Check Your Batteries Day aims to teach people about the importance of changing batteries, why it is important, and how you can share this information with people everywhere.
Taking place during Daylight Savings Time, Check Your Batteries Day hopes to serve as a valuable time to check your batteries on your smoke detectors, carbon monoxide detectors, radon detectors, and other electronics. Why is this important?
- Smoke detectors, for instance, were invented around the late 1890s. Because of the invention and patenting of the smoke detector by George Andrew Darby and Walter Jaeger and later improvement of the smoke detector by Duane Pearsall in the 1960s, smoke detectors would respond faster than heat detectors.
- According to the ServiceMaster Restore, 57% of Americans have followed best practice and done so in the past six months.
- Because of smoke alarms, the average escape time went from 17 minutes to just three minutes or less over the past decade due to synthetics in furniture and better home construction, according to UL, a company centered around safety science.
- The first battery was created by Alessandro Volta in 1798.
- Archeologists tend to argue that batteries have been around much longer though. In 1938 a discovery was made in Iraq of a 5-inch pottery jar containing a copper cylinder that encased an iron rod. It’s thought to be an ancient battery.
- The EPA estimates Americans purchase nearly 3 billion batteries each year.
- The first rechargeable battery was invented in 1859, when French physicist Gaston Plante invented the lead acid cell, which is still used in cars today. The lead acid cell paved the way to the creation of the NiMH, NiCd batteries and lithium ion batteries, other types of rechargeable batteries commonly used for items such as LED flashlights.
- The founder of Eveready Battery, Conrad Hubert, invented the flashlight in 1898, aka the electric hand torch. (Eveready introduced the D-size battery for the first handheld flashlight.)
- The word “battery” was used by Ben Franklin to describe multiple Leyden jars, which were considered power sources during his time. He pulled the word from the military term “battery”, which defined a group of weapons working together.
- The first miniature batteries weren’t developed until the 1950s when Eveready brought them to market. This discovery forever changed how people wore and wound – or rather stopped winding – their watches.
- In 1802 William Cruickshank from the UK invented the first electric battery capable of mass production. In other words, the general public could now have access to batteries.
- Rechargeable batteries were invented in 1836 by an English chemist. This battery was designed with lead-acid technology and is still the type used for car batteries.
- The smallest battery in the world was created with a 3D printer, and is only the size of a grain of sand.
- Prior to the Energizer Bunny becoming famous as the face of Energizer batteries, a pink bunny was used by Duracell. Duracell forgot to renew their trademark and Energizer scooped it up.
- Benjamin Franklin coined the term battery during his experiments with electricity. – Source
- There is a battery-powered bell at Oxford University that has been continuously ringing for over 175 years. No one knows what the battery is composed of and no one wants to take the device apart in order to figure it out. – Source
- Disposable electronic cigarettes contain perfectly good rechargeable lithium-ion batteries. – Source
- It is optimal for your lithium-ion smartphone battery to top it off and keep its charge between 40-80%, rather than let it drain 0% and charge it all the way up. – Source
- If all new cars produced were powered by lithium batteries, the world would run out of lithium in ~30 years. – Source
- The city of Fairbanks, Alaska holds the world’s largest rechargeable battery, which powers the whole city during outages. – Source
- Keeping your laptop plugged in all the time will kill its battery faster. – Source
- Benjamin Franklin coined the term battery during his experiments with electricity. – Source
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