Eloquent Description of a bad Flashlight

"Tonight the patience consists in sitting cross-legged on Jenny and blinking my little flashlight whenever a single headlight goes by on the other side of the road; the amusement in the fact that this flashlight will throw a beam of light as wide as a strand of spaghetti the distance of a fairly urgent **** for about as long as it takes to say, "That'll teach you to buy a 49c Japanese flashlight, you damn fool," twice. I suspect that the light it produces doesn't even travel with the speed of light. It'd be a great flashlight for a spy who didn't really want to know anything" - Stranded on a Scooter 7 miles West of Vegas on US 91, Peter S. Beagle, "I See By My Outfit", 1964

"... the distance of a fairly urgent ****..."
Poetry the Bard would be proud of!

its light travels at less tn the speed of light... /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Who wrote that? Isn't Surefire giving away $100 worth of credit for product stories? I bet that they'd give him $100 for that story, just because it's a reason to upgrade to an SF /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/crackup.gif

It's from this book:
I See By My Outfit by Peter S. Beagle

Perfect! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

brilliant! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grinser2.gif

Interesting. A "Peter S. Beagle" wrote the foreword to my dogeared paperback editions of "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings" in 1973.

I imagine it must be the same writer. His revisionist characterization of European explorers and traditional heroes as "thieves planting flags, murderers carrying crosses" has given me quite a bit to ponder over the years, and remains relevant to this day.

Not that I want to start a political flame war, mind you....

Well, politics aside, I'm sure we can all agree that the man apparently had very poor taste in flashlights! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grinser2.gif

I bet if he ever wrote letters to complain about a product, it would get attention though!

Just to put things into perspective... /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

A "fairly urgent ****" is not quite "ball busting urgent" and I would put that at about 6 feet or so, give or take.

We usually define throw down to 1 lux. Working backwards I come up with the light putting out about 3.3 lux. That would rate it close to the TerraLux BroadMiser on Doug's (Quickbeam) throw chart.

At that range (or lack of it) a broad flood would be better. A "beam as wide as a strand of spaghetti" just won't cut it.

The 12 second run time is about what it takes to pour a cup of coffee, depending on the size of your cup.

Tom

I'm guessing it was one of those pre-focused penlight bulbs running off a single AA cell that was no doubt a "light-duty" carbon-zinc cell. If so, they're still selling them, albeit they are Chinese now. They're actually usable with a L91 lithium AA, as are the 'free' dorcy 1-AA that are in some recent Duracell 8-AA packs.

Here, and now even cheaper (29c) than in the 1960s:

MINI FLASHLIGHT NECKLACES

Item Number: IN-24/997

$3.49 per Dozen

And if these are, as the look, like the free light that came with duracell AA packs for a while, they work pretty darn well with a lithium AA. Course, you could buy another dozen for the price of a pair of L91 AAs...

That is spot on