[3] After high school in Niagara Falls, Ballard attended Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, studying geological engineering.

During these trips his advice was often ignored as he was "only" a BSc (difficult enough in 1950s), and after several such incidents he decided to leave industry and pursue a doctorate in earth and planetary sciences from Washington University in St.

[5] After earning his PhD in 1963, Ballard worked as a civilian for the U.S. Army, specializing in microwave communications and studying how to hide refueling tanks under the ice in Greenland.

"[5] Ballard had earlier met Ralph Schwartz in Arizona, who introduced him to the idea of using lithium batteries in place of lead-acid, as they would be much lighter.

[8] Schwartz and Ballard were introduced to Keith Prater at the University of Texas chemistry department, and sold him on the idea of developing a new rechargeable lithium battery technology with them.

Working in a trailer, Ballard and Schwartz built a simple battery and Prater brought a sample of the lithium dithionite, and when they were placed together and charged, a weak current was produced.

Horton was in the process of re-fitting the Ben Franklin (PX-15) in North Vancouver for oil exploration, and Ballard convinced him that their new battery would be a perfect fit.

After obtaining some private bridge financing, they won a contract for a non-rechargeable lithium battery with a shelf life of 10 years for the fire detector company, Firenetics.

[11] After about a year the battery was ready and production was going to be started in Hong Kong, when, to Ultra's surprise, Firenetics filed for bankruptcy after a long lawsuit with General Electric.

[12] Now solvent, the company quickly started looking for applications for their technology, and won contracts with the Canadian Forces to further develop their single-use long-life battery.

In 1983, Ballard, Prater and Paul Howard started looking for new ideas for their development side to work on as the funds for the battery project dried up.

Among a variety of ideas were a number of attempts to find government funding, which eventually led them to a Department of National Defense (DND) request for proposals for bids to produce a low-cost solid polymer fuel cell.

[13] Prater, with an extensive electrochemical background, flew to the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, where limited PEM research was still being carried out.

After meeting the requirements, they won a follow-up contract, and it was during this project, in 1986, when they reached a milestone of producing four times as much energy per unit volume as any previous fuel cell.

Feeling the technology was ready for commercial use, in 1989 Ballard raised $4 million in public money from the British Columbia government to build a fuel cell powered bus, introducing it at Science World in 1993.

He took the bus to energy fairs around the world, and Daimler-Chrysler and Ford invested $750 million to buy a one-third stake in the newly public Ballard Power Systems.

"[2] Taking the technology from laboratory to the road proved very difficult, and after years of development and many rounds of additional funding, Ballard left active management in 1998.

The automotive power division was sold to Daimler-Chrysler and Ford in 2008 for $96.6 million, and Daimler currently operates a small number of fuel cell busses in Hamburg, United States, Japan and Singapore.