I would like to mention Djozz for his many LED tests and other inspirational posts.
Peter Gransee
I think we all owe him the concept of portable, powerful (for the era), technologically advanced led flashlight. The ARC flashlight is what started everything for me near 20 years ago.
The ARC LS was absolutely something new that I could barely imagine. So small, powerful and no bulb to change. This light was a game changer.
Let’s not get into M. Gransee financial problem, let’s keep its genius engineering as the legacy for led flashlights.
Little ARC history here: Arc Flashlight | Flashlight Wiki | Fandom
EDIT: of course Toykeeper has the very first spot of this list…
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toykeeper - yay anduril!
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+1
He’s a great inspiration for me to start modding and reflowing, now i have multiple identical lights all with different emitters 
Simon from Convoy ofcourse, since he supplies us with many parts, Hank for nice complete lights, wit TK’s UI.
Still, i do prefer a BLF A6 UI on simple lights, or just L,M,H with firefly mode and without memory.
Reylight and many others, man it’s too difficult too choose just 1.
I would include Mr. Admin (sb56637) as well.
I don't think he has designed any flashlights, but this forum wouldn't exist without him, and a lot of progress concerning flashlights has happened because of BLF.
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Ignacy Łukasiewicz for first ever kerosene lamp, Thomas Alva Edison for lightbulb. That’s how it started.
If you going for pioneers, than add Oleg Losev, who worked with semiconductors, and build a first led in 1927.
Batman.
Texas Ace and Toykeeper would be my highest ranking members, alongside Tom E probably.
Vinz
Gamechanger in dedoming
Regards Xandre
ToyKeeper
Loneoceans
Quadrupel
CRX
Hank Wang
Djozz
Texas ace
HKJ
Henry - HDS
Paul Kim
Peter Gransee
Malkoff
Mac Customs
Now I need to find other people
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One name I do not see here… Rey from Reylight. He was fairly early in the game of creating custom inspired budget lights. This list so far is pretty impressive.
DBSAR for sheer doggedness in creating the LT1 and it’s sister projects.
Sofirn for getting things done.
Malkoff for superb drop-ins.
Solarforce for cheap Lego lights so we could mess about with tints, cells, switches etc.
Self-Built for the first mega detailed reviews.
4Sevens and Eagletac for recognising needs and listening.
Loads more, that’s just a quick skim.
Don McGizmo
ARC-Mania
Dave - Cool Fall
Vinhnguyen54
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Maybe nobody mentioned them, because they are so obvious, but:
Old-Lumens who showed us that with simple means any household light can be turned into something special, if you just know how. And he was never shy to share his knowledge.
About the same can be said about CRX who can turn almost any object into an incredible light AND a thing of beauty with very simple means.
George Yao - not necessarily the first, but for progress in compact unibody and side clicky designs, low moonlights, long runtimes, e-switch UIs, PID temp regulation.
Lux-rc. his lights you would recognize right away, unmistakable, and they kicked a$$.
Simon, because convoy flashlights are used all around the world and he made it possible to achieve that price/performance ratio. Manu other budget brands followed afterwards.
Hank, who created customs lights at affordable prices, a couple years back the EDC community felt the need to spend a fortune on custom lights to be on level with their other gear.
Dr Jones and Toykeeper who made possible the programable firmware for everyone.
Vinh, although not one of the early flashlight modders he commercialized the idea behind hot rods. So much that brands nowadays offers products that can’t made to perform any better.
There’s so much to write about regarding the notable people and brands in flashlight development. Of course, there were MANY people involved in the incandescent days of flashlights, stretched out over many decades. But what innovations gradually came about end up so massively overshadowed by the advent of the LED flashlight, that there’s not much to say until around the late 1990’s. There were a few brands producing high quality incandescents that attempted the transition to LED. Not many made it, with the popular brand SureFire being one of the very few.
I hope one day we see a thorough article or maybe even a book on the subject. It’s fascinating when considering the entrepreneurs who saw the potential of LEDs and sought to making a viable, sellable LED flashlight.
One has to mention SureFire, founded by Dr. John Matthews — a Cal Tech engineer who specialized in laser technology. He invented the concept of a weapon mounted laser device. SureFire would expand to include flashlight mounts as well. Pre-LED, they were all incandescent. SureFire found another niche to exploit for the military & law enforcement—handheld flashlights. The brand was one of the very few that made the transition to LED flashlights. Of course, given its establishment by the early 2000’s, SureFire was not going to be producing anything cheap, save for one model—the 6P, with an ABS plastic body. And because of established company mantras, they’d not be on the bleeding edge. This opened the door for many other innovators and entrepreneurs who would take their shot at LED flashlight production.
Arc Flashlight and Peak LED Solutions were some of the first who took the 5mm LED and made pretty rugged small EDC flashlights powered by standard battery sizes. Unfortunately these brands never made the shift to SMD LED’s… leaving them in a very small niche that was soon flooded by cheap China made 5mm flashlights.
What’s notable about Arc is that Henry Schneiker got his boost from this brand. He collaborated with them to make a programmable flashlight. In a short time, Henry realized he needed to break out on his own, founding HDS Systems in 2005 where he produced the “EDC” programmable flashlight. His story is really interesting, summarized HERE. Henry faced the choice that successful entrepreneurs face—stay small, or take a risk going big. He took a chance with NovaTac. At first it worked… but then, he struggled with the push for optimization. He clashed with NovaTac management, couldn’t reconcile, then bailed and went back to running HDS. NovaTac’s following demise validated his decision—they ran the idea into the ground with poor production choices. Sadly, Henry’s operation remains very small. And for many in the flashlight community his product offering is too costly. But he maintains enough of a following to keep going.
Gene Malkov is another pioneer worth mentioning. He helped make the P60 drop-in for LEDs a real viable thing, good enough to catch the attention of Surefire and Streamlight. He helped Maglite make the transition from incandescent to LED.
Don McGizmo went the luxury route, incorporating LED’s into the most beautiful high quality hosts you could imagine. He kept the whole flashlight community drooling on the sight of what could be possible.
Things were too costly and moving too slow in the USA for LED flashlights. A number of entrepreneurs in China saw an opportunity and thankfully they took the chance. This brought about a number of new brands like Fenix, Olight, Jetbeam, and Nitecore; companies that formed in the early 2000’s and are still around today making excellent LED flashlight products.
Fenix was founded in the USA, sourcing production in China. I don’t know who founded it, but David Chow became a very successful reseller of Fenix. He had his own ideas that he wanted to implement, so he founded 4Sevens. That was a great LED flashlight brand addressing design opportunities not yet explored by Fenix. David found synergy with Olight (founded by Christina Wong ) and collaborated with the brand. Eventually he sold off 4Sevens assets to Prometheus and joined Olight as chairman of the board. Zebralight came on the scene in 2007, then quickly ramped up into becoming a real niche brand—initially focused on headlamps then branched out to handheld. By 2017 they’d developed their own limited programmable menu system.
The next real step forward had to be in the area that Henry Schneiker had explored—programmable UI. LiteFlux had tried to follow suit, but failed to gain traction. It appeared no major flashlight makers were willing to experiment with programmable UI’s, given the number of failures. The main problem—usability. These interfaces were sophisticated enough that you’d need a manual handy to help remember the menu systems. This left a hole that needed to be filled…
Several flashlight enthusiasts with firmware programming skills would start to surface in the flashlight community. User interfaces created like Biscotti, Bistro, Guppy, QLite, Noctigon Meteor, NarsilM, and Anduril. AFAIK, Tom E. and Toykeeper have become two of the most prominent developers of programmable UI’s for flashlights, with NarsilM and Anduril respectively. Of course a UI needs a home… and this meant producing flashlights of decent quality at affordable prices. Thankfully entrepreneurs from China having access to highly efficient manufacturing resources saw the merit and took a chance. Astrolux, Emisar/Noctigon, Lumintop, Fireflies, and Sofirn stepped up and enabled mass production. And to much success!
Hank Wang from Emisar/Noctigon and Jack from Fireflies have made really notable advances forward in sophisticated flashlight offerings, helping to drive Anduril UI innovation. Fritz of Denmark in conjunction with TLF and BLF made the first FW3A prototype, a flashlight collaborative that resulted in a seriously popular Anduril UI flashlight manufactured by Lumintop. DBSAR (Dennis) of BLF helped drive the innovation of the much lauded LT1 lantern with Anduril UI, produced by Sofirn. Simon of Convoy helped bring about seriously affordable flashlights with high reliability and useful innovations.
I find Anduril to be the most user friendly of the programmable interfaces. It’s fairly easy to remember the most basic menu commands. And I think it has a lot of promise for handling more kinds of functionality developed in the future (e.g. dual channel to multi-channel). There’s also still a ripe opportunity for simplification. Creating a UI menu group that’s intuitive enough for the intelligent consumer who wants to keep things simple, while also having some useful functions.
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Next, I’d like to see a full compendium of our esteemed BLF community members who are programmers, engineers, and innovators in flashlight technology. It would be nice to know who had a hand in the various aspects of flashlight technology progression. I see some mod topics with really deep dive technical aspects discussed and it really makes me curious to know who are the DIY hobbyists and who are actually participating in the industry. Some here are very good about not drawing attention to themselves… and maybe they want to keep their presence more invisible. Some have done that to a degree, with their just a first name or an alias (e.g. ToyKeeper). Still, would be nice to know more, and as a sign of respect/reverence for these fine folks!
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Excellent text, thank you for this led flashlight history sum-up 
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