This Volta's Pistol is made of sheet iron, with a cork on one end and a screw fitting on the other. Volta invented his pistol (also called a spark eudiometer) in 1777. He used it to analyze swamp gases. He would collect swamp gas, and mix it with air, then fill his pistol with it. (The screw fitting on the right is to fasten to the gas-mixing apparatus. The cork on the left would be put in after the pistol was filled, to keep the gas from escaping. There would be a metal rod tipped with a brass ball in the glass tube at the center (missing in this example) which would serve as a spark plug.

If the gas were flammable, and the proportions right, it would explode when sparked. Volta's early pistols were capable of sending a lead ball twenty feet, and denting a board. Later refinements were used to prove that hydrogen and oxygen, burnt together, formed water.

Long after its scientific use had gone, the Volta Pistol remained a favorite lecture-hall demonstration. Close relatives may still be found on sale today; the thunder house the Bakken Museum uses in demonstrations is modern, with a modern Volta Pistol inside, and we get the "fuel" from a company that still does a vigorous business in toy cannons with a big bang to them. The Volta Pistol is a close relative of the electric bomb or mortar, which uses a spark to explode gunpowder.

Museum Hours: Tuesday - Saturday 10 to 5
Thursdays 10 am to  8pm 
Closed Major Holidays
Library Hours: Monday - Friday 9 to 4:30

Admission: $7 Adults; $5 Students & Seniors; Children 3 and under are FREE!

© The Bakken Updated: April 6, 2007