Book Review: The Battery

The full title of this book by Henry Schlesinger is The Battery: How Portable Power Sparked a Technological Revolution. It simply tells the story of the invention and use of the battery throughout history.

‘Simply’ is the right term, but it’s not at all a bad thing. Aside from the title, this book has no pretentions to grandeur. It takes a small thing that we all rely on and tells its story through the much more well-known, more beloved, more written about story of the objects it powers. A single battery itself takes pride of place on the cover, humbly noble.  

Voltaic Pile: the first battery

Until reading this book, my knowledge of the history of electricity was focused on current. The bulky, very basic battery only starts in the spotlight early on before being shunted out in the Edison and Tesla years by current. The otherwise lovely BBC Story of Electricity (which I have mentioned before) does just this, leaving the battery in the dust after the first episode.

The book captures this in a quote from Edison, when he was investigating the use of the battery for powering the new electric lighting:

“The storage battery is, in my opinion, a catch penny, a sensation, a mechanism for swindling the public by stock companies.” (pg 144)

But the battery didn’t die out and disappear, even for Edison himself. A relatively simple technology that hasn’t changed dramatically over the years, the battery’s been a necessary little (semi-)portable powerhouse in continuous and heavy use since it was invented. Schlesinger describes batteries powering theatre and party lights, early and later telegraphs, ticker tape machines, telephones, farmhouse and army radios, doorbells, flashlights, even the famous green light on the end of the dock in The Great Gatsby… they made these early electric objects possible for a majority of people before current was common and widespread. Of course, they remain crucial to our lives—and in some ways their uses remain almost unchanged.

The much-less messy dry cell batteries "for telephone service".

Some of the most fascinating things that captured my interest were the importance of “unwieldy” maintenance of early wet home batteries, the use of small amounts of electricity in favour of large amounts and the myriad of tiny devices built around, not the existence of electricity itself, but the battery specifically—not to mention the scientific advances made possible by the battery. The book itself makes a good case (although not explicitly) for the powerful technological determinism of the battery—the battery guiding the creation of a certain world, rather than being pressed into service by the march of progress.

The way Schlesinger’s clear, well-written and constructed book presents it, the battery is the Frodo of the electric world. Small and frequently low-powered compared to others, but highly determined and usually portable, it can accomplish a lot for little input.

Noble battery, we salute you.   

Ps. The book is available for your electronic book, so you can read it using your own battery!