Posted 8 years ago
Kydur
(103 items)
It was very difficult to find information on this item, having discovered only two other items online. I've determined (I think) that it's a French-made hand-lever-cranked dynamo flashlight from the 1920s. It has the number 59105 stamped on the barrel; although this doesn't appear to be a patent number since the other two I found also had numbers, but different.
Mine is missing the large ball-glass lens and light bulb but otherwise appears to be complete. Although the lever works and there's a spinning motion, the gears sound like they're stripped a bit so of course it was a moral imperative to take it apart and investigate. The casing appears to be made from machined aluminum and all the gears are brass. Inside the steel dynamo barrel is a crudely wound armature and the caps are brass.
The whole unit has a nice weight to it at 336 grams (11.85 ozs = 0.74 lbs). It measures 1.75" in diameter and 5" long.
I picked this up at a yard sale for $2 along with that mystery circular gauge tool in another of my CW postings.
Kydur, I've never seen one of these before. It's pretty cool! I think it was most definitely $2 well spent here.
Aluminium was rare & expensive in the early yrs. & I would guess that this was made after 1920.
Blunder, maybe it was a rare and expensive item made in the 1920s...?! Definitely worth the Twoonie I spent on it jscott.
These are the only references I have been able to find:
http://www.wordcraft.net/flashlight8.html (6th item on page)
http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?267897-Please-help-ID-this-dynamo
Enjoyed that site Kydur. Very informative. As I remember, when aluminium was put on the market about 1900, it cost about as much as gold. May be wrong, but that's what I seem to remember. Of course the production cost went down as production tech. won over. Now, without it, how can we kill each other so cheaply! LOL!!
My girlfriends dad has one of these itentical fully working stamped 62407 THE O&CO LIVERPOOL