engineering

Lewis Urry

Lewis Urry is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Lewis Urry rather than just read about it. In short: Lewis Frederick Urry ((1927-01-29)29 January 1927 – (2004-10-19)19 October 2004) was a Canadian-American chemical engineer and inventor. He invented both the alkaline battery and lithium battery while working for the Eveready Battery company.

Key takeaways

Lewis Urry belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Lewis Urry to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Lewis Urry from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Lewis Frederick Urry ((1927-01-29)29 January 1927 – (2004-10-19)19 October 2004) was a Canadian-American chemical engineer and inventor. He invented both the alkaline battery and lithium battery while working for the Eveready Battery company.

Life Urry was born January 29, 1927, 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 Battery a few months after graduating. He was married to Beverley Ann (died 1993) and they had 3 sons and 2 daughters. He died October 19, 2004, and is buried in Butternut Ridge Cemetery, in Eaton Township, Ohio.

Career In 1955, Urry was dispatched to the company's laboratory in Parma, Ohio, in order to discover a way of extending the lifespan 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. Urry managed to overcome this problem by using powdered zinc. On October 9, 1957, Lewis Urry, Karl Kordesch, and P.A. Marsal filed US patent (2,960,558) for this revolutionary alkaline dry cell battery with a powdered zinc gel anode. It was granted on November 15, 1960, and assigned to Union Carbide Corporation. In order to sell the idea to his managers, Urry put the battery in a toy car and raced it round the canteen against a similar car with one of the older batteries. His new invention had many times the durability, and 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 as much as 40 times longer than the original prototype. In 1999, Urry gave his first prototype battery, along with the first commercially produced cylindrical battery, to the Smithsonian Institution. Both cells are now displayed in the same room as Edison's light bulb.

References

External links

Guardian obituary Alkaline Dry Cell Patent US2960558 How a Canadian engineer fuelled the battery industry Shane Dingman, Globe and Mail, 2017 Jan. 2

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Lewis Urry

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Lewis Urry claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Lewis Urry before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Lewis Urry ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Lewis Urry

In research: Lewis Urry appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Lewis Urry in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Lewis Urry is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1927 births, 2004 deaths, 20th-century Canadian inventors, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Lewis Urry outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Lewis Urry in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Lewis Urry means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Lewis Urry out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Lewis Urry in simple terms?

Why does Lewis Urry matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Lewis Urry?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Lewis Urry.