Order from Amazon.com, The Persuasive Wizard: How Technical Experts Sell Their Ideas. Now available in Kindle e-book. The Persuasive Wizard is a must for anyone wanting a better job, desiring a raise in the current one, seeking investment funding, or just needing to persuade others. College and High School students find it invaluable as they begin their careers.
Without batteries, we would be lost. I worked in the intelligence community creating listening devices, geopositioning, stand-off detectors – inventions for the modern soldier. One problem persisted – how to power those clever innovations without adding more pounds to the already weighted warrior.
A battery is essentially an electric cell, that is, a negative electrode, a positive electrode, an electrolyte that conducts ions, and a separator (ion conductor).
Fundamentally, the battery has changed little since its invention in the 18th century. If you want to win the next Nobel prize, come up with a battery idea that, by several orders of magnitude, reduces the weight, increases the power, or expands the storage of existing chemical-cell technology.
In 1748, Benjamin Franklin coined the term “battery” to describe a set of charged glass plates. In 1800, Alessandro Volta of Italy invented what we now call a “wet cell,” zinc and copper plates with an electrolyte between them. Sixty years later, a practical design by the Frenchman Gaston Plante led to the lead-acid batteries still used today in modern automobiles and most transportable equipment.
In 1881, the German Carl Gassner invented the commercial “dry cell” battery, a zinc-carbon cell. In 1901, Thomas Edison invented the alkaline (iron and nickel oxide) storage battery and 50 years later, Canadian Lew Urry found better performance with alkaline-manganese batteries. In 1899, the rechargeable nickel-cadmium battery was invented by the Swede Walkmar Jungner. Ninety-one years later (1990), the Japanese company, Sony, invented the lithium-ion battery.
Get my point?
The battery design is virtually unchanged. Battery innovations have come about from inventors all over the planet, but these advances have all been variations on a theme. The differences in performance have come through the use of different metals for the electrodes and different electrolytes inside.
It is likely that improvements will continue to be made, but without some major new concept for a portable battery, the advances will be incremental.
What this has done is force computers, phones, and hand-held devices to be power misers. That part is good, but it will only take us so far.
Got a break-through idea for battery power?
Contact: lgivens@thepersuasivewizard.com