In New Scientist for 7 July 2001,p.50, there is a dandy UK word I think is superior to usual US equivalent. The article is about the early days of home radio reception, and to my amazement is about using illuminating gas to power a radio!
Because the Brit, Insull, did his work in US, just about everybody here had electricity in home in the twenties. I remember the A, B, and C batteries. The A and C batteries were carbon-zinc dry cells, but most of the power was supplied by the B cells, which had to be a regular automobile battery, that could be charged from the house electric current.
So I was surprised to learn that in Britain a very large part of homes did not have electricity, and the illuminating gas companies fearing loss of customers, promoted the use of a device that produced power from illuminating gas by "the thermoelectric effect: the generation of electricity in a circuit made of wires of different metals in which the junctions between those metals are maintained at different temperatures."

But the name of the device that stored the power so generated, was new to me. Except for our UK members, how many can guess what it was called?