Lewis Urry, born 1947 in Pontypool, Ontario was an unbelievably modest man. He believed in doing his work without claiming credit for himself. How different that is to now, with people scrambling to get to the top of social media. Unbelievably, this is the only photo we could find. In the linked picture, Lewis is seventy-five years old.
Lewis Urry – Brains Behind the Alkaline Battery
Lewis joined Union Carbide’s EverReady Company in Ohio a few months after graduating with a degree in Chemical Engineering. By 1955, he was part of a team extending the life of zinc-carbon batteries.
Their work was critical for EverReady as it was losing market share. Lewis Urry suggested they should start afresh with something different.
There had been some successes with alkaline batteries, however, the prototypes proved too expensive to take to market.
The Big Breakthrough in Alkaline Technology
Lewis Urry discovered manganese dioxide and solid zinc teamed well with an alkaline electrolyte after trying different ideas, although power output was insufficient.
Then, after he solved this problem by using powdered zinc, he co-filed US patent 2,960,558 for a dry cell alkaline battery with a powdered zinc gel anode with colleagues Karl Kordesch, and P A Marsal.
The U.S. patent authority approved the request on November 15, 1960, after assigning the intellectual property rights to Union Carbide because the applicants were in EverReady Company’s employ. In 1980, the company rebranded as Energizer, but Lewis Urry remained the same modest person.
“He took special pride around Christmas, when there was a rush for batteries,” his son, Steven Urry told the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper after his father’s death in October 2004. “He didn’t brag on himself. It wasn’t until we got older that we realized what he had done.”
Related
The History of the Alkaline Battery
Could an Alkaline Battery Upstage Lithium
Preview Image: Patent Approval
