American Ever Ready Company
1896 - 1914
Eveready Battery Company, Inc. is an American manufacturer of battery brands Eveready and Energizer, owned by Energizer Holdings. Its headquarters are in St. Louis, Missouri.
In 1896, a Russian immigrant in New York City named Conrad Hubert founded the American Electrical Novelty and Manufacturing Company (AENMC) to market battery powered devices. He filed two patents in 1899 for his "Electric Hand Torch," a dry cell battery within a paper tube, with a bulb inside a rough brass reflector on one end of the tube—the building blocks for the world's first flashlight.
In 1905, AENMC changed its name to American Ever Ready Company, focusing on the dependability of its flashlight products. In 1906, the National Carbon Company which had supplied Ever Ready with materials for their batteries, bought a half interest in the company for $200,000. The name was changed to The American Ever Ready Company and the trademark was shortened to one word -- Eveready.
American Ever Ready became part of the National Carbon Company in 1914, forming the only manufacturer specializing in both batteries and lighting products. In 1917 National Carbon Company merged with Union Carbide to form the Union Carbide and Carbon Co. In 1986, Union Carbide sold its Battery Products Division to Ralston Purina for US$1.4 billion.