Hello everyone, my names Mark and I’m a Dalek fanatic. I don’t mind torches too!
I have joined your forum to ask about a specific Pifco torch and if anyone has ever seen one in real life. I do apologise as I’m not sure where this post on vintage torches should go on your vast forum.
The Pifco torch in question is a British torch presumably from the 60’s or 70’s and was used on a Dalek eye from a 1973 TV story.
I’m not sure how to post a photo of it from my phone. Can someone help?
It’s the torch on the far right. The Guardlite Torch.
Hi Mark!
Welcome to BLF
I am not much of a help concerning the flashlight you are searching, but a least I can help you concerning the images.
Since you are using a photo from the web, you can copy the URL from the photo (not the site) and then use the editing menu that appears when you write a post. Use the image icon, paste the URL into “Image URL” and then you can define a % of the image size.
FLASHLIGHTS
Quote: Early flashlights ran on zinc–carbon batteries, which could not provide a steady electric current and required periodic ‘rest’ to continue functioning. Because these early flashlights also used energy-inefficient carbon-filament bulbs, “resting” occurred at short intervals. Consequently, they could be used only in brief flashes, hence the common American name flashlight.
TORCH
Quote: A torch is either a wooden or metal rod wrapped at one end with a material that has been impregnated with a flammable substance and ignited. It also means, in British English, a battery powered portable light source: compare flashlight. Flaming torches have been used through history and currently for various purposes including use in processions, symbolic or religious events and in juggling entertainment.
Zinc-carbon batteries don’t have the capacity of some of the newer types, and they do have some “rebound”, but they’re not so bad that the light has to be flashed. Americans were using “flashlight” since at least the 1940s, referring to both photographic bulbs and handheld lights. (In the 1940s, a “flash” could also refer to a flashlight.) As you say, the term “torch” (used in the UK and some other countries) is a shortening of electric torch – the device’s shape was also modelled after a handheld flame torch, just as early electric lamps were modelled after older kerosene lamps.
Both companies are old. Ever Ready was from the 1890s and made batteries in America. Pifco was a British company specializing in incandescent gas lighting around 1900 (Provincial Incandescent Fittings Co.), then moving to electric lighting after World War One. So they both came to flashlights/torches from the opposite direction – one from the batteries and the other from the bulbs. Pifco was absorbed by another company years ago, but they used to make some nice flashlights, as well as other home electrical items.
That Pifco torch used in the Dalek must have been before 1971, because all the prices in the advertisement are still in pounds and shillings. It is odd that the BBC would use a common torch for a Dalek eyepiece – it seems so recognizable, and the previous Dalek eyepieces are usually round. Then again, many of the Dalek parts seem to have been picked up from the local hardware shop – the flashing “ears” are ordinary 1960s car signal lights (replaced with other shapes when those lights became hard to find) and they used a toilet plunger in place of an (expensive) claw.
