250 BC - 224 AD: Some historians claim to have invented the first battery during this period, based on the discovery of iron and copper (similar to electrodes) and clay pots found near Baghdad in the 1930s.Although this finding is often referred to as "Baghdad battery" or "Patiya battery" (after discovery and after its historical period), other historians suspect that it actually produces current or batteries.

1744: Ewald Georg von Kleist (1700-1748) invented the Leyden jar, a glass container with metal foil for storing charge. Although it is actually a capacitor (a device for storing static electricity), it has the same purpose as a modern battery: it is a portable electrical energy storage. (Many early power experiments used Leyden tanks as the power source for our batteries.)

1749: American politician and inventor Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) first used the term "battery" to refer to multiple capacitors connected to each other.

1800: The Italian physicist Alessandro Volta (1745-1827) invented the Voltaic pile, the first practical battery. He made it by stacking zinc and silver plates, alternately separating them with cardboard and soaking them in brine.

1836: British chemist John Daniell (1790-1845) invented the Daniell battery, which is a more reliable battery.

1859: French doctor Gaston Plante (1834-1889) developed the world's first rechargeable lead-acid battery.

1868: Another Frenchman, Georges Leclanché (1839-1882), developed a modern zinc-carbon battery.

1949: Canadian chemical engineer Lewis Urry (1927-2004) invented alkaline and lithium batteries for Eveready Battery.

1970s: During the University of Oxford, American chemist John B. Goodenough (1922-) and colleagues discovered the science behind lithium-ion batteries. The first commercial batteries using this technology were developed by Sony in the 1990s.

2017: John B. Goodenough applies for lithium or soda batteries and will replace lithium-ion battery technology in the future.