hmmm, a flashaholic life story? in how many words? well, I will attempt to keep this short.
in the late '40s in semi-rural SW Minnesota, powerline wires over long distances of open fields meant that power failures were routine with nearly every storm due to wind or ice. Power outages were maybe a day in the summer, a few days in the winter. During power failures, We used kerosene lamps - restricted to the kitchen, dining room, and my Father's office. Bedrooms upstairs or anywhere else in the house meant flashlights. Fire in an old clapboard house was a very real danger. A kerosene stove served up semi-hot food, usually pancakes. Since the house employed steam heat - nothing electric - shovel in coal and corn cobs and the 2-story house could stay sort of warm downstairs. Bedrooms upstairs received heat via the stairwell. Flashlights followed me thru many many power failures in MN, US Forest Service in Northern Idaho (very remote - local generator power only during daytime), in the military around the world, University, and finally a family. Oddly enough, no power failures for years in Germany. I was in the Northeast blackout of 1965: watching the city of Syracuse NY go dark in the evening of day 1 was sobering. only hospitals had generators and minimal light, and some of them went dark about day 2-3. IOW, power failures have been a part of my life. Neverthless, I enjoy getting outside for walks in wooded/open areas dark enough to need a handheld light.
back to flashlights: My flashaholic beginnings in the later '40s were complements of hardware store flashlights, standard incandescent filament bulbs, and Carbon-Zinc cells. IOW, very yellow beams with short ranges - which is probably why I explicitly dislike 'warm' LED beams and only tolerate neutral-colored beams. I often raided my 'piggy bank' for flashlight upgrades and batteries. Reading under the blankets in bed was frequent. I slowly followed the bulb improvements - krypton-filled bulbs - and the evolution of C & D-cell chemistry. The real breakthru was the GE Nickel-Cadmium cells, which lead to battery chargers, ever increasing cell capacities, and discovery of the voltage depression effect and dendrite issues in Ni-Cd cells. Ni-MH cells solved the voltage depression issue, but battery chemistry could not keep up with the bulb->LED evolution. A Maglite was a dream - eventually had up to a 5-cell, but then LEDs wiped out the Maglite fascination.
My first LED light from REI had all of about 60 lumens - and only increased my desire for more lumens. Routine walks at night in a semi-wild park or simply wooded areas gave me the opportunity to test out many different flashlight styles. I cycled thru nearly all sizes of lights and cells. I standardized on 14500/18650/26650 and AAA or AA cells. Button cells, 10180, RCR/CR123 cells are gone for various reasons - usually a too short run time at lumen levels that I want. In my old age, I need more light now, so I frequently use the higher lumen levels. sub-lumen levels are meaningless to me.
Looking to the future, high-lumen lights >1000 lumens are excessive for most urban/suburban areas in Germany, save for walks along the Main-Donau Kanal. Even in my apt area in Wisconsin, my TN40 has only limited usage at max output. I definitely evolved to prefer a good mixed beam, neither thrower nor flooder. In total I am down to less than a dozen lights, about half in a rotation. I am becoming very selective about how I would use any 'new' light. Shelf queens are now quickly given away. Frequent travel & living locations is a good motivation for minimalization!
I also attempted gifting small keychain lights ... eh, most of those lights eventually sat on shelves after the first usage. Rechargeable lights would normally be run down and left down - a certain battery killer. After many gifting failures, I settled on a 1xAAA cell single mode light for a giveaway. Otherwise, all of my closer relatives have been suitably provisioned with flashlights, but only one of them became a flashaholic. oh well.
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