Battery Powered

The columbia battery isn't flashy. It is a homely cylinder, 6 inches long, wrapped in yellow paper, and sporting a reddish eagle design. By today's standards, the battery is big and clunky and certainly nothing that you'd pick up at the checkout line at the grocery store or use to power your CD player or attempt to install in your hearing aid.

But this modest powerhouse was revolutionary. It was the first battery manufactured on a large scale, and it made possible many of the developments in modern consumer goods-from flashlights to telephones to portable radios to iPods and everything in between and beyond. The Columbia dry-cell battery, manufactured by National Carbon Co., the predecessor of today's Energizer Co., was designated an ACS National Historic Chemical Landmark on Sept. 27.

Dan Carpenter, Energizer's vice president and chief technology officer, along with the company's Energizer Bunny mascot, welcomed about 250 people to the landmark designation ceremony in Cleveland. Carpenter introduced speakers; the bunny doesn't talk.

Much of what makes modern life modern is powered by batteries, ACS President William F. Carroll said. He challenged attendees to imagine a world without batteries: Your MP3 player would be tethered to your home by a lengthy extension cord. You would wind your pacemaker like a pocket watch. Your BlackBerry would only work while pedaling the bicycle that powered it.

There have been more than 50 ACS National Historic Chemical Landmarks designated since the program began in 1994. With the addition of the Columbia battery, the ACS Northeastern Ohio Section now hosts six of these. Section Chair Kenneth W. Street Jr. gave a brief talk on other area landmarks. They are Morley Laboratories at Case Western Reserve University, Kem-Tone paint, the Sohio acrylonitrile process, production of aluminum metal by electrochemistry, and high-performance carbon fibers.

Virginia Brandt, Energizer's general manager of technology, gave a keynote presentation that, among other things, traced her company's corporate lineage from National Carbon to American Electrical Novelty, Electrical Torch, American Ever Ready, Union Carbide, Ralston Purina, and finally to today's Energizer.

Energizer's business is batteries. Basically, batteries are devices that store chemical energy, which can be converted into electrical energy used to power a device. They consist of two electrodes connected by an ion-conducting solution-an electrolyte. Modern battery development can be traced to the late 18th century and the work of Luigi Galvani and Alessandro Volta.

Volta experimented with systems of metal plates connected by brine-soaked cardboard to produce electric current. He built the first modern electric battery by stacking disks of zinc and silver in pairs to form a pile. The voltaic pile was the first device producing continuous current. His work established the electrochemical principles that are the basis of batteries used today.

Over the years, additional work was carried out by Georges Leclanch in the 1860s and by Carl Gassner Jr. in the 1880s. A few years later, E. M. Jewett of National Carbon became interested in dry cells and, in his free time, conducted experiments in the company's laboratory near Cleveland. There, he developed a paper-lined, 1.5-V cylindrical dry cell, which he showed to Washington H. Lawrence, National Carbon's founder. Lawrence gave Jewett and his boss George Little the go-ahead to begin manufacturing commercial dry cells.

Energizer Chief Executive Officer Ward Klein was on hand to accept the landmark plaque for the Cleveland facility. An identical plaque will be placed at corporate headquarters in St. Louis. The plaques read:

In 1896, the National Carbon Co. (corporate predecessor of Energizer) developed the 6-inch, 1.5-volt Columbia battery, the first sealed dry cell successfully manufactured for the mass market. The Columbia, a carbon-zinc battery with an acidic electrolyte, was a significant improvement over previous batteries, meeting consumer demand for a maintenance-free, durable, no-spill, inexpensive electrochemical power source. Finding immediate use in the rapidly expanding telephone and automobile industries, the Columbia launched the modern battery industry by serving as the basis for all dry cells for the next 60 years.