Friday, March 16, 2012

Magic

Arthur Clark postulated, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic".

You know how it goes- show up at an Indian encampment in 1712 with a Zippo & you'd pretty much be a god (or at least a guy to be really good friends with).

I've been fortunate enough to witness a crap-load of technological advances in my lifetime (can you say "internet"?), but some advances, being enhancements of known technology, just floor me.

See the magic:

This is a Streamlight Microstream, & it's pretty cool. But this particular model is not the subject here, it's the WOW factor that flashlights have achieved.

When I was a young-un, a flashlight was a two "D" incandescent contraption that might, on a good day, get about 20 minutes of usable light before devolving into a yellow glow emitter that was not much good except for finding the flashlight if you had left it on. And that only lasted another 20 minutes & you were then, officially, SOL.

Now, look at that picture- that light is 3.5" long, 9/16" in diameter, & weighs just over 1 ounce, with the AAA battery. It puts out 28 lumens (I'm told), but I can light up the barn over 100' away. And, it will do so for over 2 hours on one silly little AAA.

Magic.

I recently bought a Fenix "tactical" light that puts out 180 lumens on 2 AA batteries. Word is it will do that for 2 hours as well (longer on lower settings).

Stunning useable technology...all within my lifetime.

Now I gotta go research upgrades for the LED headlamps, themselves magic in their own right.



My name is DT, & I'm a flashaholic...

3 comments:

bluesun said...

A headlamp is da bomb for camping. I don't know how I made it so long without it.

Old NFO said...

MUCH better than the old gooseneck or the 4lb flashlight with the 6V battery... :-)

TOTWTYTR said...

LED flashlights, well all LED lights, are incredible. Now just about anything can have a light added.

Mrs. TOTWTYTR's new cell phone has a flash for it's camera that is also a flash light.

I have a new Streamlight Strion LED is that is about 10 times brighter and 1/20th the size of my MagCharger and half the size of my Streamlight Sting.

The future looks incredibly bright.