of his own invention to the public. This electrochemical battery was the first to use zinc amalgam (zinc alloyed with mercury).

Each of the circular wooden cups in this stack (or battery), has a projecting rim, and on the base, a circular convex plate of zinc attached to the cup. A zinc or copper wire projects through this, and the whole thing apart from the wire is sealed with wax. Mercury and muriatic acid are poured into the cup: successive cups are piled up, linked to each other by the wires.

Kemp first appeared in the street directories in 1829, as a lecturer, when he was aged 24, but his teaching career had evidently begun much earlier. He was the son of a merchant tailor and hatter, and was almost entirely self-taught. This was at a time when classes in practical chemistry were proving particularly popular, as not only were they not taught within the University, but it was a necessary part of the examinations of the Royal Colleges of Surgeons and Physicians.

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