Alexandria, VA – Until recently, all I knew about batteries was that sometimes I had to change them. Over a few days, I had to change AA batteries in two different remote devices.
I know that cold weather depletes car batteries, and I wondered whether the winter’s cold had shortened the lives of these batteries too.
I didn’t learn about how batteries work when I went to school. In the Fifties, girls took Home Economics and boys took Shop. We learned how to make cinnamon toast and to sew aprons. A favorite memory is when a classmate was told to use elbow grease to clean something and reported back that she couldn’t find it in the supply closet.
I asked my computer how batteries work. The explanation geared to inquisitive children was somewhat understandable to me. Google it, just like I did.
It intrigued me to learn that the unit for electromagnetic force, the volt, was named after Italian physicist Alessandro Volta, in honor of his discoveries.
It was fascinating to learn about Volta’s debate with Italian physician and scientist Luigi Galvani. Galvani experimented with dissected frogs’ legs still attached to their spinal cords and hung on brass or iron hooks. When they came into contact with another metal, the frog legs would twitch. Galvani believed he had discovered a new form of electricity, generated by the legs, which he called “animal electricity.”
Volta argued that the metals used in Galvani’s experiments were generating the current. His effort to show that generating electrical current did not require any animal tissue led to the world’s first battery.
My eldest daughter, Julie, also took Home Economics. She remembers learning basic cooking, nutrition, and menu planning. And she made a skirt with an elastic waist and a peasant top. No boys were in that class.
Julie joined Civil Air Patrol in Eighth Grade, where a class on electricity was part of the Aerospace education curriculum. ”It wasn’t explained in a way that I could understand,” she recalled.
Julie was more interested in how planes stayed up in the air. The ratio of girl to boy cadets in CAP was ten to twenty percent girls to boys. “We were treated the same and allowed to do anything we could,” she said. “We may have been extremely lucky to have had a woman squadron commander.”
My son, Steven, learned simple woodworking in Shop. He took “Electricity In Communications” in Tenth Grade, the same year he took Physics – and earned an “A” in both.
Steve remembers taking things apart around the age of seven or eight. Things like radios and walkie-talkies. If they were dead, he wanted to see why. “It was a bit easier when I was younger because things weren’t as complicated,” he said. “The earlier electronics had mainly transistors, resistors and a capacitor.”
Once, he put a screwdriver between the plus and minus on the capacitor of an old non-working TV. “There was a discharge, a loud snap, like maybe a rock hitting the windshield, or a high voltage power line that shorts.” He remembered his father looking over the newspaper, shocked at the noise and melted screwdriver, saying, “I don’t want you playing with that!” Steve was undeterred.
Lynn my youngest daughter, learned the basics of cooking, baking, using a sewing machine, and basic interior design. She said her Home Economics class may have had one male student.
Lynn remembers their dad taking the kids to the mall regularly. The boys had Club cards from a Radio Shack store there. Researching the cards online, she found a picture of one on Reddit. A reader commenting that the card was the “coolest thing ever — to be able to walk into a store, show the card and get something for free!”
I thought Radio Shack had gone out of business. An article published on the website, RecommendedStations.com, in February, says they’re coming back.
If I had been offered the opportunity, I would not likely have excelled in “Electricity in Communications” or Physics. But my brain isn’t wired that way. Fortunately, New York City offered me an opportunity to excel in art at the magnet High School of Music and Art, now LaGuardia Arts.
That said, I am grateful to Alessandro Volta for batteries and New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia for his vision.
Mosaic artist/photographer Nina Tisara is the founder of Living Legends of Alexandria
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