History of Science and Engineering Annotation << Back On the 250th Anniversary of Vasilii V. Petrov, Founder of Russian Eletrical Engineering V.V. Kuznetsova Academician VasiliiV. Petrov is not especially known in the history of Russian technical physics. Meanwhile he closely follows Michail Lomonosov as to significance of his oeuvre in science. He built the first powerful voltaic pile (1,7 kV) consisted of 2 100 pairs of copper and zinc platelets. In 1802, Petrov produced electric arc with the help of this pile. In 1803, this discovery was published as Academia ouevre (St.Petersburg). Six years later, the great English chemist Humphry Davy observed the similar phenomenum and called it «voltaic arc». Having been published in Russian Petrov’s experiments remained unknown for years. Hereafter the term «voltaic arc» turned to be fixed in the science . Key words: Petrov; Davy; voltaic arc; Petrov arc. E-mail megapolice@inbox.ru