I think we are getting hung up on technical definitions that were not used in the real world.
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A carbon-zinc is classified as a Laclanche in all my battery books. [can't add the diacritical above the e in this font] While carbon-zinc and Laclanche are "the same." I suspect every since the first Laclanche was built in a lab, there has been constant improvements with minor differences in the open terminal battery voltage.
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From "Batteries in a Portable World - A Handbook on Rechargeable - Isidor Buchmann - 4, 2017"
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High specific energy and long storage have made alkaline more popular than the old zinc- carbon, which Georges Leclanché invented in 1868.
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Choices of Primary Batteries
Zinc-carbon, also known as carbon-zinc or the Leclanché battery, is one of the earliest and least expensive primary batteries. It delivers 1.5V and often come with consumer devices. The first zinc-carbon invented by Georges Leclanché in
1859 was wet.
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When I was a kid, the magazines all said we could count on a new carbon-zinc having an open circuit voltage of 1.5V.
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I suspect this was a bit optimistic but hobbyist accuracy in 1960 was probably a lot more hope then reality.
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I bought a set of carbon-zinc "D" cells at Kroger Sunday, cut one open (God what a mess) and it had the expected carbon rod down the center and a layer of zinc surrounded by a case of steel.
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With the exception of the outer case of steel, it looks just like the cells I opened back in 1958~1965. I'm assuming the damp black crud is magnesium dioxide, I don't have any way to verify that at the moment. [I wonder if you heat magnesium dioxide in a closed container if you could 'drive off' the oxygen leaving magnesium.
I can test magnesium but lighting it, if it burns brighter then the sun, it's magnesium.]
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The open circuit voltage was 1.61V.
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I suspect the magnesium dioxide probably has an additive. Again, I don't have an analytical chemistry lab handy, don't think the university will let me use one of their labs, and it's been so long since I've done any chemical analysis (class back in 1976) I wouldn't trust myself to make an accurate analysis.
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One thing the battery book stated was "all primary cells release hydrogen" and that might be why alkaline cells are now leaking.
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My wife has a Dell something or other laptop with touch screen, the screen rotates and flips around to form a giant tablet and a stylus that uses AAAA cells. She can do some nice art work with the stylus.
