220713 Batteries

Batteries have been around even longer than I have.
This is what the first battery looked like.

The first true battery was invented by the Italian physicist Alessandro Volta in 1800. I wonder how or if he sold them? There were no Radio Shacks around to sell batteries back then. There are no more Radio Shacks here anymore, but batteries are more prolific than they have ever been. There are batteries in most electronic things we use these days, tablets, cell phones, laptops, flash lights, cars, clocks, measuring equipment and more things than I can think of at the moment. There is one thing all batteries have in common, they will fail you! As I understand it, even $1000 cell phones have batteries that are no longer replaceable and that thousand dollar device becomes a paper weight. My clock battery quit on me a while back, but it is still right twice a day, that’s more often correct than I am in a single day. According to Google, electric car batteries can cost as much as $13,000 to $20,000 to replace. The last new car I bought was $15,000 out the door and I am still driving it 9 years later. It is likely to be the last car I ever buy. If or when it quits, I plan on quitting my driving days. I may have to get a new battery at some point and that will likely be around $200 or so for a good one.