The Battery: How Portable Power Sparked a Technological Revolution
Henry Schlesinger, . . HarperCollins/Smithsonian, $24.99 (308pp) ISBN 978-0-06-144293-3
Obscured by the handheld electronic devices that pervade our high-tech culture is the battery that powers them all. Technology journalist Schlesinger provides an illuminating historical account of a device whose enormous influence has been downplayed or misunderstood. The term “battery” is attributed to Benjamin Franklin, who arranged Leyden jars in a manner akin to a battery of cannon. But possible early electrochemical batteries—the centuries-old Baghdad batteries—discovered by archeologists in the 1930s remain controversial, as the appendix details. Schlesinger (
Reviewed on: 01/18/2010
Genre: Nonfiction
Paperback - 320 pages - 978-0-06-144294-0