Q: Why Do Battery Letters Skip from A to C? And Was There Ever a B-Cell Battery?
Published September 27, 2006
A: Once upon a time, there used to be a B-cell battery. But just like the second sister on the ABC’s Family Matters, the B-cell battery simply found itself written out of the script.
Here’s what happened. Battery letter designations are based on the size of the battery for common sizes. Hence, A is the smallest, and D is the largest. By that same logic, AA batteries are larger than AAA. Unfortunately for B batteries, however, it wasn’t the size that counted.
The fact is, you never see B batteries around because they just aren’t very useful in America. Essentially, the mid-size battery never caught on in products made for consumers, so stores didn’t carry them, and the cycle just fed itself. The truth of the matter is that B-cells, like artsy directors and good jazz musicians, are really only appreciated in Europe, where they’re used primarily for powering bicycle lamps.
- Q: Why Do Battery Letters Skip from A to C? And Was There Ever a B-Cell Battery?
- Published: September 27, 2006
- Type: News
- Section: Sci/Tech
- Filed Under: Culture: History, Sci/Tech: Physical Sciences
- Part of a feature: mental_floss Question of the Day
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Comments on this articleComments
Wrong, wrong and wrong.
US battery designations go back to the days of tube radios when one needed several batteries to operate a radio: an "A" battery for the filemants, a "B" battery for plate voltage, and a "C" battery for grid bias.
The "B" battery had a relatively high voltage of about 67.5 or 90 volts, so it was made up of a great number of 1.5 volt cells in series. If any one of those 45 or 60 cells died then the whole battery died. Ask the guy who had to buy them for his 1950 portable Admiral radio used on fishing trips to listen to ball games. That "B" battery had to supply the watts to drive the speaker, as well as the AM detector stage and the 455KC IF amps. So we were happy to see the first commercially available transistors (Raytheon CK722, $2.75 from Olson Radio Warehouse in Ohio) which only had a gain-bandwidth of about 20kc, but could do useful work as the audio power output stage to a speaker.
In Europe thay don't use the "A", "AA" etc., sizes, but rather something like "LK02", or whatever, which I could look up if I weren't too lazy to find the camera I put some into a couple months ago while I was in France. Anyway, you can eyeball the right size in LeClerc or Monoprix as necessary.
Actually, here in the UK, we use the names AA A C and D rather than the longer LK02 for example. However, the longer battery names (like LK02) can usually be found on MOST batteries in tiny print under the simpler size names (like A). As for the original post, the UK is in Europe last time I checked, and I've never in my life seen or heard of a B size battery, so Biffles post sounds most feasable.
I ment AAA and AA by the way, not A....
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It's a shame too...B's can be very nice...anything more than a handful is a waste anyway, right?
Uh, are we talking about the same thing? :-/