Darker evenings, and a new torch

My first personal electric possession, back in the late 1950s, must have been a torch. 

In those days, torches were made of metal, and had screw-in bulbs and big blue cylindrical replaceable batteries that were prone to leaking a sticky substance after a few months. The sliding switch (or button) and the internal connections that made the bulb light up were easily corroded and this made the torch rather unreliable. Furthermore the batteries only had a short life. They would at first make the bulb glow brightly, but this would soon fade into amber, and then nothing at all. 

Even so, I found torches (at age seven or eight) to be fascinating gadgets, absolutely magical in the way they lit up my bedroom, and a badly-needed talisman against the things I could imagine in the darkness. I was often prey to bad dreams if I saw something frightening on TV, or read something disturbing. So for me a torch was part toy, part shield. I was a nervous child, not brave at all.

No doubt the contemporary children's TV puppet series Torchy - about a resourceful boy who did things with a torch - was an encouragement. There's a surprising amount of information about Torchy on Wikipedia - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torchy_the_Battery_Boy - although I can't remember any of those details. 

In the early 1970s torches became more sophisticated and much more reliable. I had a big long red plastic one, made by Ever Ready, that took three or four big replaceable batteries and kept its charge for a long time. Although in my early teens, I was still hooked on torches, and although no longer frightened of the dark, still played with them. I imagined using my quite-powerful torch for adventure. In later years - especially when living in London in the 1980s - I moved on to pocket torches that I could easily carry for those late-night walks home after getting off the bus or the tube. Later still, when I started to take personal safety rather more seriously, I considered buying a military-grade torch that could emit a temporary-blinding and disorientating strobe beam. But it was very expensive, and faintly illegal, and I didn't get one. 

Nevertheless, I reckoned a bright torch that could be flashed into someone's face was a good thing to have handy. And I was surely right.

I actually had occasion to use a torch that way in 2002, when up late at night in a friend's house. It was well after midnight. It was very foggy. The doorbell rang. I wouldn't do this now, but I was bolder then. I switched on the hall light, grabbed my torch and opened the door. There stood a young man who looked as if he'd stayed too long at the pub. I shone my torch right into his face, making him back off and blink. He asked me if he could come in, and use the phone to call for a taxi. I said no. I told him to go away. I used the beam from my torch as a weapon, dazzling him and forcing him to retreat. I made sure that he shambled off into the fog and didn't change his mind. He may have said something choice as he went, but I didn't care. 

I haven't found myself in any further situations where a bright torch could make a difference, but as I've got older I've become jumpier, and reluctant to venture out into darkness without a strong and reliable light source in my bag or coat pocket.  

When LEDs replaced bulbs a while back, I got myself a little pocket torch, which had regular use for finding things in the dimmer corners of my attic or garage, and when on holiday. But the other day it wouldn't switch on - its first fail. I unscrewed the thing, to check the state of the replaceable battery, and found that something had jammed inside. A bit more fiddling got the thing working again, but the writing was on the wall. I'd better get a new torch.

And this was it. A nifty little affair made by Lighthouse, with a rechargeable battery. Unscrewing the end cap reveals a USB that I simply pop into a free socket on my laptop. 

While plugged into the laptop, a light on the side of the torch glows red. It turns green when charging is complete.

My new torch is the same small handy size as the old one. It does however seem much better made. And of course, I now have no dependence on batteries. 

The old torch had a rubber pad at one end, which you pressed in to switch it on. The new torch has a collar that you turn. 

As you can see, the new torch has a concentrated beam, and out in a street it illuminates the way ahead very well. It would certainly dazzle a troublesome drunk! I tried doing a light-intensity comparison test between the old and new torches, taking photos with Lili. But they came out looking much the same, even though the new torch was obviously brighter. Then I realised that I had left my camera on auto-ISO, and this was why I was not seeing a dimmer result with the old torch. A bit like my efforts to capture the eclipse of the sun in Sussex in 1999. The camera merely adjusted itself to take a bright enough picture, and did not record a series of shots, each darker than the last. 

This said, the EXIF information for my comparison shots was revealing. All the pictures were taken at full aperture (f/1.7). The old-torch pictures required a shutter speed of 1/30th second and ISO 3,200. But the new-torch pictures needed only 1/40th second and ISO 400. So that implies that the light emitted from my new torch was nearly eleven times more intense than the light from the old. Check my arithmetic: (3,200/400) x (40/30) = nearly 11. Definitely not a torch to shine into anyone's eyes then - unless in self-defence.

The likelihood of being waylaid by a mad axeman or rapist in my corner of Sussex is not high, but even so, this is reassuring. I shall not fail to pack my new torch if going out in the evening this winter.