Radio broadcast .. (1922-30)

How Is Your A Battery ? Which Explains Why AH A Batteries are not Always What They Seem — When Buying an A Battery, Look for the Rated Ampere-Hour Capacity —Products of Nationally Known Manufacturers Can Be Relied Upon WHICH A BATTERY WOULD YOU BUY? The first and fourth batteries above are rated at 100 amperes and will deliver it. The second was sold as a "i4O-ampere" battery and when tested, gave but 80 ampere-hours. The third was labeled "amp.-hours 120", and a test showed it would deliver but 75 ampere-hours By B. L. SHINN National Better Business Bureau WHEN you flip your radio switch this evening, will each tube be warmed with its normal filament voltage and kept that way until you shut off the set? Or will you wonder all evening whether the last charge you gave your battery is going to last until next Sunday? When you bought your battery, did you get the ampere-hour capacity you were led to expect? Do you know how to get it in the next battery you buy? The ampere-hour capacity of i*Si ~ an A battery is a factor of vital importance in the satisfactory reception of radio broadcasting — and for any other services as well. True, the discharge of the battery is but a fraction of what is used in the starting or lighting of an automobile. But, as radio sets are not yet equipped, like automobile motors, with generators for recharging, and as the average fan's enthusiasm leads to many hours' usage each week, enough c^at^^^— ampere-hour capacity to service the set without too frequent recharging is essential. When the radio public became an important market for storage batteries, the leading battery manufacturers produced batteries especially designed for radio use to give a relatively low discharge over a long time period. The first of these batteries which appeared were often rather cumbersome affairs. This created the impression among many fans of little technical knowledge that the brute size of a battery is at least one indication of the number of hours of service which it will give. While the manufacturers already in the field strove to fit the design of radio storage batteries into cabinets of reasonable size, while retaining maximum amperehour capacity, a host of newcomers invaded the field of storage battery manufacturing. In this field, as in others, fair competition has usually the effect of spurring on the improvement of the product and of its advertising, marketing, and servicing. As in other fields, however, unfair competition, once it appeared, threatened at one time to TT SHOULD be said that, without major exception, the radio manufacturers •* that you and I are apt to have dealings with are entirely reputable and have MO thought but to give the consumer his money's worth in radio products. They believe that good merchandise should be exchanged for good money. But like all large and growing business, radio has had its camp followers — its unprincipled fellows who prefer to "get away" with something than to do the job properly. Through the cooperation of the National Better Business Bureau, RADIO BROADCAST, in its August, 1924, and February, 1925, issues, published the first information on how tubes and sets were being misbranded and sold dishonestly. Now, we have the privilege of presenting information of importance to every battery buyer. Readers who know of dishonest selling practices, such as outlined in this story, will confer afator by writing to cither RADIO BROADCAST or to the National Better Business Bureau. — THK EDITOR. play havoc generally with the selling of radio storage batteries. Numerous battery assemblers, with not even a reputation to lose, exploited the radio tan's innocence of storage batters' construction by placing very few plates and correspondingly small quantities of active material in very large boxes, and either misbranding these "hope chests" with much higher capacity ratings than they possessed, or selling them unbranded to the type of dealers who take advantage of such a product to misrepresent it on their own account. Using a very small number of plates, frequently of poor quality, these concerns were able to undersell by several dollars any legitimately rated battery in the market. Some of the older battery makers, although but for a brief interval, succumbed to the economic stress of this manifestly unfair type of competition. Picture to yourself the "gyp" getting the business with veritable junk, the honest product lagging on counter and shelf while radio fans scramble for spurious "bargains." Some companies, for a short Deft time, were thus led to overrate the batteries which they had designed for radio use. Others, while maintaining a fair degree of accuracy as to the batteries sold under their own trade mark, manufactured for jobbers batteries made up in oversize boxes, some of which were misbranded as to ampere-hour capacity, and some of which were unbranded. The effect of such practice is visualized for you in the illustration which heads this article. Just as most radio fans could not tell without the caption under this picture which of these batteries truly have a capacity of 100 ampere hours, so most of you might be similarly confused by the batteries themselves. The two whose actual capacity is far below 100 ampere hours were rated 120 and 140 ampere hours. One was so marked by the maker. The other was made up oversize and unbranded, and the high amperage was claimed by the retailer. The spread of the oversize box, misbranded and unbranded, would soon have meant chaos in the marking and selling of storage batteries for radio use. It had aisv