Three “new to me” Vintage flashlights arrive to me today from a friends who graciously donated them to my Flashlight Emporium in the Museum section.
One is a Vintage 3-D Eveready Incan, with an aspheric glass lens. Its heavy built with a nickel plated brass body, and looks like it was well-used as much of the nickel is worn off.
The second is an unusual “palm” style with an incan bulb, and used some sort of odd oval battery.
The third is the most unique, it came with its original box, and looks something like a vintage puck-shaped Compact mirror case that Marilyn Monroe would have carried in her purse during the 1940s - 50s, but its a 2-AA cell flashlight called the ” Electro-Pak”. The momentary-on button is on the side, with an old-style incan bulb poking through roughly 40 degrees from the button. The cover is removable to show the two original batteries, the bulb, switch and wires all held in place with wax.
The two Zinc batteries are long since dead, but they are loose in the wax, and i could probably replace them with new cells and the light would work again, but woudl take away from its original look and parts.
From what I’ve seen via google it says “hermetically sealed against corrosion” and “no battery or bulb replacement”. Have to agree that replacement would take away from it.
Please do keep originality or be sure it can be restored in the future. Once originality is lost it can rarely be regained and along with that goes irreplaceable history. Bulbs are rarely original but most types can still be sourced so you can retain the one which came with the light should you ever want to power it up. Beamshots of old lights will almost always be a great disappointment- a Nano with half-dead cells does better than a lot of them did.
And a bit of trivia: Eveready US and Eveready England were two entirely different unrelated companies with different product lines, only the brand name was the same.
These are so cool. I definitely don’t see any like this. I wonder where they get these. So the electropak was a disposable flashlight it seems. That’s pretty interesting… it seems like this sort of thing would be less likely to be disposable in that era vs. the throwaway age we live in.
Wow! Those are unusual. Nonleaking original dry cells; perhaps that brand had thick zinc cans, or perhaps there is enough wax to keep it from leaking. That is an odd switch on the nickel plated one. Is the lens really aspheric or is it spherical? I think aspheric glass was hard to make before numerical control.
I wonder how old they are. I think chrome plating had already replaced nickel when I was young.
Why not? lol. Honestly, Molten wax as a thermal conductor inside a sealed pill could potentially work. Wax itself is a poor thermal conductor but, convection and the energy used to melt the wax must count for something.
