You're an old timer like me. Us old timers can remember the threads here about the early 5mm LED lights and luxeon 1 and 3 lights and their competing with the maglights and such. The 5mm LED shower head lights that were popular like the Inova and Xnova (clones) were front and center and lights like the Dorcy 1AAA were talked about all the time.
we are several generations of Cree emitters down the road here and I remember the first Crees which were 60-80 lumens output if that compared to 120-200+ lumen crees and lights blasting 1000 lumens vs under 100 lumens. Combine all of that with battery technology that had nicads and RAM cells with todays LSD nimh and lithium ion and the world has a huge amount of light power and endurance.
I recall a simple #222 2AA Eveready penlight that ran for about 2 hours at perhaps 20 lumens that was "good" light but costly to use a lot today with rechargeables you can run a 100 lumen lithium light for 15 hours or more for a penny or two in cost.
Essentially we are old timers in that when we joined the technology was akin to Model T's vs todays Ferraris in lights.
Think of it like this.... when I was about 10 I became a flashaholic and kids born when we started would be around 13-14 now several years a flashaholic.
