~ Back long before there was BLF, before there was internet, before there was modern LEDs, & before many of us were even born, the lowly flashlight existed as a part of life in locations where electricity was limited or non-existent. These lights were much dimmer, some no more than a candle, and ate old, heavy bulky carbon batteries in minutes of runtime, while dimly glowing a yellow beam through the night. While the outputs & runtimes of many of these lights of days gone by are a glimmer in comparison to what we have now, These lights is where it started and did their job & did it well for what they were built for.
I have collected vintage flashlights long before discovering BLF or CPF or even the internet. and most of my collection is in great working order, (with only a few that i still need to repair to get working again.)
Some of them i even built LED warm-white bulb modules so they are brighter, run longer, and mimic their former glory but with more output & a 100 times the run time.
(one example is the square red Niagara-miners lamp on the right, (the one with the white reflector) on its 2 D-cells with the LED bulb mod it is 3-times brighter than it was with an incan-bulb, and will run for WEEKS non stop versus 3-hours for the incan-bulb. Some of these i still pull out of my display cabinet to actually use because its just that cool to step back a few decades to what flashlights once were…
Below is most of my current vintage flashlight collection. All are older than 25 years old., & a couple are close to 100 years old. Some of them may bring back memories to many of you or what your parents may have had.
I need to do a new updated photo of my vintage gas latern collection as well as my LED lantern collection. (And one of my current LED Flashlight collection too
Nice vintage collection. I have always been fascinated by them. When I see a flashlight, I want to hold it.
And I stem from a long line of hoarders. Yet I own only one vintage light.
Because I’ve always thought they suck, and always fail when you really need them.
Much later I found out that I was wrong.
I’m trying to find nice old torches for a few years now, but The Netherlands is a bad place for finding them, I have found just one (an Everready from the twenties).
Ah, old time lights. I’m permanently in love with their looks and tints; functionality, OTOH, not so much. I respect their age and technological level and know they were a flippin’ godsend in their time, but LEDs have spoiled me with their brightness and (especially) efficiency. Back when all portable lighting there was was incandescent, I admired flashlights but never took them seriously, thanks to their dim and artifact-filled beams, and unreliable bulbs that had to be swapped out constantly. Back when M@g-lite used to be the cream of the crop and I envied my uncle for having a 2D model, and I was restricted to the frail tin ones (same as the bottom center on DBSAR’s post).
I have a few Maglites too, most of them though are the older incandescent ones. Mag was probably the first well-know consumer brand to build flashlights as good solid machined aluminum lights, while most manufacturers of that time were using plastic & stamped sheet steel.
