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Opinion
Power, Power, and Power
9/20/2006
Wouldn’t it be nice to have a laptop battery that would last a typical work day, say 10 to 12 hours? Earlier this year, one of SCUP’s corporate members paid a visit to our office and I just happened to notice, after he’d been with us for a couple of hours, that his Windows machine said that he still had 6.5 hours of battery life left. One of these days I have to call him and find out how that could be.
The modern world of batteries as a technology and business started in 1800 with the discoveries of Alessandro Volta, who was “discovery racing” with many other inventors of the time. However, the archeological find known as the Baghdad Batteries may represent 2,000-year-old low voltage battery technology, possibly used for medical therapeutics or for metal plating.
The most common usage of the word “battery” prior to electrical storage devices was in describing “arrays of cannon” on land or on ships that could “batter” an enemy. It’s not that much of a jump to seeing that array of cannon as “stored power” and hence to Benjamin Franklin’s initial use of the term “battery” in 1748 to mean an array of power storage devices.
Of course, the biggest issue of the day is lithium-ion batteries exploding or burning due often to the presence of very tiny metal mini-shavings in the electrolyte from the manufacturing process. I suspect that many, like me, are ignoring the recall and assuming that we are not going to be “struck by lightning” if we just ignore it. We’ll see.
My mind often strays toward thoughts of “broadcast power.” However, I am immediately reminded of how quickly people in the 60s gave up on the solar satellites broadcasting free power back down to earth when they realized that, when slightly miss-aimed, those power sources could become serious weapons.
I was reminded of that last week when the head of the U.S. Air Force stated in a speech that before his service tried out so-called “nonlethal” microwave crowd control weapons on foreigners, they’d better look for an opportunity to try them out on U.S. civilians. Seriously, this deserves a quote:
"If we're not willing to use it here against our fellow citizens, then we should not be willing to use it in a wartime situation," said Wynne. "(Because) if I hit somebody with a nonlethal weapon and they claim that it injured them in a way that was not intended, I think that I would be vilified in the world press."
Strange world we live in, and some pretty strange people in power. I’ve been following the development of these weapons and during testing. They had to have people remove metal belt buckles, buttons, eyeglasses, etc., because those concentrated the power being broadcast and injured people.
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