Science Fiction Flashlights

I’ve seen one fanwork of The Martian where Watney uses an RTG to warm up the rover while he goes looking for Pathfinder. After much failure and overheating, he makes it work.

Hmm, maybe a flashlight using parasitic WiFi energy suck to recharge.
Would it need a trailing antenna?

The TL-122 is an old design, before WWII… But that of the photo appears be a MX-991/U, more modern (Vietnam).
https://olive-drab.com/od_soldiers_gear_flashlight.php

Edit: Fulton still manufactures it… Fulton Industries | Product Categories | Government & Military

But I’m hoping y’all can come up with some novel, innovative, surprising, new ideas —- science fictiony ideas —- for flashlights of the future.

Dream a little!

Okay, a dystopian future flashlight — built-in facial recognition.

Scan it over the crowd and it brightens to pick out the [insert your personal paranoid fantasy here] people.

A “people recognizing” light is already in the works. But it is for car headlights that selectively dim parts of their beam to avoid blinding everyone on the road.

Petzl has a crude version of this in their $400 industrial headlamps. A pair of IR transcievers mounted in the headlamps will automatically crank down the output when it is pointed at someone also wearing a $400 headlamp.

I still have one; readapted with a reflector with three low power LEDs; it will give about 60 lumens, but to get around at home it’s fine; I run it with two “D” “SUPERPILA” at nikel cadmium dating back to the 80s, but they still work

Cross-reference for historians: flashlights in use by astronauts and cosmonauts at present:

0-degree divergence light source :slight_smile:

Black photons — invisible at the source, which only become visible when reflected from something more solid than air.
Useful when trying to illuminate something that would like to shoot back.

Rufusbduck was ahead of his time with this build.

looks like a chopped off black & decker spotliter!

this is a bit off topic, but is there a term for the effect you see when you shine a laser on a surface? Kinda looks like thousands of tiny dark particles moving about, I don’t know how to describe it, it’s cool tho.

thanks Snakebite thats it exactly :+1:

I may need a few more IQ points to fully grasp the explanation tho :smiley:

Interesting tidbit on speckle patterns (interesting if your into firearms accessories), it’s the mechanism used to create the reticle inside an eotech [or any other real] holographic weapons sight.

Just thinking about this topic.

Hank wanted us to be creative…right?

Here is an idea, a light with a wider variety of types(or spectrum) of light, that worked along with improved/aided human vision (like with Gordi Lafarge’s visor in Star Trek Next Gen)., so that humans could see a wider spectrum (or different types) of light. Sort of the way some night vision already works. Much of the technology already exists.

“All tools,” said Nessus. He pointed. “These are flashlight-lasers with variable beams. At night one can see great distances with these, for one can narrow the beam indefinitely by turning this ring. Indeed, one must be careful not to burn holes in nearby objects or persons, for the beam can be made perfectly parallel and extremely intense.”

Ringworld; Larry Niven 1970

^ 1970! :sunglasses:

probably just some weird thing your eye does