I\u2019ve always had a kind of love\/hate relationship with batteries. Seems like at various times in my life, they\u2019ve come to play an important part. When I first started work with the Federal Aviation Agency, they had a self-study program known as Directed Study, and their courses were numbered much like a college curriculum \u2014 from lower numbers to higher numbers. To give the program a try, I took the lowest numbered course \u2014 DS-1. The title of the course was \u201cBatteries.\u201d When they gave me the material for the course, it was more than 500 pages \u2014 I never knew there was so much information about batteries\u2026 and guess what \u2014 DS-2 was another, more advanced, course on \u2014 batteries.<\/p>\n
I could probably easily write a book about my work experience with batteries and another book about my personal experience with batteries\u2026 maybe I\u2019ll do that sometime.<\/p>\n
But before I continue, let\u2019s think a moment about how many of our household items use batteries \u2014 from our cars to remote controls and phones, just to mention a very few.<\/p>\n
You may have heard or read that a battery is sometimes referred to an a voltaic cell. That\u2019s because the first battery was supposedly created by Alessandro Volta in 1798. Of course archeologists will argue that batteries have been around much longer\u2026 in 1938 a discovery was made in Iraq of a pottery jar containing a copper cylinder that encased an iron rod. It\u2019s generally believed that this was an ancient battery.<\/p>\n
When I was a kid we used batteries mostly in flashlights \u2014 in fact, we almost always referred to them as flashlight batteries. So when I was young, we had flashlight batteries in the house and a \u2018car battery\u2019 in our car. That was pretty much it. The flashlight was invented by the founder of Eveready Battery Co., Conrad Hubert, in 1898. He called it the electric hand torch. Our ex-neighbors, from Zimbabwe, still refer to a flashlight as a torch.<\/p>\n
The word \u201cbattery\u201d was used by Ben Franklin to describe multiple Leyden jars, which were considered power sources during his time. He got the word from the military term \u201cbattery,\u201d that defined a group of weapons working together.<\/p>\n
As more and more of our everyday devices depend on batteries, they seem to be making the news more\u2026 rarely does a month pass that you don\u2019t hear about some device exploding or catching on fire because of a battery malfunction. Recently we\u2019ve had battery problems in phones, computers, \u201chover boards\u201d and even airplanes make the news. One of the reasons is that for some reason battery technology has fallen behind other technologies and we demand short charging time and long life from our batteries\u2026 unless there\u2019s some \u201cbreakthrough\u201d these problems will continue.<\/p>\n
I think I\u2019ve mentioned before that when I was in high school, I built a radio-controlled airplane. I also built the radio equipment. The receiver in the airplane used a single tube (look that up if you don\u2019t know what it is) that required 1 1\/2 volts for the filament and and 90 volts for the \u201cplate.\u201d I had to use two batteries – a flashlight battery powered the filament, but the 90 volt battery was larger than the receiver that I\u2019d built and weighed much more than the entire airplane, including the engine. Today most drones run on a couple of AA cells.<\/p>\n
Looking around the house, most of our clocks, all our remotes, our iPads, phones, computers, a lot of my power tools and a number of lights all require batteries. And toys\u2026 it\u2019s almost impossible to buy a toy that doesn\u2019t require a battery of some kind.<\/p>\n
So by now, you\u2019re probably wondering why I chose to ramble on this particular subject today.\u00a0 Well, I\u2019ll tell you \u2014 today (February 18th) is Battery Day. A day all about recognizing and celebrating just how important the humble battery is to our way of life\u2026
\n\u2014 30 \u2014<\/p>\n
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I\u2019ve always had a kind of love\/hate relationship with batteries. Seems like at various times in my life, they\u2019ve come to play an important part. When I first started work with the Federal Aviation Agency, they had a self-study program … Continue reading