By Gregg Halteman

Here at Powerhouse Two, it is our mission to set the record straight about the little wonders we call batteries.

So here we go!

Let’s first look at what a battery is. It is an electric cell that produces electricity from a chemical reaction. Benjamin Franklin. as it turns out, was the first person to coin the term “battery” in 1748. He was referring to an array of charged glass plates. Not sure what Ben was doing with charged glass plates, but I feel sure it didn’t involve making dinner! Here is a chronology of the high points in the batteries evolution.

• Fast forward to 1800 and you find a crazy Italian by the name of Alessandro Volta. (Yes the word volt traces back to him!) He created the first “wet cell” battery called the voltaic pile using brine, cardboard, and metal discs. You have to hand it to him, what would you do with wet salty cardboard?

• Now the French make a play with Gaston Plante, who developed the first practical lead acid battery that could be recharged. This is the guy you need to thank every time you get into your car.

• Not to be outdone, fellow Frenchman Georges Leclanche took Volta’s wet cell idea, and made it safer by using carbon and crushed manganese dioxide. Still pretty nasty as it was in a pot full of ammonium chloride, but reliable enough to be used two years later in over 20,000 telegraph machines worldwide. Battery power was coming of age!

• Scientists were really getting turned on by this emerging technology. In 1881, Carl Gassner invented the first dry cell             Zinc-Carbon battery, finally making it safe for everyone. Thanks a bunch Carl. The whole acid thing didn’t make the battery a friendly device.

• Eight years later, Waldmar Jungner invented the first Nickel Cadmium rechargeable battery. He probably had a lot of time on his hands. Can’t imagine a guy with the name of Waldmar had a lot of dates!

• But the biggie came from America’s favorite inventor, Thomas Alva Edison, who in 1901 invented the alkaline storage battery. This greatly extended the life of the battery, and opened up a whole new world for inventors.

Today, it is hard to imagine everyday life without battery power. In large part, modern society depends on batteries to keep us connected, to keep us mobile, to keep us healthy, and to protect us. The alkaline battery chemistry of today, something Powerhouse Two is very involved in, has achieved new levels of performance and reliability. The future is indeed bright. The lithium ion batteries of today last longer and have gotten smaller than any of these scientists of yesterday could have ever imagined.

What the next great improvements are we can’t say, but all of the energy technologies that our government wants to pursue to free us from the dependence on oil share a common thread. They all need to store the energy they create. You can’t put energy in a box or a can. It won’t be contained in a mini-storage unit or a POD in your driveway. It has to go into a battery.

So, the next time you hold a lowly AAA in your hand, show the little fella some respect. He has earned it!