Posted 9 years ago
Kydur
(103 items)
This is the telephone cell that predates the cell telephone by many years! I found this at an antique store and the fellow said it had been sitting unsold for a long time so he let me have it for $5.
It doesn't have any original voltage rating on it (and I still haven't determined what it would be) and we were daring each other to stick our tongues on it to see if it still had some juice left. We both chickened out even though we were certain it was quite dead. When I got it home and connected it to my digital multimeter I was surprised to see that it still had 0.25V, although that waned very quickly down to nearly zero just with the small drain of the meter.
This battery is 6.25" tall (not including the terminals) and 2.5" in diameter. They were used inside the old crank phones.
The small print on the label reads: "This dry cell is the original telephone cell greatly improved and is built especially for telephone use. It delivers long service life with uniformity and dependability in the highest degree."
The battery is showing signs of bulging and I don't know how much longer it will last before bursting its guts. Some people have advised me to attempt to remove the label and attach it to a less-volatile wooden core for display purposes.