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Wait a minute, Doc. Are you trying to tell me that there was a fellow Badger in the third Back to the Future movie? Well, not quite. You won’t find a Badger’s name buried in the cast list of this sci-fi classic, but you might spot it in a scene. A Burgess battery — the invention of Charles Frederick “Battery” Burgess 1895, MS1898 — is the favored power source of Emmett “Doc” Brown (c. 1985) when Marty McFly travels to 1885 to rescue him from certain death. He’s aided in his endeavor by none other than Doc Brown (c. 1955), who equips Marty with walkie talkies powered by comically large Burgess Dry-Cel batteries originally purchased by, you guessed it, Doc Brown (c. 1985). Burgess founded the Burgess Battery Company in Madison in 1917 before moving its operations to Freeport, Illinois. He was also a consultant with the French Battery Company, which eventually became Rayovac and, later, Spectrum Brands. He never invented something that could generate the 1.21 jigawatts — er, gigawatts — needed to jumpstart a DeLorean, but three generations of Docs have that covered.

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