Flashlight Day

What the day is

Flashlight Day is observed on December 21, which falls at or near the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere, the shortest day and longest night of the year. It is an informal day with no documented founder, and the timing is a natural fit: with the most hours of darkness of the year, a flashlight is at its most useful.

The practical message is the real value of the day. Most households own a flashlight, and many people only discover on the night of a power cut that its batteries are dead or that they cannot find it.

Origin and background

The flashlight depends on two inventions, the dry cell battery and the small electric bulb. David Misell, an inventor working for what became the Eveready company, received a patent in 1899 for an early tube-shaped electric light that could be carried in the hand. Those first lights gave short, flickery bursts, hence the word flash, because batteries and bulbs of the time could not provide a steady glow. Steady improvements in batteries and filaments made them practical, and flashlights became standard equipment for railway workers, soldiers and households.

Modern flashlights use light-emitting diodes, which are far more efficient than the old filament bulbs. A modern LED model can run for many hours on a set of batteries and can be small enough to fit on a key ring, and headlamps and rechargeable lights have made them even more useful.

Emergency agencies recommend keeping a flashlight in every household's emergency kit, in addition to spare batteries, and advise against using candles during an outage because of fire risk.

How to take part

• Find every flashlight in the house, test each one and replace dead batteries.
• Keep one in a known place, such as a kitchen drawer or beside the bed, and tell everyone where it is.
• Add spare batteries to your emergency kit, and store them separately from the flashlight to prevent corrosion.
• Go outside on the long night and look at the sky with a red-filtered light, which preserves night vision.
• Play flashlight tag or shadow puppets with children, who will enjoy it more than an equipment check.