The 9 Volt Battery...An Odd Duck

The 9 volt battery...remember those? Growing up, there were so many things that required 9 volt batteries, things that kids loved, like transistor radios, and my personal favorite, walkie talkies. The 9 volt--with those weird connections on top in which I choose incorrectly half the time when trying to hook them up. We used 9 volts all the time as kids. It's all part of growing up in a "not-yet-digital" electronic world.

Yeah, they were big.

They were in remote controls and kids toys. I remember seeing if a stray battery lying in the junk drawer had any power by placing it on my tongue on the connections--the stronger the jolt, the more charge the battery has. I still do that.

Of course, today not as many things used the rectangular-shaped batteries, mostly smoke detectors. Plus, you can tell fewer and fewer things use a 9 volts because of how expensive the darn things are. In a grocery store they run around $5 per battery, at a convenience store they're even more. I know--I checked. We picked up a pack of ten at Costco--they were the cheapest we could find. I have a couple of transistor radios, but the old-fashioned walkie talkies (the kind with Morse Code keys on the side...) are long gone. Those were fun--I never did learn the code, however.

We needed to replace the battery in our garage door keypad. I know there's a date on the side of the 9 volt letting everyone know just how long they can expect the batteries to function. I don't know how they calculate the dates, but in my experience, I have doubts that the battery I put in the keypad today will be working in 2023. Maybe it means I can put the battery aside and pick it up in 2023 and it'll work like new.

I doubt that claim as well.

With the new battery in place, the garage door obeys my command each time. If, the battery follows in the footsteps of its now-dead siblings, in a couple of months it'll take more than a couple of keypad tries to open the door until finally, it'll stop working all together.

I don't know--maybe the keypad's to blame.

I wonder when we'll no longer use the odd-shaped batteries. More than likely, they'll always be around. Like everything, time will tell.