Lewis Urry was born in January 1927, in Pontypool, Ontario, and graduated with a degree in chemical engineering from the University of Toronto in 1950. Previously, he had served in the Canadian army. A few months after graduating, Urry began working for Eveready Battery.
Though many engineers had experimented with alkaline batteries, nobody had been able to develop a longer-running battery that was worth the higher cost of production. Urry tested numerous materials, and discovered that manganese dioxide and solid zinc coupled with an alkaline substance as an electrolyte worked well. Initially, Urry’s battery could not provide enough power. Urry overcame the problem by using solid zinc in the form of a powder.
On October 9, 1957, Lewis Urry filed the application that issued as U.S. Patent 2,960,558, along with co-inventors Karl Kordesch and P.A. Marsal, for the revolutionary alkaline dry cell battery with a powdered zinc gel anode. The patent covered what would ultimately be come to known as the D battery. The patent was granted on November 15, 1960, and assigned to Union Carbide Corporation.
To sell the idea to his managers, Urry put the battery in a toy car and raced the car around the canteen at Eveready against a similar car with a zinc-carbon battery. Urry’s new battery clearly demonstrated many times the durability. Eveready began production of Urry’s design in 1959.
In 1980, the brand was renamed Energizer. Modern alkaline batteries, due to technological improvements, can last up to 40 times longer than the original prototype.
In 1999, Urry gave his first prototype battery, and the first commercially produced cylindrical battery, to the Smithsonian Institution, and both are now displayed in the same room as Edison’s light bulb.