History
See also: History of the batteryBatteries with alkaline (rather than acid) electrolyte were first developed by Waldemar Jungner in 1899, and, working independently, Thomas Edison in 1901.
The alkaline dry battery using the zinc/manganese dioxide chemistry was invented by Canadian engineer Lewis Urry in the 1950s while working for Union Carbide's Eveready Battery division in Cleveland, OH, building on earlier work by Edison. On October 9, 1957, Urry, Karl Kordesch, and P.A. Marsal filed US patent (2,960,558) for the alkaline battery. It was granted in 1960 and was assigned to the Union Carbide Corporation.
When introduced in the 1960s, alkaline batteries contained a small amount of toxic mercury amalgam to control side reactions at the zinc cathode. With mercury content reduced by law and improvements in the purity and consistency of materials, manufacturers have reduced the mercury content in modern cells.
Read more about this topic: Alkaline Battery
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“History is the present. That’s why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth.”
—E.L. (Edgar Lawrence)
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“There are two great unknown forces to-day, electricity and woman, but men can reckon much better on electricity than they can on woman.”
—Josephine K. Henry, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 15, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)