Home
Creators
Search Recent Missing Random
Posts
Search DMs Popular Hash Lookup Tags Random
Importer
Import FAQ
Register Favorites Keys Review DMs Logout
Community
Telegram ThePornDude
Home Creators Posts Import Register Favorites Logout

Exploding Batteries (Patreon)

Published:
2023-02-26 14:20:47
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:
BTS

Content

Friends, I come to you with tragic news - no video today. I went down a research rabbit hole and fell out the other end confused and alone.

As you might remember, the poll topic of choice was "Why Batteries Are Letters." As long as I searched, I struggled to find definitive primary source explanation for it, or even close secondary source info from the time period. I actually wrote up the whole script, but as I was checking stuff I felt I just couldn't be confident enough to put it out. (Happy to spitball about any info I found in the comments, casually, though.)

This occasionally happens, but usually I catch it a bit earlier in the process. It's often the result of internet articles that confidently assert something only to find there's a weird sourcing ouroboros going on with no contemporary sources that truly prove what you're looking for. In this case, I thought I had it, but then things kept getting more and more complicated (and more technical since, after all, batteries are involved).

I've only had this happen once before — I was pitching a video about if Mussolini really made the trains run on time. I found a bunch of articles that said he didn't, but then one paper that said he kinda did, but then ambiguity when I checked the sourcing for that. Regardless, I felt slightly uncomfortable being behind a full-throated endorsement of fascism if it turned out old Benito really was a good conductor.

Apologies for the failure here and longwinded explanation. Truth is, I'm glad that I didn't fall for a sunk cost fallacy with all that research and put out something that wasn't definitely true, but I am sad that I'm missing a week. But for my next vid, I've chosen a topic that I can make a video for in a week — so that'll hopefully be out next Sunday. Thanks for understanding!

Comments

T. K.

I appreciate the integrity of this choice. I might suggest trying to look for patent information, or contemporary "popular mechanic" type periodicals, but imagine those are routes you already explored. Batteries like these might have also appeared in things like the old Sear's mail order catalogs, where you could even buy a prefab house for delivery, or so they say.

philedwardsinc
>>102815989

Those are both good ideas for sure. I really need to keep Pop Sci/Mechanics in mind for a first search rather than late in the process. I found some old ads and stuff like that — the problem was more that a bunch of the decisions still had ambiguity after I researched them, and there was a lot of confusion whether the ANSI standards or Bureau of Standards standards were the more important ones, and I didn't have enough evidence to really arbitrate it (this is a taste of the boring stuff you happily get to miss out on!). There was also this thing with B batteries (and why they're missing). See, there were B batteries for size, but there were also "Radio B" Batteries which didn't have to have B Batteries, though B Batteries were almost exclusively used to make Radio B Batteries (along with A batteries). Stuff like that is like....kinda interesting? But it's also stultifying to get so technical. The main problem was that I took on the story for the political ramifications because, at the time, I believed the Bureau of Standards (the predecessor to NIST, which still operates) was the sole reason for batteries being letters, but it got murkier the more I learned. I just couldn't stick with it.

John Harrer

Thanks for the update, Phil. It's worth the Patreon just to learn words like ouroboros and stultifying. It amazes me that this information is not available from the EveryReady or Duracell companies. That would be like Pentel not knowing where the lead hardness number/letter system came from. Looking forward to next week.