Alessandro Guiseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta was born in Italy in a town called Como (near Milan). In 1774, he was given his first academic job as principal of the state gymnasium in Como. Three years later, in the year 1777, he was given the job of Professor of Physics at the University of Pavia. Here he began to repeat experiments first done by Galvanis, with decapitated frogs! He attached a brass hook between the frog's brain and the body. When he put an electrical current through the brass hook, the frog's body twitched. In 1801, he went to Paris to show Napoleon his experiments.