Burgess Battery Company

The Burgess Battery Company was founded March 1, 1917 in Madison, Wisconsin and was dissolved in late 1989 at Freeport, Illinois. By the start of World War II the company was noted for its dry-cell battery quality. It was then one of five smaller producers as opposed to three major producers.

Some Burgess D cells.
Some 9-volt transistor radio batteries. Burgess on the left.
A Number 6 Burgess battery. AA cell on the left for scale. Grid is 7mm squares.

Rise (1917-1945)

The Burgess Battery Company (Burgess) was founded by Charles F. Burgess in Madison, Wisconsin and incorporated on March 1,1917. The United States entered World War I a month later on April 6. During the war Burgess collaborated with the U. S. Army Signal Corp to develop quality batteries for radio communication equipment. Radio "A" and Radio "B" batteries resulted.[1]

Charles Burgess was very experienced in the field of dry-cell batteries when he started his battery company. Following graduation from the University of Wisconsin in 1895, he taught chemistry there until 1913. In 1905 he became a Full Professor and later founded the University's Department of Chemical Engineering. In 1907 he became a consultant to the nearby French Battery Company (later renamed The Ray-O-Vac Company). He was charged with improvement of the French No. 6 battery[1] — the large 6-inch-tall, single-cell battery used for automobile ignition, railroad signals, telephones, doorbells and other electrical devices. Mr. Burgess’ efforts took French battery quality to among the best on the market and Mr. Burgess was put in charge of engineering at French. Within a year Mr. Burgess started work, independently, on two new battery sizes: the Number 1 size (standardized later as the "C" cell) and the Number 2 size (the future "D" cell). Coincident with his university teaching, Mr. Burgess, in 1910, formed and incorporated Northern Chemical Engineering Labs (NCEL). Using the trade name “Northern Lights” NCEL made and sold some dry batteries to the Madison Gas and Electric Company. Mr. Burgess resigned from the University of Wisconsin July 1, 1913 and devoted full time thereafter to his battery enterprises.[1] 

In 1915, NCEL became C. F. Burgess Laboratories becoming the parent firm for various enterprises including the Burgess Battery Company at its founding. In 1916, Mr. Burgess severed all connections with the French Battery Company leading to his incorporation of The Burgess Battery Company in 1917.[2]

After WW I, and through the 1920's, it was a boom time for Burgess and the radio and radio-battery industry in general. As the company prospered, high Wisconsin taxes sent Mr. Burgess looking for a more advantageous state in which to do business. He settled on Freeport, Illinois along the southern border with Wisconsin. There on December 15, 1925 he purchased a large manufacturing building where battery production was commenced on July 1, 1926. That year the University of Wisconsin awarded Charles Burgess an honorary degree of Doctor of Science. (A year before his death he received a second honorary doctor's degree, this time in engineering, from the Illinois Institute of Technology.)[3]

Unfortunately Burgess was hit hard during the Great Depression. In 1931 the company was losing $1,000 a day. In 1937, a long and bitter labor strike broke out that led to a hearing before the National Labor Relations Board which ruled unfavorably for Burgess the following year.[4]

In 1937 Ray-O-Vac Company patented and introduced its so-called “Leak Proof” flashlight batteries which were an immediate success — in fact the U.S. Army specified these for all its requirements in WW II. This was a blow to Burgess and all other dry battery companies. When the Ray-O-Vac patent expired Burgess and most others adopted the Ray-O-Vac design. (See illustration of Burgess D cell batteries in the Ray-O-Vac design.)

At the outbreak of WW II Burgess stood out as a successful small manufacturer of a full line of dry-cell batteries. Burgess was then at the apex of its history, being known as a maker of very high quality batteries. Burgess concentrated with great success on selling directly to universities, colleges, schools, private scientific laboratories and all facets of civilian governments large and small -- aided by Dr. Burgess’ background in academia and the scientific community.

During WW II, as Burgess was at its peak, Dr. Burgess died unexpectedly of a heart attack on February 13, 1945 in a Chicago hospital.[5] Dr. Burgess owned the company, and no significant successor had been groomed to take his place.

Decline (1945-1989)

In 1943 P. R. Mallory & Co. of Indianapolis, under license from prodigious independent inventor Samuel Ruben, began the manufacture of “Mercury-cell" batteries for the Signal Corp. These batteries far surpassed the performance of zinc-carbon batteries for use in handi-talkie and walkie-talkie radios. They were smaller with much longer shelf and service life, especially in the heat of the South Pacific Theater. The US government used its wartime authority to license both Ray-O-Vac and General Dry Batteries to make these in addition to Mallory — General Dry Batteries made a lot of them and at war’s end secured a continuing sub-license from Mallory. However, after the Mallory/Ruben patents expired Ray-O-Vac and Energizer joined Mallory and General in making these in button sizes for watches, cameras, toys, hearing aides and many other applications. Burgess never made mercury-cell batteries after the controlling patents expired in about 1960, nor any other button batteries.

In 1943 General Dry Batteries, Inc. was granted at least nine patents on zinc-carbon “wafer-cell” batteries for vacuum-tube hearing aids and small portable radios like walkie-talkies. These were well suited for the coming transistor radios.[6] Burgess did make some of these after the patents expired. See illustration of 9v, wafer-cell batteries.

Other major changes in the dry-cell battery market came along after WW II. Rural electrification spread and eventually eliminated the market for railroad signal batteries and “farm packs,” large combination batteries with A, B and C battery components enclosed, used to power table-top farm radios.

Hand-crank telephones were phased out eliminating the last major market for No. 6 batteries. Household usage for the No. 6 had vanished with the development of reliable alternating-current transformers about 1945.[7]

In 1960 P R Mallory & Company introduced the manganese-alkaline, zinc-carbon battery which was a great improvement over the manganese-acid, zinc-carbon batteries, long the mainstay of the industry.[8] Mallory then branded these “Duracell” to distinguish them from the traditional “Mallory” branded manganese-acid batteries.[9] Soon National Carbon did the same by introducing the Energizer brand to make a similar distinction from Eveready. Ray-O-Vac made both types of batteries with the same brand name. Very shortly the market shifted almost totally to the alkaline chemistry battery. It is doubtful that Burgess ever made a change to manganese-alkaline chemistry.

In 1962 Texas Instruments introduced the transistor for radios, TVs and various small appliances.[10] This killed the need for most vacuum tubes and therefore the market for A, B, and C batteries for portable radios. These batteries were the backbone of Burgess leaving it with only, by then, low quality manganese-acid batteries for flash-lights and toys. Against all the above obstacles Burgess struggled on for another 17 years.

Burgess was acquired in December 1958 by Servel, Inc. (a maker of refrigerators and refrigeration equipment) and became the Burgess Battery Division of Servel. [11] In 1967 Servel was merged into Clevite Corporation (a major maker of internal combustion engine bearings).[12] In 1969 Clevite was merged into Gould-National Batteries, Inc. and Burgess was renamed Burgess Battery-Gould, Inc., a dba of Gould-National Batteries.[13] In 1971 Burgess Battery-Gould built a new dry-cell battery factory in Woodruff, South Carolina.[14] (Gould-National arose from the merger of Gould and National wet-cell storage battery manufacturers.)

In 1974 the Burgess operation was acquired by Charles Pindyck, Inc. an infants-wear maker in New Jersey. The name of the Burgess operation then became Burgess, Inc.[15] Within about a year, in 1975, the Woodruff plant was closed and all production there was moved back to Freeport.[16]

By 1985 Burgess was behind in payables and in jeopardy with utility companies. Employment was down to 100 workers. (During WW II employment in that plant had reached 1,000 and was still at 350 in 1976.[17]) At this point Charles Pindyck, Inc. sold Burgess, Inc. to Robert F. Schnoes, [18] an experienced, industrial turn-around executive.[19]

Schnoes bought it with the ambition of turning it around as he had done before with other failing businesses.[19]But things turned out to be so bad at Burgess that Schnoes' dream of turning it around came to nought. The Freeport plant was shuttered for good in 1989. All the ancient tools and equipment, office furniture, along with a 26-year-old Buick LeSabre were liquidated in a three-day auction at the Freeport plant November 14-16, 1989.[20]

References
  1. "Burgess Battery | Batteries, Flashlights, and Lanterns". web.archive.org. September 26, 2011.
  2. ibid
  3. C. F. Burgess obituary Freeport Journal Standard: Feb 13, 1945 pg 10
  4. Capital Times Madison Wisconsin August 25, 1938 pg 1
  5. C. F. Burgess obituary Freeport Journal-Standard: Feb 13, 1945 pg 10
  6. ibid
  7. Ray Shatzel, Corporate Information, Hammond Mfg. Co.
  8. The Indianapolis Star May 13, 1960 page 6
  9. The Indianapolis Star April 17, 1966 page 22B
  10. DURO-POWR The Convergent Origins of DURACELL Library of Congress 2019905561
  11. Freeport Journal Standard Dec 23, 1958 pg 1
  12. Freeport Journal Standard May 1, 1967 pg 1
  13. Minneapolis Tribune April 20 1969 pg 1C
  14. The Charlotte (NC) Observer August 8 1970 pg 4C
  15. Freeport Journal Standard October 17 1974 pg 12
  16. Freeport Journal Standard Aug 25 1975 pg 6
  17. Freeport Journal Standard October 9 1976 pg ?
  18. Robert F, Schnoes obituary Freeport Journal-Standard September 12 2012 pg?
  19. The Capital Times (Madison, Wisconsin) May 14 1985 pg 8
  20. Chicago Tribune November 5 1989 pg 155
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