Over a century ago, Thomas Edison developed a rechargeable nickel-iron battery, designed to power cars. Remarkably, the technology is still used by some people to store energy from solar panels and wind turbines—but now, Stanford engineers have tweaked it to charge 1000 times faster.

Edison’s original battery used a cathode made of nickel and an anode made of iron, and bathed the lot in an alkaline solution. Back in Edison’s day, the conductive elements contained some carbon to help them work, but the Stanford engineers thought it would be fun to see what replacing that with graphene would do.

via Making Edison’s Batteries Charge 1000 Times Faster.