I have been reading up on lead acid batteries. Previously I knew that lead acid cathode battery plates had the lead oxide plate manufactured and pressed and glued together. I thought this was how all batteries were made and most are, well only almost all of them are. It's cheaper and faster than the old way. The old way of making lead acid you put 2 plates in weak acid and run a charge through then to make the lead oxide cathode plate. This takes time and some electrical power. Well it turns out you can still get the electrochemically formed batteries in dry form. They will stay good for at least several years if moist air can be kept out of the cells. The problem is finding them. I have not tried to identify which ones are electrochemically formed. The glued and preased lead oxide cathode plate batteries are only dry to make shipping cheaper. Oxygen ruins the glue that holds the cathode plate together after 6 months to 1 year. These batteries do better with acid covering the plates. If you could get unpolarized blanks, just 2 dry lead plates you could store these potentially forever. But then you have to form the cathode plate when you want to use the battery. Problem is there isn't much market for these. I think it would be a custom order. And this battery would have very low output due to lack of surface area. This would be a reproduction of a mid 1800s 1st generation lead acid battery.
Many sources. Modern marvels on history channel, copyrighted proprietary company manuals, the instruction manual that came with a dry starting battery I bought some years ago and Wikipedia. I assume all this information could be found on public domain some where since these batteries are 110+ year old technology.
