Battery Power

Ho Hum.

I can think of few subjects as boring as the history of batteries, but they are something we all handle, use, depend upon. As I write to you on this laptop, I’m waiting for the battery to die, but it seems to have plenty of juice left.

You can’t do anything without involving a battery.

Is it possible that Americans are so badly out of shape because we use a remote control device to change channels on the television?

No more crawling out of the easy chair, walking across the room and manually changing the channel. There is no choice. I don’t know if there is a power or volume control on my television set.

Tools today are battery powered. The only guy I know who has electrical cords trailing his work space is me.

Bicycles are battery powered. No need to grunt up hills. Everything is battery powered, no wind up clocks anymore – they’re too noisy.

Batteries hold charges better than ever. New chemicals mean that batteries last longer than anyone would have dreamed.

Many batteries are rechargeable and can go through thousands of cycles before they are depleted.

Still, some batteries are not rechargeable and should be recycled when the last electron is squeezed out of them.

I’ve been confused about the advantage of using “D” cells over much smaller “AAA” cells. We used to call the “D” cells flashlight batteries. They both hold 1.5 volts, but the “D” cells are larger and heavier.

There were some very old and crumbling dry cell batteries at my grandparents’ house. I asked my dad about them, and he said they were used to power the telephone.

Next he told me that the first household radio used batteries to power an amplifier. Otherwise only one person at a time could listen to the radio.

Batteries power life saving devices. Some people carry portable heart or glucose monitors. They are battery powered.

Some patients have implanted pacemakers with batteries that last for years and years.

Two years ago I attended a funeral in Kansas and wandered the cemetery with a relative who is also a nurse.

“You know what I think about when I come here?” she asked. I fumbled the question thinking she referred to pioneer ancestors or the head stones written in German.

I gave up. She waved her hand and said, “I think about all the pacemakers still firing away underground.”

joenphillips@yahoo.com