I've got my Doc Savage flashlight -- and they work just the way Lester Dent described! Of course, he was writing pulp magazine stories in the 1930s, long before high-strength magnets, light-emitting diodes and supercapacitors. Whatever kinds of dynamo flashlights were available in his time would have been bulky, clumsy things, eking out extra life from carbon-zinc batteries.
The iFixit people sell an inexpensive hand-powered flashlight that is small and charged by squeezing a little lever whenever the beam starts to dim. They're far from the only source -- the various big online retailers list a wide variety, from basic squeeze-charged units to fancy ones with a hand-crank, a radio receiver and a jack to charge your phone. None of them are high-end tactical lights, but if you're looking for something to leave in useful places for jobs like finding your way to the basement when the lights go out, a few of these wouldn't be a bad choice, The supercapacitor "battery" on most of them isn't going to turn crusty after a year or two of neglect, though it may need a quick charge by the lever.
You've already got a better portable communications device than Doc and his associates ever had -- or even Dick Tracy! -- so why not add a flashlight like theirs, too?
Update
1 year ago
8 comments:
The ancient squeezy light I have uses an incandescent bulb; the duration of illumination between squeezes is less than useful.
In an interview, I-forget-who said many Doc Savage stories were written by a bunch of McCarthy-era blacklisted writers as evinced by quite different writing styles. Superamalgamated...
I-forget-who was talking up their sleeve. Doc's adventures first made print in 1933. The last of the original Doc Savage pulps was published in the summer of 1949; McCarthyism wasn't up and cranking until 1950, with the arrest of Alger Hiss and the eponymous Senator's speech to the Republican Women's Club of Wheeling, West Virginia.
Lester Dent wrote most of the Doc Savage stories (in a consistent, only slightly purple style), and as a former telegrapher (born in a log cabin!) turned pulp writer who was a ham radio operator, private pilot, oceangoing sailboat captain, inventor, etc., came close to being a Doc Savage character himself. Ask the current owners nicely, and they may even give you a tour of his "House of Gadgets," in his hometown of La Plata, Missouri. There was a Doc Savage museum in downtown La Plata, though I don't know its current status.
As for the modern squeeze light, the LED stays lit up for minutes between charging, and recharges quickly. There's probably a little charge-pump regulator driving the LED, maintaining constant current until the supercapacitor goes flat.
Pardon me while I wipe the egg off my face. I appear to have somehow conflated Paul Robeson and Kenneth Robeson. Sigh. If I were to be sworn in and take the stand, I would honestly say I had no uncertainty about what I had read. Of course, I read it fifty years ago, so some data might have degraded a bit.
Your civilized and informed reply is much appreciated. Thank you.
As for my "vintage" flashlight: it was a great idea hampered by the technology of the time.
How's that vertical working out?
Strangely enough, I have no memory of Doc Savage. He must never have appeared in Popular Science or Popular Mechanics.
Be nice to add a PWM circuit for setting illumination level as well. Those IC's draw negligible current.
As it turns out, the La Plata Historical Museum is the home of Doc Savage stuff, and they are hosting a fan gathering October 10. While you're there, you can watch trains on the BNSF main line (including the Amtrak Southwest Chief), or you can watch them from your living room on the depot webcams hosted by Virtual Railfan on Youtube.
I have a shake-light, which charges the cap with a magnet that bounces back through a coil when you shake it. The motion needed to make it work is a bit risque, and I never do it in front of anyone lest I be ridiculed.
I poked around the Doc Savage Wikipedia page and saw a latter-day comic cover drawn by Doug Wildey of Jonny Quest fame. That was cool.
Nope, CC, Doc was hanging out with The Shadow, Black Mask and Astounding, in a whole different section of the newsstand. ;)
Hardly egg -- the vast number of writers, and the welter and confusion of pulp writers and publisher's "house names," makes for way too much to keep track of.
I have a particular fondness for Dent, whose stories did a lot of alleviate the loneliness of my Jr. High years And he was a gifted storyteller, despite turning out pulp about as quickly as he could type and rarely revising. After he retired as the pulp markets were contracting, he tried more serious writing, a couple of well-regarded Westerns and a decent hard-boiled noir novel, but found it very difficult to slow down and polish work that was already "good enough." Nevertheless, he .managed it, and who knows what else he might have written if he'd lived past 54.
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