How did " Ray-O-Vac" batterys get there name?

On January 17, 1906, several businessmen led by University of Wisconsin graduate James B. Ramsay incorporated a new company in Madison, Wisconsin. Called the French Battery Co., after the country of origin of partner and technical advisor Alfred Landau, the firm began manufacturing zinc-carbon dry cell batteries for telephones and automobiles.

Sales were good in the company’s first year, but poor quality control and financial mismanagement threatened to bankrupt the fledgling company. Landau was asked to resign in November 1907 and Ramsay sought the technical assistance of Dr. Charles F. Burgess, founder of the Chemical Engineering Department at the University of Wisconsin. This is an early example of the university-industry cooperation that has boosted the success of many Wisconsin businesses.

Burgess gradually helped improve quality and profitability of French Battery Co. products and eventually interested the company in marketing D-cell batteries manufactured by his own Northern Chemical and Engineering Laboratory. In 1914 French began selling Burgess-made flashlights which it called “French Flashers.”

A devastating November 1915 fire in a part of the French factory rented to Burgess caused a falling out between Ramsay and Burgess. In 1916 the French Battery Co. ceased buying flashlights and batteries from Burgess and began manufacturing its own. Burgess founded a competing battery company in Madison the following year, eventually relocating it to Freeport, Illinois in 1926.

In 1920 the French Battery Co. finally named the lightning-like cartoon character it had been using to advertise its flashlights: “Mr. Ray-O-Lite.” This nickname became the source of several other brand names: Ray-O-Spark for automobile starter batteries and Ray-O-Vac for radio batteries (the vacuum tube amplifier was an essential component of early radios). While the phenomenal growth of the radio market in the mid -1920s powered the company’s success, the introduction of plug-in radios in 1927 triggered a precipitous shake-out of the battery industry.

French Battery Co. survived by drastically cutting its prices and building up its flashlight business to offset the loss of the radio market. Although radio batteries represented a dwindling proportion of sales, the brand had become so well known that the company changed its name to the Ray-O-Vac Company in 1934.