Don’t you just hate it when you’re late for an appointment and you run out the door, jump into your car, turn the key in the ignition and nothing happens. All you hear is this faint clicking sound, then you slap yourself in the forehead as you realize that you left the parking lights on all night and now the battery is dead and your appointment isn’t until the next week? I hate it when that happens.

The whole world is now powered by batteries. Cell phones, land line phones, cameras, iPods, laptops, navigation systems, our teenagers… We have become the “unplugged generation”, freed from the restrictions of the electrical power cord.

The battery (probably the same one that’s in my car) was invented in 1800 by Alessandro Volta, Italian physicist, known for his pioneering work in electricity. Various other inventors greatly improved the battery over the next century. They also invented the slogan ‘new and improved’.

However, some researchers believe the first battery was invented long before the 1800′s.

In 1938 a jar was found just outside Baghdad, Iraq that some believed to be a Weapon of Mass Destruction…no wait, that was a different set of research…it was thought to be the first battery invented. The jar, composed of clay with a stopper made of asphalt, proved to be around 2,000 years old from the Parthian period.

Sticking through the asphalt stopper on the jar was an iron rod surrounded by a copper cylinder. When filled with vinegar – or any other electrolytic solution – the jar produced about 1.1 volts. But, such ancient knowledge in the history of electricity bears no known continuous relationship to the development of modern batteries. However, according to one source, there was a label on the jar that read “batteries not included”…

Batteries are never included and I for one would like to know why. Apparently all the cardboard used in packaging everything that is manufactured must come from the same factory pre-printed with the statement, “batteries not included”. I think it even says “batteries not included” on the batteries. You get home and all you have is the empty package.

No, I take that back. There was one time the battery was included. It came with a laptop I bought last summer. I charged the battery until the little icon on the screen told me it was 100% powered up, took my laptop out with me to write and about twenty minutes into writing an article the battery died, the screen went blank and my writing was lost forever in that big black hole where all unsaved files go when the computer dies.

I called “Cheap Laptop Inc.” (not really it’s name, but I don’t want to be sued) the manufacturer of the computer since the store I purchased it from did not offer technical support. The call went something like this:

CLI: Ellou. Dis es Chep Laptip, Inc. Ow may I direct you call?

Me: Uh, I need to speak to some one about my laptop.

CLI: Choo wata one momento. I git choo technician.

Technician: Goot Murning, dis techinichi. How I help choo?

Me: Uh, I bought a laptop and the battery isn’t holding a charge. What can you do?

Tech: noting. We can do noting. Were choo buy laptup?

Me: I bought it at one of the Mart Centers.

Tech: Hmm. Me see. Choo get battery whit laptup?

Me: Yes the battery came with the laptop. It was included.

Tech: Choo need to buy better goot battery. We sell you battery.

Me: How much does a better good battery cost?

Tech: Around ninty dullor. Choo pay ninty-dullor and get best goot battery.

Me: Can I call you back?

Maybe sometimes “batteries not included” is a good thing. If I had known how much a “best goot” battery cost, I wouldn’t have thought I was getting a deal on the laptop. I think they call this back end sales technique.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to untangle myself from all these electrical power cords and go buy another car battery. I left my parking lights on and…  Don’t you just hate it when that happens?

Humor-blogs.com

Tags: battery, cell phone, electrical power cord, ipods, laptop, unplugged generation