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Comment by thunderbong | Hacker News Reader

Wikipedia article has photos

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_tube_battery

This article is a bit odd. It does mention the "B" vacuum tube batteries you linked in that Wikipedia page, but B-size batteries are not the same thing. The article kinda mentions this ("voltage range of 45 to 90" vs 1.5v) but overall just conflates the two.

It's almost as if the shortest possible designations are most likely collision candidates.

I think the oddness is the LLM content generator conflating information about the 2 types of batteries.

Yeah I was wondering if it might be LLM generated, it just seems so pointless though. Additionally while the date could obviously be fake, June 2022 is before ChatGPT came out.

Non-mobile link (will still automatically switch for mobile users anyways): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_tube_battery

Those aren't B batteries, they're "B" batteries. You can tell because there's also a photo of a "C" battery that isn't cylindrical.

There's a photo of an actual B battery here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:B-AA-battery.jpg

Linked from: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_battery_sizes

The B battery referred to in the article is a vacuum tube battery.

The B battery you linked, is an carbon-zinc/alkaline battery and against that the comment says -

> Most commonly found within a European 4.5-volt lantern battery. Not to be confused with the vacuum tube B battery

This is a latern battery. You put other batteries in it. That's why it's called the 3R12. There are 3x R12 batteries in it.

https://www.google.com/search?q=European+4.5-volt+lantern+ba....

I remember seeing something like these in roadwork flashing lanterns.

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