By subscription among the members of the Royal Society, a voltaic battery of two thousand cells was obtained and in 1808 Davy exhibited the electric arc on a large scale. It is difficult to judge from the reports of these early investigations who was the first to recognize the difference between the spark and the arc. Certainly the descriptions indicate that the simple spark was not being experimented with, but the source of electric current available at that time was of such high resistance that only feeble arcs could have been produced. In 1809 Davy demonstrated publicly an arc obtained by a current from a Volta pile of one thousand plates. This he described as "a most brilliant flame, of from half an inch to one and a quarter inches in length." In the library of the Royal Society, Davy's notes made during the years of 1805 and 1812 are available in two large volumes. These were arranged and paged by Faraday, who was destined to contribute greatly to the future development of the science and art of electricity. In one of these volumes is found an account of a lecture-experiment by Davy which certainly is a description of the electric arc. An extract of this account is as follows: The spark [presumably the arc], the light of which was so intense as to resemble that of the sun, ... produced a discharge through heated air nearly three inches in length, and of a dazzling splendor. Several bodies which had not been fused before were fused by this flame.... Charcoal was made to evaporate, and plumbago appeared to fuse in vacuo. Charcoal was ignited to intense whiteness by it in oxymuriatic acid, and volatilized by it, but without being decomposed. From a consideration of his source of electricity, a voltaic pile of two thousand plates, it is certain that this could not have been an electric spark. Later in his notes Davy continued: ...the charcoal became ignited to whitness, and by withdrawing the points from each other, a constant discharge took place through the heated air, in a space at least equal to four inches, producing a most brilliant ascending arch of light, broad and conical in form in the middle.