You cannot rely on Black & White images found in contemporary print media to tell you what the actual battery looked like.
The reason is that line art or even half-tone B&W images may not show features clearly, or have as much 'eye appeal' without color information. So the advertiser woulld comission artwork that would look good when printed in B&W. Even perspective shown may not be true to the actual product.
Below is an example from my collection.
Virtually all the batteries absolutely necessary to operate almost all radios made before 1927 have now been discarded. The same is true for the majority of radio batteries made before about 1938. Information necessary to construct museum grade replicas in many cases now only exist in the very few batteries still in vintage radio collections.
Too often when a collection is broken up, these batteries are not recognized as scarce items worthy of preservation & documentation. You can help document your vintage batteries by following the instructions below and on the next page. It is really not difficult.
You can help preserve battery history.
(Even if your artifacts are badly damaged.)
Accurate replicas cannot be made without artifact dimensions, graphics and most importantly, color information.
