[Al Skierkiewicz]

Electronics people have been using capacitors as batteries for many years. For instance, low current devices can be powered by a large capacitor for a really long time. It was quite common for VCRs to have a large capacitor in the clock circuit or tuner memory so that people would not have a hard time resetting the VCR after a power failure. The interesting thing was that a 1 farad cap at 5 volts was only about the size of a stack of dimes, smaller than a small NiCad pack and no hazardous materials.