Reminds me.
Back in the late1960s as a teenaged experimenter I bought a Soviet V,A etc meter - housed in a steel case - beautifully made, if a bit rough around the edges. It had one of the very ancient type bicycle lamp batteries (? 3 cells in one case, size of a long flat cigarette pack, sprung copper contacts).
I wasn't using it much, and not often for resistance, which requires the power, but it continued working fine into this century, with no battery change, really mystified me as to what was going on - must have been Zinc acid/carbon type, but any British-made battery of this type never lasted more than a year or so. Even when it stopped working and I left it outside its box in a damp environment . it didn't leak, but finally lost its charge, about 2005.