Alexander Gilmour

Alexander "Lex" Gilmour (1930 — 2006) attended Queen's University, Belfast (QUB), earning BSc, MSc and PhD degrees in Chemistry. After graduating from QUB in 1956, he obtained a position at Short Brothers, the company which developed black box flight recorder technology. He met his future wife, Miriam, at Short's.

By 1961 he had found new employment at the British Oxygen Corporation. In 1962 he and Miriam were married. In 1966 Gilmour was named European engineering manager of Mallory Batteries Incorporated (MBI), the manufacturers of Duracell batteries, where he remained for 15 years. Gilmour made the preliminary designs for the 9 Volt “PP3” battery.

In 1980 Gilmour moved to the British Ever Ready Electric Company. For almost two decades he ran his own consulting firm, Lexcel Technology Ltd., which held the Rechargeable electrochemical cell's U.S. patent (#5,741,607; 980421).