Raves

Posted on 2 Jul 2009 at 16:27

It's strange how innovations usually aren't that innovative.

Take, for example, the recent spate of green torches that use a handle-powered dynamo to charge a capacitor that's then used to light up LEDs. These torches are brilliant and we use them all the time in Shopper's Labs when we're working inside computers. They seem like an incredible innovation.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I was clearing out my late grandfather's possessions and found an earlier example of a dynamo-powered torch. I'm not talking about the hand-powered models that were briefly popular in the early 1980s, but something much older.

It turns out that the dynamo-powered torch I found was in fact invented by Philips (the consumer electronics company) in 1943 during World War 2. The reason it was invented is that the use of energy was severely restricted, so there was a need for self-powered electrical lights, such as this torch.

The design isn't so different from modern dynamo-powered torches. Instead of a handle to turn, though, there's a lever you push with your thumb to generate the electricity to light the bulb. There's no capacitor inside, so you need to keep pumping away to generate light. In the Netherlands the torch was apparently given the nickname knijpkat (squeezed cat), after the whirring noise it made when in use.

Incredibly, the torch I found still works, despite spending the best part of 60 years in a box. How many of this year's 'innovations' will do the same in 60 years' time?

Author: David Ludlow

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