Feeling flat over battery woes from the old days H

OW times change.

I wrote that 84% of people in Yorkshire suffer from battery anxiety in case their smartphone runs out of power.

Oh my goodness, what would they do if they couldn’t maintain constant contact by voice or text, watch the TV soap they recorded the night before on their phone whilst going to work on the bus, or tap their foot to Ed Sheeran’s Nancy Mulligan?

Even I have suffered the odd twinge of vulnerability when I’ve left home without my phone and I grew up in the days when the only outside communication system was the red telephone kiosk.

Brian Troop, of Lepton, recalls battery problems of a previous age.

“Just enjoyed your article on batteries and how people are so dependent on them. It really made me chuckle. I got to thinking back to when I was a nipper back in the 1950s; the only battery we knew was the accumulator that was used to power our old wireless in the pre-electricity days.

“It was, to my eyes, a wondrous thing: A big square glass jar filled with acid and two connectors on top. It used to last about a week, then it had to be taken to the shop to be recharged, which I think cost about sixpence.

“I wonder how many of those we’d need to power a Fiesta?”

Radios powered by dry batteries, rather than the accumulator, were actually available in 1939 for those who could afford them.

An “all dry” portable Ever Ready

The only battery we knew was the accumulator that was used to power our old wireless.

radio was advertised in a July issue of the Radio Times that year for £8. Its batteries lasted 240 hours at a cost, it claimed, of a halfpenny an hour, meaning a battery cost 10 shillings (50p). That seems reasonable until you realise that £8 in 1939 is the equivalent of £365.60 today, and a replacement battery would have been £22.85. The average wage was £143 a year, although those at the bottom of the scale such as agricultural workers only got £2 for a 50-hour week. The average house cost £525 and the average car was £310. Oh yes, and that portable radio weighed 8.4 kilograms or 18.5 pounds. Carry that very far and you would soon develop muscles like Popeye. A smartphone, battery included, weighs about 140 grams, which is less than five ounces.