Luigi Galvani was professor of anatomy at University of Bologna.
Using the electricity produced by an electrostatic machine and stored in a Leyden jar for touch nerves of legs of a dead frog noticed that them twitched.
In 1780 he found that the legs of frog hung from an iron hook also twitched when touched with different kinds of metals.
He thought that "animal electricity" caused this. Galvani wrote a pamphlet to describe the experiment and explain his ideas.
When Alessandro Volta, a professor of Physics, saw the pamphlet agreed.
Few time later, thinking it over, suspected a chemical cause and began the experiments which led to the pile invention.
Galvani was wrong, the legs of dead frog twitched by the electricity produced by the contact of different kinds of metals.