We do learn things if we are only patient.  Young man at Radio Shack on Madison Street said I should charge my new nickel cadmium battery for our wireless house phone for 12 hours before removing it from the charger.  Fine.  But he also said I should then remove it and let it wholly discharge before I replaced it for recharging.

This part I found suspicious. I’m not supposed to leave the wireless house phone on its cradle all the time?  No, he said patiently, and happily, I did not argue with him but forked over the $16–plus and took a new battery on home, charging it for 12 hours but leaving it in the charger!

Because I didn’t believe him, you see.  But when I finally did remove it, a few days later, I noticed something very suspicious: the phone was hot in my hand.  That can’t be right, I considered briefly, and decided to leave it off the charger.

Well.  The young man, already looking smarter, looked even smarter when I found this with a little Googling — “recharging nickel cadmium battery” was my signal to the world’s fastest answer machine, or one of the fastest:

Do not leave the battery on the charger for extended periods of time, this causes cells to “boil” and will quickly ruin a battery.

I found it here, where it’s part of the wireless.berkeley.edu site, which I assume is U-Cal Berkeley, under “battery care.”

What’s going on that makes a battery boil?

Always fully discharge your battery before recharging it, this excercises all of the cells in the battery so they are less likely to build dendrides, which are the cause of “memory effect”. Memory Effect- battery loses capacity and begins to use only the cells that are fully charged and discharged regularly, resulting in poor battery performance and eventually failure.

I did not know all that was going on, was in fact blithely unaware of it. 

But: You can’t be running to the charger every time it runs out.  It’s a lot to ask, you say, boiling point or not?  The Berkeley fellow recommends

a device called Pulse Power Rapid Charger & Conditioner, [which] has been proven to erase “memory effect” in most bad batteries, and increases the life cycle of healthy batteries from 200 charging cycles, to 500 or more charging cycles. Unit automatically charges, shuts off, and maintains battery charge with no buttons or switches to push. You can leave a battery on the Pulse Power indefinitely and cannot overcharge it.

Excellent.  I do not wish to overcharge my battery.  It’s a terrible thing to be overcharged anyhow.  So me for the Pulse Power Rapid Charger & Conditioner, which sounds wonderful.  I will look into that and report back, especially if I find one for human beings.  Couldn’t we all use some rapid charging and conditioning?