page_title: Thomas Edison
section_title: Rechargeable battery
hierarchical_section_title: Thomas Edison / Other inventions and projects / Rechargeable battery
caption_attribution_description: English: Share of the Edison Storage Battery Company, issued 19. October 1903 Deutsch: Aktie der Edison Storage Battery Company vom 19. Oktober 1903; ausgestellt auf Thomas A. Edison
context_page_description: Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman who has been described as America's greatest inventor. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventions, which include the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and early versions of the electric light bulb, have had a widespread impact on the modern industrialized world. He was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of organized science and teamwork to the process of invention, working with many researchers and employees. He established the first industrial research laboratory.
  Edison was raised in the American Midwest; early in his career he worked as a telegraph operator, which inspired some of his earliest inventions. In 1876, he established his first laboratory facility in Menlo Park, New Jersey, where many of his early inventions were developed. He later established a botanic laboratory in Fort Myers, Florida in collaboration with businessmen Henry Ford and Harvey S. Firestone, and a laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey that featured the world's first film studio, the Black Maria.
context_section_description: In the late 1890s Edison worked on developing a lighter, more efficient rechargeable battery (at that time called an "accumulator"). He looked on them as something customers could use to power their phonographs but saw other uses for an improved battery, including electric automobiles. The then available lead acid rechargeable batteries were not very efficient and that market was already tied up by other companies so Edison pursued using alkaline instead of acid. He had his lab work on many types of materials (going through some 10,000 combinations), eventually settling on a nickel-iron combination. Besides his experimenting Edison also probably had access to the 1899 patents for a nickel–iron battery by the Swedish inventor Waldemar Jungner.
  Edison obtained a US and European patent for his nickel–iron battery in 1901 and founded the Edison Storage Battery Company and by 1904 it had 450 people working there. The first rechargeable batteries they produced were for electric cars, but there were many defects with customers complaining about the product. When the capital of the company was spent, Edison paid for the company with his private money. Edison did not demonstrate a mature product until 1910: a very efficient and durable nickel-iron-battery with lye as the electrolyte. The nickel–iron battery was never very successful, by the time it was ready electric cars were disappearing and lead acid batteries had become the standard for tuning over gas powered car starter motors.
caption: Share of the Edison Storage Battery Company, issued 19. October 1903
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