this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2025
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This brought to my mind Battery of Hate, a 1933 sci fi story by John W. Campbell, about an inventor who comes up with a super-powerful battery and uses it to power an electric airplane. A battle ensues with an industrial tycoon determined to quash the invention. I remember it being a pretty well written story for the period. Wish I could find it online - amazing that it's not on gutenberg, given that it was published 92 years ago.
Wouldn't want people getting ideas, eh?
If we had simultaneously actually researched battery technology on an industrial level since the start of car manufacturing, I'm sure we would already have much better batteries.
It's not a joke or conspiracy that there's the fossil fuel industry engages in suppressing and downplaying technology that might affect their business.
Some of the first cars were electric, at least I remember reading about those breaking records (like going over 60km/h maybe, it was a long time ago).
Nonsense. Oil companies would never do Such things.
Only when mobile phones started being an actual notion did batteries finally start becoming reasonable. Now it's been like 40 years and the development is pretty significant. But if there had been 80 years more...? Who knows.