Karl Kordesch was a front runner of a new wave of energy storage pioneers. He helped breathe new life into a battery industry that had largely been marking time. Kordesch was a joint signatory of Lewis Urry’s 1957 alkaline battery patent, together with a certain P.A. Marshall. However, the Kordesch hydrogen fuel cell was perhaps his greatest contribution during his eighty-eight-year life span.
Karl Kordesch’s Contribution to Battery History
Kordesch was born in Vienna, Austria in 1922. He studied physics and chemistry at the university there, and graduated in 1948. Then he joined the U.S. Signal Corps in 1953, where he headed the battery division at Fort Monmouth for two years. After that, he took up a position with Union Carbide in Ohio, where he managed two research groups.
One of those two groups devoted itself to developing manganese-dioxide batteries. But the other proved to be the wellspring for the Kordesch hydrogen fuel cell ideas. We should not allow the relatively slow development of this technology, compared to batteries, to reduce the significance of his contribution. Fuel cell technology is out there, waiting for its window of opportunity to open.
Kordesch presented a fuel cell prototype at the 1958 Brussels Fair. This comprised a hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell, using his proprietary thin carbon fuel cell electrode. However, there seemed to be few takers for the idea at the time.
And so he incorporated his Kordesch hydrogen fuel cell in a hybrid electric motorcycle in 1967. The hydrazine version of that vehicle delivered 200 miles to the U.S. Gallon. In 1970 he followed through with a hydrogen-fuel-cell-powered Austin A40 motorcar. Four passengers could travel in it for 180 miles on a single charge.
But alas, Karl Kordesch was a man ahead of his time in those gasoline-guzzling years. He retired early to Austria in 1977, where he continued exploring fuel cells. It is said he was happy to see hybrid electric vehicles appearing during his closing years. Kordesch was a prolific genius, who filed over 120 patents and wrote more than 200 publications.
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