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This identification indicates the sizes of each of them. “At first, the letters were a notation used only by specialists to give an idea of the length, diameter and shape of the pile”, says chemist José Maurício Rosalen, from the University of São Paulo (USP) in Ribeirão Preto (SP). ). Over time, the procedure ended up being accepted by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), the institution that takes care of technical standards in the United States, and it became popular for classifying the batteries we use at home. The first to emerge was the battery used in small flashlights. “It was arbitrarily called C. Later, when a battery for larger flashlights appeared, it was named after the next letter in the alphabet, D”, says another chemist, Henrique Eisi Toma, also from USP.
With the decrease in the size of the devices, the smaller piles were named A. It was defined that it would measure 17 millimeters in diameter and 50 in length. “Then, with each reduction in size, there was a repetition of the letter. The AA model, the small battery used in radios and walkmans, is 14.2 by 50 millimeters. The stick battery, the AAA of the remote controls, measures 10.5 by 44.5 millimeters”, says Henrique. You might be wondering: are there any B stacks? No! As the manufacturers did not strictly follow the sequence of the alphabet in the denomination of the batteries, this letter was left aside in this electric baptism.