This Day in Geek History: March 20
1800
In a letter, Alessandro Volta announces his invention of the voltaic pile, the earliest battery, to Sir Joseph Banks, president of the Royal Society in London, England.
1841
The short story The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe, which will later come to be widely considered the first detective story in history, is published in Graham’s Magazine. The story establishes many literary devices and motifs later seen in the mystery genre.
1886
An alternating-current (AC) electrical system is demonstrated by lighting Main Street in Great Barrington, Massachusetts with electricity generated by the power planet of George Westinghouse.
1900
Nikola Tesla receives a patent for the wireless transmission of electric power. (US No. 645,576) View the patent online.
1916
Albert Einstein publishes an academic paper on his Theory of General Relativity entitled “Die Grundlagen der allgemeinen Relativitästheorie” in the journal Annalen der Physik. Einstein’s theory accounts for the slow rotation of the elliptical orbit of Mercury, which Newtonian gravitational theory failed to explain.
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Alexander von Humoldt and 

1781
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