Duracell PowerCheck History: An Energizer of a Battery Patent Battle
Today in Tedium: The world has changed immeasurably in the years since the battery wars of the 1980s and 1990s—a time when seemingly every gadget had a corresponding need for incredibly valuable, but somewhat wasteful, alkaline batteries. These days, of course, batteries are still with us, but they tend to be rechargeable and possibly embedded in our devices, so we’re not throwing away batteries every time we use a device for a few hours. But near the end of the 20th century, our need for batteries knew no bounds. There was just one problem, and that problem was … the average person had no idea if a battery was going to work or not if it was just in a drawer—until one day in the mid-1990s, when the two largest battery manufacturers decided to release a measurement system that lived inside of the battery. It seemed like magic, even if it was really basic electronics at play. And despite announcing the technology at the same time, it was very much not in tandem. Today’s Tedium talks about the simple novelty of on-battery power meters—and the legal battle the competing options inspired. — Ernie @ Tedium Thanks to Nick Dimichino for inspiring me to write about this.
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