Home

Technological Evolution of Emergency Flashlights

During the early years of their inception, most emergency flashlights used zinc-carbon batteries. These batteries had a huge limitation that they could not provide a constant source of electric current. They needed routine rest hours and were often unavailable for large duration of time. It’s bad enough not having a emergency flashlight when you don’t have power, it’s actually worse having a flashlight which can’t be used during a power outage.


Figure 3 2: Emergency Flashlight - Early Years

Clearly, these flashlights had a lot of issues which needed to be fixed if they were to be commercially viable and offer any value to customers. The carbon bulbs used by these flashlights were very energy inefficient to say the least. Since these lights could only be sporadically used to provide flashes of light, these were aptly named as flashlights.

Once the era of Zinc Carbon batteries phased out, the next era was dominated by flashlights having incandescent bulbs – the idea was simple, use heat energy to generate light. These flashlights contained electric filaments having made up of tungsten wires. Inert gases were used to evacuate the incandescent bulbs. Argon is the de-facto choice for making incandescent bulbs. Higher quality and higher priced bulbs often use Xenon as it offers better performance.


Figure 3 3: Maglite

A Canadian company named Mag Instrument, Inc. pioneered the technology of building flashlights using incandescent bulbs and named its series of flashlights as Maglite (aka Mag-Lite). The Maglite series was introduced in 1979 and it’s a very popular vendor even today.

It’s fair to say that the invention of LEDs is probably the most important chapter in the history of technology evolution of emergency flashlights. Numerous companies made efforts to use LEDs for manufacturing portable lighting devices like emergency flashlights – some of them failed miserably while others had moderate success.

It was not until 1999 when Lumileds Corporation (subsequently acquired by Philips), a company based in San Jose, California made the real breakthrough which set the tone for using LEDs for emergency flashlights. Lumileds introduced a new LED code named ‘Luxeon’ which was a high power emitter of white light. This LED provided much better performance for emergency flashlights than those based on its predecessor era of incandescent bulbs. It took Lumileds another couple of years to iron out the kinks and they launched their first commercial emergency flashlight named Arc Ls in the year 2001. The company used an apt name ‘Arc’ for it’s emergency flashlight to stress upon the fact that LEDs produced an intense beam of white light which looks very similar to the color of an electric arc.


Figure 3 3: LED

Lumileds also launched the first ever emergency flashlight which ran on a single AAA battery without any major performance issues. It’s fair to say that it is one of the companies which have played a key role in the evolution of emergency flashlights over the years. Peter Gransee, the founder of Lumileds subsequently started a new company in 2004 named MTD LLC which continued manufacturing and selling the Arc brand of emergency flashlights.

It was no surprise that the company was acquired by Philips in the year 2005 and re-branded as ‘Philips Lumileds’. The deal was part of Philip’s strategy to re-enforce its lighting business and has worked wonderfully well for both companies.


Figure 3 4: Philips Lumileds Acquisition

So, what makes LEDs better suited for emergency flashlights than incandescent bulbs? Well, there are a quiet a few reasons for it.

  • First and foremost, LEDs are much more efficient than incandescent bulbs at lower power levels
  • They use much lower battery energy as compared to incandescent bulbs
  • They are more resistant to damage and can often survive tough conditions unlike incandescent bulbs which can break easily.
  • No effect on lighting due to voltage fluctuations unlike incandescent bulbs where lighting capacity is directly proportional to the voltage level.

With constant technological innovations, recent emergency flashlights based on LEDs can be monitored and regulated electronically to maintain a constant beam of light even as the batteries get discharged. This is handy as you do not need to worry about diminishing light in case your emergency flashlight is low on battery. After all, what’s the use of an emergency flashlight going off due to low battery when you are already facing a power outage?

Another massive advantage of using LEDs for emergency flashlights is that they maintain the same color temperature irrespective of fluctuations in voltage and current.


Figure 3 6: Aluminum Emergency Flashlights

To avoid warming during usage, most emergency flashlight LEDs have aluminum bodies. Aluminum also makes these emergency flashlights waterproof and there is lesser risk of water damaging the LEDs.