Years ago I saw an article about the discovery of what appeared to be an electric battery in some sumerian ruins. The device was tested…when filled with sour grape juice, the hing produced about 1.2 volts (it was a metal jar with a central bronze electrode.
At the time, there was speculation that the device was used to perform electroplating…has this ever been proven out?
And, if the ancients new about electricity, why was the secret lost? 
Two different metals + electrolyte = battery (galvanic cell, more precisely).
Anything that has two different metals in it will turn into a battery when you drop it into salt water, or vinegar, or “sour grape juice”.
And it’s quite possible to do “electroplating” like this. Drop an iron nail and a copper coin into some acid. The copper will plate onto the iron.
It doesn’t mean that you would necessarily understand anything at all about electricity, just like the ability to brew beer doesn’t mean you understand microbiology.
according to http://www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/ane/anecofaq.html
the battery you are talking about is probably just a ornamental type of thing used in magic rituals
translation: no one knows anything about it, but we can’t beleive the sumarians knew anything about electricity
There’s a good article on the Baghdad Batteries by the BBC.
Basically, no one has proven anything although there a lot of ideas.
There was an article in Skeptical Inquirer about it a while back, suggesting other possibilities. Ordinarily, I agree with the SI, but in this case they seemed to be stretching things.
I think people suggested that the batteries could be used for electroplatic because they couldn’t think of anything else to do with them. It’s not as if the Sumerians could hook these up to light bulbs or LEDs or little Sumerian electric motors.
And there’s the real problem. I don’t have a problem with Sumerians having electricity. I have a problem seeing how this supposed battery could have evolved in the absence of a lot of other knowledge and/or technology. You don’t just accidently put together a battery and have it work. An electroplating system doesn’t just come together, even when you have a battery. Our first instinct is to connect the leads of the battery with wires to the item being plated and a metal tank of solution. But this isn’t an obvious thing to do, by any means. Heck, the 18th century experimenters in electricity used wet packthreads!
So I have trouble with this battery because it’s an isolated item – there are no other electrical or scientific apparatus associated with it, as far as I know. No electroplating tanks or wands. And, aside from giving little jolts of stimulation (“Hey, Hamadrasi, come here and put your tongue on this thing!”), I can’t see how they could even tell the battery was doing anything.
The damned thing does look a hell of a lot like an electric cell, though. In the 19th century a lot of cells looked exactly like that, right down to the metal rod and ceramic pot. So keep an open mind, and try to think of a logical route to development, and a realistic use for the battery.
Well, I know that the Egyptians are not the Sumerians, but here’s the Egyptian lightbulb.
Of course, the second you see “Erich Von Daniken” you should probably stop reading.
I can see why one would be sceptical. However, if there was a battery, electroplating would be the most obvious application - it would make an unscrupulous inventor rich very quickly through counterfitting.
While it is tempting to be incredulous at the sophistication of ancient inventors, many examples show that they could be very clever indeed - when it comes to inventions with money-making potential. For example, it is well known that Precolumbian Mesoamericans had some pretty sophisticated counterfitting techniques of their own. They would make an object out of a mixure of a small amount of gold and a large amount of base metal, put the object in an acidic solution, wait a while - and presto! The copper/other base metal on the outside would disolve, leaving a coating of porous gold. Burnish, and you have an apparently solid-gold object at a fraction of the cost.
This developed in a culture quite deficient in many forms of scientific knowledge. So I don’t find it so odd that the Sumerians could have had a trick or two.
Equally, it is obvious why, if they did, they would keep it a secret: electroplating, presuming others do not know of this technique, would be as good a method as any to counterfit golden objects. Hence those that use it would have every incentive to keep it a close secret.
As a side issue, it is well known that the ancients employed some conterfiting technology. What about the story of Archamedies (sp?) and his “eureka!” moment - wasn’t he working on the problem of how to tell whether a certain gold object was counterfit, without cutting it open? I have never heard what technique was used to make the counterfit in question - maybe it was electroplated!
Maybe what someone said about subscribers feeling horny is true – I’ve had a perverse thought.
Some time ago someone wrote in the SDMB about a woman who liked having her genitals stimulated with a 9 volt battery.
Is it possible…?
“Hey, Hamadrasi, put this thing on your thing!”
…that the “Baghdad Battery” is an example of the world’s first battery-operated marital aid?
It makes a lot od sense. It doesn’t require the development of a whole parallel technology (as of electroplating or van Daniken light bulbs). Given that a crude battery somehow gets built (and, as most home chemists know, that can be as simple as sticking two dissimilar metals into, say, a lemon), it’s easy to discover the mini-“zap” one gets on the tongue. And to extrapolate from there to both stronger batteries and more interesting places to zap.
I’ve long said that the greatest creative force is horny male engineers. (I don’t know enough horny female engineers to make statements about them – but the male engineers outnumber them, in any case.)
“Hey, Hamadrasi, I’ve figured out how to use the Sex Toy to turn a crown gold!”
“Get real!”
Archimedes discovered that the object wasn’t pure gold by measuring the volume (lower it into a full tub and collect the water it displaces) and comparing it with the volume it should have had if it were pure gold. Most likely the object wasn’t plated but made of an alloy of gold and something else, maybe copper, so the craftsman could turn an extra profit.
As Demostylus pointed out, electroplating is easy. Leave two spoons (made of different metals) in the pickle jar, and if they touch above the brine level one spoon will get a plating of the other’s metal. A little tinkering will give you the full setup, so the Sumerian idea isn’t too implausible.
I know how Archimedes discovered the object wasn’t gold - I just wonder if anyone has any information as to how the fakery was accomplished. It strikes me that an alloy would look wrong (I am no metallurgist, so I could be wrong in that), but maybe the faker did a variation of the mesoamerican technique?
[quote]
As Demostylus pointed out, electroplating is easy. Leave two spoons (made of different metals) in the pickle jar, and if they touch above the brine level one spoon will get a plating of the other’s metal. A little tinkering will give you the full setup, so the Sumerian idea isn’t too implausible.
[/quoe]
To tell the truth, I really don’t buy this. I can see discovering a plating method by touching metals. I could conceive of someone doing replacement by dissolved salts (although that’s a stretch), but I can’t see how touching metals in saline gets you a battery plus the electroplating tank and wires (that’s what’s usually proposed whenever anyone brings up the Baghdad Battery) – there are too many non-obvious steps, and a lotta conceptual leaps. The progression is not an obvious one.
The weird thing about the sexual use is that it does follow a traceable path. I’m getting more and more tempted to take it seriously.
If you don’t like that suggestion, here are a couple of others:
– I know from experience that a 12 Volt lantern battery will cause a pretty spectacular demise of a fine piece of steel wire. To see for yourself, “tease” a single strand of wire from a piece of steel wool (preferably the kind sold in hardware stores, with no soap on it. DON’T use plastic “steel wool”) and hold it between the leads of the battery. Current flows, the resistance causes it to heat up, an it fails catastrophically in a flash of red and orange. I’m not sure if you could get enough oomph with a probable Baghdad Battery, or what wire material you’d use (almost certainly not steel, of course, and I think copper would be too good a conductor. But maybe lead), but if you could generate the same effect, then you’d have somethin impressive in ancient Iraq. You could use it as a priestly/magic effect, and really “wow” the plebs.
– Another posibility would be to use such a wire, rapped, erhaps in cotton and/or straw, as a fire starter. No wrangling with metal and flint, or with a bow drill when you’re away from home and hearth.
Neiher of these uses requires knwing about conducting wires or any other technology – all you have to do is observ the effect of metal placed across the same electrodes that produce a jolt on your tongue – a natural enough progression.
Aha! Here’s the thread I was looking for – Female Genital Stimulation with a 9-Volt Battery:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=241977&highlight=Battery
Where but the SDMB can you find this stuff?
Have you tried googling for “porn” ? 
alt.tasteless for one… or, more reliably these days, its archive web pages.
I have suspicions that just like the BBC atricle suggests, quack medicine might be an accurate explanation.
In the museum in which I work, we have a very similar item. It was rediscovered in one of our storage vaults while I was on vacation. All the time I was gone, they puzzled over it, wondering what it might be. When I came back to work, I saw it sitting on the desk. “Oh, cool! It’s one of those batteries!” I exclaimed. Everyone stared at me until I explained what I meant.
It was only because I had seen articles about the Baghdad Battery that I recognized it. Ours is made of glass, but it has basically the same structure.
The charge may have been too weak to actually do anything, but I can imagine that a quack doctor could convince his patients otherwise. “If you feel the tingle, you know it’s working!”