National Battery Day was established around the year 2000 on the birth date of the Italian chemist and physicist Alessandro Volta (1745-1827). Volta's 1799 experiments on u2018voltaic piles' of salt and covered piles of zinc and silver, cloth, or paper proved that electricity could be generated via chemical reaction and earned him a place in history as the inventor of the electric battery.
The commemorative date has since been embraced and promoted by battery and battery-adjacent industries in various nations, as well as international industry associations. Though not by the National Carbon Company, the producer of this 1924 advertisement for their u2018Hot Shot' batteries. The National Carbon Company, founded in Ohio in 1886, produced the Columbia brand line of of batteries, the world's first batteries manufactured for widespread consumer use, rather than industrial applications.
The National Carbon Company was acquired by Union Carbide in 1917, though the name of another one if its brand lines lives on. Eveready batteries, first produced by the American Electrical Novelty & Manufacturing Company as u2018Ever Ready' batteries became the brand we know today after National Carbon purchased a controlling interest in the American Electrical Novelty & Manufacturing Company in 1906, before absorbing them outright in 1914.This advertisement is part of Hagley Library's John Okolowicz collection of publications and advertising on radio and consumer electronics (Accession 2014.277). To view it online, alongside other material from this collection, click here to visit its page in our Digital Archive.