It's the three words every parent see's...but too late.

"Batteries Not Included".

So there you are, on Christmas Day, heading to the junk drawer. Oh, we all have a junk drawer. And you have the full assortment..." AA", "AAA", there's a couple "C" and even a "D" or two. Thank goodness they're all there.

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But hold on a minute there, buckaroo. Just out of curiosity, why isn't there a "B" battery? And for that matter an "A"? We have the others but...hmm.

Well, to answer the question you never asked yourself:

It was back around the time of World War I the powers that be decided that, with all the new technology that was being developed, they need to have some sort of specification for battery sizes. The easiest way? Alphabetical. And so was born the "A", "B", "C", and so on.

But the technology developed, even more, things got smaller and thus we came to "AA" & "AAA".

Now I don't want to get too technical here, but suffice to say that while "AA" & "AAA" found a nice comfortable niche in the market, "B" didn't. Long story short: Because there simply wasn't a market for it, it went away. As did the "A".

Oh, they're still around, mostly in Europe. But if you go to your local store that carries every type of battery you need, well, no "B"...or "A".

But thank goodness you will have those "AA", "AAA", "C" and "D". otherwise you'll have one disappointed kid with remote care that won't run.

MentalFloss.com Contributed To This Article

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