Nobody but engineers and chemists called them by their proper name.
Leclanché cells were the first practical "dry cell." They started out dry but the electrolyte was replaced with magnesium dioxide and they became 'dry.' [damp really] Of course "as deployed" they were quite different from the original and featured additions/modifications by several people.
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https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/zinc-carbon-battery
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I took a class in the "physics of electrical cells" in 'university' and learned the proper name.
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Most of us called them carbon-zinc batteries being ignorant that a battery is a collection of cells.
I cringe when I hear people call a "D" cell a battery.
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You can actually recharge carbon-zinc/Leclanché cells. They don't recharge all that well, the only place I could see the process being worthwhile was for a night watchman, use one set and recharge the other.
Going from a vague memory, each recharge lost about 5% of capacity. Typically recharging ended when the process ate through the zinc shell.
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There was a long series of letters to the editor in one of the magazines about how to improve charging.
One thing that appeared to have helped was to have about 10% reverse charge during the process.
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Everready [or one of the battery companies] actually sold a commercial charger.
I don't think you can recharge alkaline cells at all. even charging the carbon-zinc was a loss leader.
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The university class was interesting because it helped me understand "Primary batteries are burning metal to produce electricity." Not exactly accurate but it gets the idea across. We visited Oak Ridge and saw a liquid sodium battery. Good energy to weight ratio but molten sodium is pretty energetic if there is a leak.
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At the time, silver-cadmium had the best, as in highest energy to weight ratio, they were prone to memory just like nickle-cadmium but handled temperature extremes better. Of course they were somewhere so far beyond obscene expensive only the military and NASA could use them. The US Navy OSCAR series used them. The Nike' Zeus missile defense missiles would have also used them.?
[Been to one Nike' Zeus as they demolished it. Interesting site.]?
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Note: The Navy OSCAR and amateur Oscar only share names and have nothing else but being satellites in common.
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