Ponder historical camera gear and you tend to think of a dividing line between “needs no battery” and “batteries not included”. The truth is often not nearly so cleanly defined.

Even when cameras themselves didn’t use batteries, flashes did. Light meters? Some of them had augmented features that needed more juice. Sometimes batteries were actually batteries inside of batteries leading to creativity when it came to refurbishing or recharging.

This gallery is dedicated to the different kinds of batteries (many original) that I’m finding still in situ while cataloging and curating these devices and components. (Like each of the WaybackBox galleries, will be updated as warranted.)