Lewis Urry

Who was Lewis Urry?

Lewis Frederick Urry was a Canadian chemical engineer and inventor. He invented both the alkaline battery and lithium battery while working for the Eveready Battery company.

Urry was born in Pontypool, Ontario and graduated with a degree in chemical engineering from the University of Toronto in 1950, having previously spent time serving in the Canadian army. He went to work for Eveready a few months after graduating.

In 1955 Urry was dispatched to the company's laboratory in Parma, Ohio in order to discover a way of extending the life span of the zinc-carbon battery. The low longevity of these batteries had been seriously damaging sales. Urry realized that developing a new battery would be more cost-effective than developing the old ones further.

Throughout the 1950s many engineers had experimented with alkaline batteries but nobody had been able to develop a longer running battery which was worth the higher cost of production. Urry, after testing a number of materials, discovered that manganese dioxide and solid zinc worked well coupled with an alkaline substance as an electrolyte. His main problem was that the battery could not provide enough power.