**DONOTDELETE**
09-18-2002, 05:51 PM
Hello,
We've been pointed to this forum by a customer, as a good place to discuss LED flashlights in general, and our LED flashlights in particular. So I am using this opportunity, having been in this business over 20 years, to introduce ourselves and give a little history of this biz.
Brief History of the LED Flashlight
Rigel Systems was started in 1984 by Leon (PhD Astronomy, Ohio State University) & Linda (MBA UCLA) Palmer in our kitchen.
The genesis for Rigel Systems was an observing trip Leon had to Kitt Peak in 1983. At that time the "preferred" flashlight for "professional" astronomers was a Sanyo rechargable. For those that remember it (Sanyo still sells it), it was a white rectangle about 4 in long by 1.25 inches high and .75 inches wide that could be plugged into a wall socket to recharge. You push a slide switch forward to turn on one of its two light bulbs, and push backwards to turn on the other. One of the lightbulbs was protected by a clear plastic lens, the other by a red plastic lens. It was quite the thing to have, well almost.
The Sanyo's battery wouldn't last through an entire winter night's observing! There Leon was, at 3am, trying to nurse a second or two of light out of the Sanyo flashlight to read settings on the CCD camera and the telescope. Which led to wondering about red LEDs ... could red LEDs be used to make a flashlight?
After returning from Kitt Peak, Leon experimented with red LEDs, electronics, and plastic and developed our first product; an LED flashlight which we christened (and trademarked) Starlite. The basic electronic features and design are used to this day. Well the electronics was the easy part. The hard part was the packaging ... the case.
Starlite wasn't going to be just another bulb flashlight with an LED soldered into it. So Leon started experimenting in Linda's kitchen, bending white Styrene plastic over aluminum frames in Linda's oven, which led to our first version and a whole new meaning to what's cooking! We cranked out about a dozen of these, and made our first trip to the Riverside Telescope Maker's Conference (an annual pilgrimage ever since) where we set up a card table and sold them all within 30 minutes! There appeared to be something to the idea!
After returning from RTMC, we improved the design a bit, making Starlite a bit easier to fabricate, but not easy enough to make money at it. A year later in July, Leon found a 9 volt flashlight at the local hardware store that we could adapt with a few zips on a table saw for our Starlite circuitry to fit into and even incorporate variable brightness control. Unfortunately, the flashlight had been pulled from the market! After a little phone work we were able to track down the source of the 9 volt flashlight and the story of its disappearance from stores.
Seems two large corporations (who shall remain unnamed); one specializing in power tools, the other in chemical products, teamed up to make the flashlight to introduce the second corporation's intro into lithium batteries. Unfortunately, after the flashlight reached the stores it was recalled because the lithium batteries had too high an internal impedance ... they didn't work at the high current drains required by the lightbulb!
However, everyone Leon talked to at both corporations was helpful, and eventually we were able to track down a warehouse full of the recalled flashlights and arrange to start buying them in 1000 piece lots (We still have 5000 light bulbs in our garage). There are two morals to this story; (1) one man's lemon is another man's lemonade, (2) big corporations can be friendly and helpful even to small guys.
We finally started making money with the 9 volt version, especially when red LED technology became 10 times brighter. Within a couple of years we had a fair number of dealers and as the supply of the recalled flashlights dried up, we could afford to have plastic injection molds fabricated, and save Leon from any future table saw related hazards to his appendages. This is the version most amateur astronomers have. With this model we grew our distributor to 100 US and international dealers.
Within a couple of years later, NICHIA intoduced white LEDs into the market, something we had anticipated ever since we made the original Starlite. We quickly reintroduced our original concept of a two-color LED flashlight and christened it Skylite!
About that time, other companies, big and small, discovered white LEDs and started replacing incandescent bulbs in their flashlight lines with LEDs, and elbowing and jostling each other in the marketplace. Sometimes sueing each other for violating each other's patent for inventing the LED flashlight! A couple of other companies sent our flashlight to China to have it copied, down to the smallest detail and have flooded the market with these knockoffs.
So given time and competition, we have continued to improve our flashlights (www.rigelsys.com), adding water resistance, easier to operate thumb wheel, and colored cases as well as adding all the other colors of the LED rainbow from infrared through ultraviolet. The moral of this little history, we like to believe, is that the first, Rigel Systems is still the best.
Best Regards,
Leon Palmer
We've been pointed to this forum by a customer, as a good place to discuss LED flashlights in general, and our LED flashlights in particular. So I am using this opportunity, having been in this business over 20 years, to introduce ourselves and give a little history of this biz.
Brief History of the LED Flashlight
Rigel Systems was started in 1984 by Leon (PhD Astronomy, Ohio State University) & Linda (MBA UCLA) Palmer in our kitchen.
The genesis for Rigel Systems was an observing trip Leon had to Kitt Peak in 1983. At that time the "preferred" flashlight for "professional" astronomers was a Sanyo rechargable. For those that remember it (Sanyo still sells it), it was a white rectangle about 4 in long by 1.25 inches high and .75 inches wide that could be plugged into a wall socket to recharge. You push a slide switch forward to turn on one of its two light bulbs, and push backwards to turn on the other. One of the lightbulbs was protected by a clear plastic lens, the other by a red plastic lens. It was quite the thing to have, well almost.
The Sanyo's battery wouldn't last through an entire winter night's observing! There Leon was, at 3am, trying to nurse a second or two of light out of the Sanyo flashlight to read settings on the CCD camera and the telescope. Which led to wondering about red LEDs ... could red LEDs be used to make a flashlight?
After returning from Kitt Peak, Leon experimented with red LEDs, electronics, and plastic and developed our first product; an LED flashlight which we christened (and trademarked) Starlite. The basic electronic features and design are used to this day. Well the electronics was the easy part. The hard part was the packaging ... the case.
Starlite wasn't going to be just another bulb flashlight with an LED soldered into it. So Leon started experimenting in Linda's kitchen, bending white Styrene plastic over aluminum frames in Linda's oven, which led to our first version and a whole new meaning to what's cooking! We cranked out about a dozen of these, and made our first trip to the Riverside Telescope Maker's Conference (an annual pilgrimage ever since) where we set up a card table and sold them all within 30 minutes! There appeared to be something to the idea!
After returning from RTMC, we improved the design a bit, making Starlite a bit easier to fabricate, but not easy enough to make money at it. A year later in July, Leon found a 9 volt flashlight at the local hardware store that we could adapt with a few zips on a table saw for our Starlite circuitry to fit into and even incorporate variable brightness control. Unfortunately, the flashlight had been pulled from the market! After a little phone work we were able to track down the source of the 9 volt flashlight and the story of its disappearance from stores.
Seems two large corporations (who shall remain unnamed); one specializing in power tools, the other in chemical products, teamed up to make the flashlight to introduce the second corporation's intro into lithium batteries. Unfortunately, after the flashlight reached the stores it was recalled because the lithium batteries had too high an internal impedance ... they didn't work at the high current drains required by the lightbulb!
However, everyone Leon talked to at both corporations was helpful, and eventually we were able to track down a warehouse full of the recalled flashlights and arrange to start buying them in 1000 piece lots (We still have 5000 light bulbs in our garage). There are two morals to this story; (1) one man's lemon is another man's lemonade, (2) big corporations can be friendly and helpful even to small guys.
We finally started making money with the 9 volt version, especially when red LED technology became 10 times brighter. Within a couple of years we had a fair number of dealers and as the supply of the recalled flashlights dried up, we could afford to have plastic injection molds fabricated, and save Leon from any future table saw related hazards to his appendages. This is the version most amateur astronomers have. With this model we grew our distributor to 100 US and international dealers.
Within a couple of years later, NICHIA intoduced white LEDs into the market, something we had anticipated ever since we made the original Starlite. We quickly reintroduced our original concept of a two-color LED flashlight and christened it Skylite!
About that time, other companies, big and small, discovered white LEDs and started replacing incandescent bulbs in their flashlight lines with LEDs, and elbowing and jostling each other in the marketplace. Sometimes sueing each other for violating each other's patent for inventing the LED flashlight! A couple of other companies sent our flashlight to China to have it copied, down to the smallest detail and have flooded the market with these knockoffs.
So given time and competition, we have continued to improve our flashlights (www.rigelsys.com), adding water resistance, easier to operate thumb wheel, and colored cases as well as adding all the other colors of the LED rainbow from infrared through ultraviolet. The moral of this little history, we like to believe, is that the first, Rigel Systems is still the best.
Best Regards,
Leon Palmer