Russian manually-electrified flashlight

[Dr. Jones]

For many years after the fall of the Soviet Union, such items as dry-cell batteries were in short supply or economically unobtainable for the average citizen, and many of these manual flashlights were produced. The particular model referenced here appears to have been made for export, and was purchased commercially here in the U.S. in the late 1990s.

The flashlight's maker is unknown to me (their logo appears to be in Cyrillic). It has a lock for the charging handle and adjusts from wide to narrow focus. The bulb appears to be a standard E10 screw base type, and is rated at 2.5 volts and 0.5 amperes according to the stamping on its base.

There is a small white plastic lock for the charging handle to keep it in place when not in use, seen at the rear underside of the flashlight in the attached images below. The focus mechanism uses a white plastic button, located on the front top, to move the entire bulb assembly, with forward being wide focus and back being tight. The bulb moves through a hole in the center of the reflector, which remains stationary. The reflector is chromed plastic, protected by a flat rectangular glass lens approximately 1/8" thick, with a black snap-on plastic collar to hold both lens and reflector in place.

The mechanism appears to be quite sturdy, and consists of a heavy cast metal charging handle with an attached plastic gear sector, which when repeatedly squeezed engages a set of plastic gears (whose longevity is likely fairly uncertain) which in turn rapidly spin a metal rotor with embedded magnets; these magnets rotate under a pair of copper coils, which produces current for the filament.

Performance is what one would expect from such an arrangement, and provides enough light to navigate, providing one's hand doesn't give out! In use, it really doesn't take much effort to generate sufficient current to fully light the bulb, and the slow, repetitive squeeze required is fairly easy to maintain for long periods. Such relatively gentle treatment will no doubt help to preserve the plastic gears. The rotor acts as a flywheel, and although the light pulses a bit, it is perfectly serviceable.

I wanted to see if using a #222 pre-focused bulb would be an improvement on the original, so ran some brief tests. The results can be seen in the attached photos (the first two light tests, wide and narrow, are the #222); I'd give the nod to the pre-focused bulb, as it seems to be the better performer overall.

All in all, a very well-made and unusual item. Its clones and contemporaries in its country of origin during a period of considerable privation were no doubt godsends to those who otherwise would not have had a working flashlight available to them.

 

[Kestrel]

Came for the runtime test; left disappointed. ;-)

Just kidding; pretty neat, thx for the pics of the internals.

 

[Dr. Jones]

Came for the runtime test; left disappointed. ;-)

Just kidding; pretty neat, thx for the pics of the internals.

My pleasure, glad you enjoyed it!

 

[PhotonWrangler]

That's an interesting relic. I wonder if you retrofitted the bulb with a white LED if it could produce the 3.something volts required to light a blue (phosphor white) LED.

 

[letschat7]

I've used one locally. Philips made these during WW2.

 

[Dr. Jones]

That's an interesting relic. I wonder if you retrofitted the bulb with a white LED if it could produce the 3.something volts required to light a blue (phosphor white) LED.

Never checked to see if the output is DC or AC, and if the voltage would be sufficient. Good rainy-day project.

 

[bykfixer]

The workers at the Chernobyl disaster used those because like you said, batteries were scarce but also they could withstand the high amount of radiation they encountered.

 

[Dr. Jones]

Yes, LEDs and associated circuitry would eventually fail after exposure to the level of radiation present at that incident. As for the batteries, studies have shown that lithium cells degrade in the presence of ionizing radiation, but I was unable to find any data regarding its effect on alkaline or carbon-zinc batteries:

Radiation effects on the electrode and electrolyte of a lithium-ion battery

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0378775316303573

Did you hear if standard batteries were affected by the radiation levels there, thus the need for manual flashlights? It wouldn't surprise me if their chemistry was affected to some degree.

The world owes the Chernobyl Liquidators, as they were called, a debt of gratitude. It's a disgrace that so many of them have never been properly seen to in the aftermath.

 

[bykfixer]

I do not know why the ones that failed did. Just that when they reached a certain distance from the killer radiation the only lights that worked were the dynamo type. I don't know that they didn't konk out as the heroe's got even closer.

I've seen various documentaries and re-enactments that showed battery operated flashlights didn't make it very far inside the building so the one guy with the junkiest old squeeze light was lighting the way for the others on round one of entering the building.

Next round, everybody had that type.

 

[Dr. Jones]

I just did a little research on the flashlight issue at Chernobyl, and the consensus is that the stories are apochryphal, and that the movie scenes showing the flashlights going dead due to the radiation were theatrics and pure fiction.

I did come across, via the wayback machine, a 1964 JPL paper entitled The Effects Of Radiation On Nickel-Cadmium Battery Electrodes, which concluded that "loss in capacity of the cadmium electrode and on the radiolysis of the aqueous KOH electrolyte" did occur under intense ionizing radiation, but only to a relatively small degree (15% loss of capacity); this after being subjected to a Cobalt-60 source for some time. The paper did not give the strength of the radiation, that being in another, previous paper that I could not locate.

Just an educated guess, but I suspect that ionizing radiation strong enough to cause dry cell batteries to cease working would result in anyone holding a flashlight containing them to basically drop dead.

 

[ABTOMAT]

The scene in HBO's Chernobyl was supposedly made up for the show. Beyond that I haven't heard much about the flashlight situation.

 

[desert.snake]

That's an interesting relic. I wonder if you retrofitted the bulb with a white LED if it could produce the 3.something volts required to light a blue (phosphor white) LED.

The LED lamp will fail after a few presses. I tried to measure the voltage on mine, at peak up to 9 volts. Old German from 1961, copies were made from them

Lol, I found an old video, he died just after I finished writing the video. Something died in the driver of this light bulb. The diode itself remained intact and was used separately


There were other good lights - Philips Type 7424
Here they were carefully examined inside

DUAL / Philips? (Dynamo)

Hier kommt ein etwas betagteres Dynamo-Modell namens DUAL. Man findet das ganz ähnlich gebaut häufiger als Philips. Mir ist noch nicht klar, was DUAL hier genau bedeutet und ob das der Phono-Hersteller sein kann. Ich kenn dessen Logo nur in etwas anderer Art. Ich habe nirgends weitere...

www.taschenlampen-forum.de

 

[bykfixer]

I just did a little research on the flashlight issue at Chernobyl, and the consensus is that the stories are apochryphal, and that the movie scenes showing the flashlights going dead due to the radiation were theatrics and pure fiction.

I did come across, via the wayback machine, a 1964 JPL paper entitled The Effects Of Radiation On Nickel-Cadmium Battery Electrodes, which concluded that "loss in capacity of the cadmium electrode and on the radiolysis of the aqueous KOH electrolyte" did occur under intense ionizing radiation, but only to a relatively small degree (15% loss of capacity); this after being subjected to a Cobalt-60 source for some time. The paper did not give the strength of the radiation, that being in another, previous paper that I could not locate.

Just an educated guess, but I suspect that ionizing radiation strong enough to cause dry cell batteries to cease working would result in anyone holding a flashlight containing them to basically drop dead.

Good info. Perhaps they just ran out of batteries to run those "modern" battery operated flashlights....

Years ago DOT's had a chart on how much radiation their nuclear guages that check for density would put out compared to many other radioactive devices and how many rentgoens caused what issues to occur.

The humorous part was the last two issues to occur were death and sterility in that order.

Reagan told a joke I'll paraphrase.
It seemed that in communist Russia it took the average comrad 10 years to receive a car they bought.
This one fellow was told by the car dealer "your car will be ready in 10 years".
The fellow quipped "is that morning or afternoon?" The dealer replied "what difference does it make?"
The fellow replied "the plumber is scheduled for that afternoon".....

 

[Dr. Jones]

The LED lamp will fail after a few presses. I tried to measure the voltage on mine, at peak up to 9 volts. Old German from 1961, copies were made from them

Lol, I found an old video, he died just after I finished writing the video. Something died in the driver of this light bulb. The diode itself remained intact and was used separately


There were other good lights - Philips Type 7424
Here they were carefully examined inside

DUAL / Philips? (Dynamo)

Hier kommt ein etwas betagteres Dynamo-Modell namens DUAL. Man findet das ganz ähnlich gebaut häufiger als Philips. Mir ist noch nicht klar, was DUAL hier genau bedeutet und ob das der Phono-Hersteller sein kann. Ich kenn dessen Logo nur in etwas anderer Art. Ich habe nirgends weitere...

www.taschenlampen-forum.de

Thanks for posting this! That's an excellent write-up at that link.

Your light, and those like it, are considerably more substantial than the one I reviewed here, with its plastic gears and case. Beautiful lights in all regards.

Here's that link you so kindly posted, translated into English (the link will appear below to still be in German, but clicks through to the English translation):

DUAL / Philips? (Dynamo)

Hier kommt ein etwas betagteres Dynamo-Modell namens DUAL. Man findet das ganz ähnlich gebaut häufiger als Philips. Mir ist noch nicht klar, was DUAL hier genau bedeutet und ob das der Phono-Hersteller sein kann. Ich kenn dessen Logo nur in etwas anderer Art. Ich habe nirgends weitere...

www-taschenlampen--forum-de.translate.goog

There's much of overall interest from that forum, and for anyone unfamiliar with Google Translate, once you're on a translated page, you need only click on its links to go to further translated pages on the site. Thanks again, desert.snake!

 

[letschat7]

I have been interested in joining that forum.

 

[euroken]

Just wanted to share.

Got this from my father in law who still lives in 'former' East Germany.

Still works.

 

[Dr. Jones]

Nice! Thanks for sharing, looks like a good, solid light.

 

[KITROBASKIN]

First dynamo light I had was Japanese; wore it out doing security work. Got a Russian one with more metal in its construction and the glass lens; wore out too fast. Chinese model did not take long for the gears to strip. We had one of those wind up and the dynamo spins under spring tension but not very bright. Maybe we dropped it and it failed.

Loving that former East Germany model.

 

[PhotonWrangler]

Just wanted to share.

Got this from my father in law who still lives in 'former' East Germany.

Still works.

View attachment 58833

Nice. It looks like it's built like a tank. Is that the bare bulb or a reflector?

 

[euroken]

It's more like a glass lens (collimator)?