{"id":11,"date":"2008-01-04T00:01:11","date_gmt":"2008-01-04T07:01:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/2008\/01\/04\/dawn-of-the-fuel-cell-era\/"},"modified":"2013-02-10T21:45:23","modified_gmt":"2013-02-11T04:45:23","slug":"dawn-of-the-fuel-cell-era","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=11","title":{"rendered":"Dawn of the Fuel Cell Era"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve lamented in my Laptops for Dummies<\/a><\/em> book that battery power is woefully pitiful and obsolete. Folks, we use flashlight batteries today that were designed in the 1930s. But that’s about to end.<\/p>\n

We are at the dawn of the fuel cell era. Batteries are about to go buh-bye and we’re all going to be better off for it. Proof comes from a company called Millennium Cell. (I once owned stock in that company. Good company, bad stock move; I bought just before the dot-com bust.) But before showing you a taste of the future, a word on fuel cell technology.<\/p>\n

A fuel cell works like a battery. It’s portable. It will eventually be lightweight and small. But unlike a battery, a fuel cell requires fuel for a charge. You fill up the fuel cell similar to filling a jug or gas tank. The fuel cell is then charged and produces electricity for a while. When the fuel cell gets low, you simply add more juice. Away you go!<\/p>\n

Millennium Cell has just introduced a portable fuel cell generator called the Hydropack. I have no data on its weight, but it produces 400 watts of power and its fuel is plain water. It’s spendy: $400. But it’s a wonderful first step into a world without batteries, a world with fuel cells.<\/p>\n

Star Trek Dept.<\/strong> Here is a link to a funky video<\/a>. It’s the Turkish version of the first aired episode of Star Trek, “The Man Trap.” Now it takes about 3 minute for the credits to roll, but then you’ll see a set of Turkish actors playing the rolls and speaking dialog you know so well \u2014 except it’s in Turkish! And the sets are, well, gloriously campy!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve lamented in my Laptops for Dummies<\/em> book that battery power is woefully pitiful and obsolete. Folks, we use flashlight batteries today that were designed in the 1930s. But that’s about to end.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[16],"class_list":["post-11","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main","tag-laptop"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4215,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions\/4215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}