Volta Prize facts for kids

The Volta Prize was a special award created in France in 1852. It was named after Alessandro Volta, an Italian scientist famous for inventing the electric battery. This prize gave out a lot of money – 50,000 French francs – to amazing scientific discoveries, especially those about electricity. It was started by Napoleon III, who was the Emperor of France at the time, and he even used his own money to fund it! A group of smart scientists from the French Academy of Sciences usually decided who would win.

Some famous winners included Heinrich Ruhmkorff, who made a device called an induction coil popular, and Zénobe Gramme, who invented the Gramme dynamo and the first useful electric motor for factories.

One of the most well-known awards was given in 1880 to Alexander Graham Bell. He won the prize for inventing the invention of the telephone. Famous writers like Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas, fils were even part of the committee that chose him! Bell used his prize money to create new science places in Washington, D.C.. These included the important Volta Laboratory Association in 1880, which was an early version of what is now Bell Labs. Later, in 1887, he started the Volta Bureau, which became the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (AG Bell).

The Volta Prize stopped being awarded in 1888.

Why the Volta Prize Was Created

Volta explains his "electric column" to Napoleon in 1801.

The idea for the Volta Prize came from an earlier award called the Galvanism Prize. This prize was started by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1801. It offered a huge prize of 60,000 francs for discoveries like those made by Volta and Benjamin Franklin. However, no one ever won the main prize.

Only four people received a smaller reward of 30,000 francs from the Galvanism Prize:

• 1806 Paul Erman
• 1807 Sir Humphry Davy
• 1809 Shared by Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac and Baron Louis Jacques Thénard

Also, the person who started the Volta Prize, Napoleon III, was very interested in electricity himself. He was Napoleon Bonaparte's nephew. In 1843, he even showed his own type of voltaic pile (an early battery) to the French Academy of Sciences.

How to Win the Volta Prize

The rules for the Volta Prize were set by Napoleon III in Paris on February 23, 1852. Here's what the rules said:

• Article 1: A prize of 50,000 French francs would be given for new ways to use the voltaic pile (electric battery). This included uses in factories, for lighting cities, in chemistry, in machines, and in medicine.
• Article 2: Scientists and inventors from any country could enter the competition.
• Article 3: The prize would be available to win for five years.
• Article 4: A special committee would be set up to look at each invention and decide if it met the rules.
• Article 5: French government ministers were in charge of making sure these rules were followed.

The 50,000 francs prize money was a lot! It was about $10,000 in US dollars at that time. This was more than five times what a professor in Paris earned in a whole year!

Who Won the Volta Prize

Here are the main winners of the Volta Prize:

• 1858 No main prize was given. But special medals went to Heinrich Ruhmkorff, Paul-Gustave Froment, and Duchenne de Boulogne.
• 1863 Heinrich Ruhmkorff won for making the Ruhmkorff coil better.
• 1871 No prize was given.
• 1880 Alexander Graham Bell won for inventing the telephone. A smaller prize of 20,000 francs was also given to Zénobe Gramme.
• 1888 Zénobe Gramme won for his hard work in creating and improving the continuous-current dynamo.

Other people also received smaller awards for their work. These included Paul-Gustave Froment for his electric motor, Auguste Achard for an electric brake, Gaetan Bonelli for an electric loom, and David Edward Hughes for a printing telegraph.

See also

• Alexander Graham Bell honors and tributes
• Edison Volta Prize
• List of physics awards