The History Of the Flashlight
Flashlights have come a long way. The first hand-held electric torches were considered novelty items, and were named “flashlights” precisely because they couldn’t deliver steady light. Russian immigrant Conrad Hubert (nee Akiba Horowitz) is the entrepreneur we have to thank for the transition to reliant flashlights. In 1897, Hubert was struggling to make ends meet in his new homeland. Since he was flat broke, he took work anywhere. He worked in a cigar store and ran a hotel and restaurant. He even repaired watches for a while. But he never seemed to have enough money.
He soon started his own business, American Electrical Novelty and Manufacturing Company, to create and market new electric novelty items, such as portable fans, lighted stick pins, and even a light-up flower pot. Soon, he paired up with an innovative engineer, David Missel, and the two worked together to create a better portable electric torch.
Their early models were hand-made from paper and fiber tubes. Hubert and Missel assembled a mass of their new flashlights and gave them to New York City policemen in various precincts. The public began to see the usefulness of the flashlights when the policemen reported back favorably. In 1906, Eveready bough half of the company’s shares for $200,000, and soon flashlights were popping up in households across the country, helped in no small part by an ad campaign in the 1920s and 30s featuring Rockwell-esque portraits of flashlights in family scenes. The picture above shows a 1899 Model One Eveready light.
Today’s flashlights are eons ahead of those early models. LED lights are at the forefront of the flashlight field, thanks to their efficiency and long battery life. LED Lenser’s T7 tactical light is an excellent choice. It throws light to 711 feet, twice as far as the high-beams on most car headlights. And the four AAA batteries it requires will last forever– about 130 hours, in fact. The one-handed speed focus and three-step quick-cycle switch funtion allows you to switch easily between low and maximum light settings. Finally, the T7 comes with a life-time guarantee, something those early paper and fiber tube flashlight models certainly didn’t have.
Top photo by Stuart L. Schneider.
