19 



II. Beginnings of the AD-X2 Story 



The case would never have arisen had it not been for an individual- 

 istic entrepreneur whose determined efforts to sell his product brought 

 him in conflict \\ith competitive and institutional obstacles, and whose 

 persistence and ingenuity were sustained in the face of accumulating 

 adversity. The protagonist in this episode was Jesse M. Ritchie, 

 president of Pioneers, Inc., of Oakland, Calif. He described himself 

 in these words: 'T am not a chemist; I am an engineer. I am basically 

 a bulldozer operator." ^ Elsewhere, he has been described as a man of 

 versatile and somewhat informal interests: 



Ritchie, a self-educated engineer, was born in 1909 in Sharp County, Ark. 

 He supplemented a sixth-grade education with correspondence courses, worked 

 as a certified bulldozer operator and as a journeyman diesel engineer. During 

 World War II he worked as a civilian in charge of various defense contracts 

 and in 1946 joined the Drake-Utah-Grove construction combine on an $80 

 million Armv Engineer contract, serving as general superintendent of construction 

 with headquarters in the Philippines. In 1945 he qualified as a class A general 

 contractor in California. In 1953 he listed himself as a "Psychologist-Specialist 

 in Alcoholism" in the phore directory in Oakland, Calif. By this time, too, he was 

 able to claim a doctor of psychology degree from a Chicago institution called the 

 College of Universal Truth.^ 



In his testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Small 

 Business, Ritchie described the evolution of his formula for a battery 

 additive. Upon his return to California from the Philippines, early 

 in 1947, he bought a partnership in a firm that made and sold a 

 storage battery additive called Protecto-Charge. He found this addi- 

 tive to be harmful to batteries, and undertook to develop a satisfactory 

 one. He enlisted the aid of Dr. Merle Randall, professor emeritus of 

 physical chemistry at the University of California. After an earlier 

 partial success, he assertedly settled on the "AD-X2" formida in 

 October 1947.^ To protect his proprietary interest in the new additive 

 he relied on secrecy. In the Senate hearings Ritchie introduced various 

 documents signed or authored by Dr. Randall describing the effect 

 of the new additive in qualitative terms. Experience with the new 

 additive, according to Dr. Randall, showed that it held the active 

 lead paste tightly to the plates in storage batteries with "an apparent, 

 possibly real, decrease in the amount of battery mud." The bubbles 

 of gas generated during the charging phase were small and distributed, 

 resulting, he said, in a decreased evaporation of liquid from batteries.* 



Elsewhere, Dr. Randall had said that the additive AD-X2 contrib- 

 uted a desirable softening action to hardened "sulfated" battery 

 plate material, and that by electrophoretic action it caused particles 

 of battery mud to be "attracted to the plates, where they lodge and 

 gradually form additional active material." He also attributed to the 

 compounds of sodium suKate and magnesium sulfate the property of 

 diminishing the rate of growth of crystals of lead sulfate; size of these 



1 Testimony of Jesse M. Ritchie, president, Pioneers, Inc., Oakland, Calif. In U.S. Congress. Senate. 

 Seleat Committee on Small Business. Battery AD-X2. Hearings before tlie * * * on Investigation of 

 Battery Additive AD-X2. Mar. 31, June 22, 23, 24, 25, and 26, 1953. 83d Cong., first session. (Washington, 

 U.S. Government Printing Office, 1953), p. 18. 



2 Samuel A. Lawrence. "The Battery Additive Controversy." The Inter-University Case Program, 

 No. 68. (University of Alabama, University of Alabama Press, 1962), p. 5. 



3 This account is pieced together from Ritchie's testimony in Senate. Battery, AD-X2. Hearings, op. cit., 

 pp. 17-18, 20, 196-197. 



* Letter of June 23, 1948, from Dr. Merle Randall to Dr. George W. Vinal, National Bureau of Standards. 

 In Senate. Battery AD-X2. Hearings, op. cit., p. 44. 



