Maglite D-Cell Flashlight

The D-cell Maglite is a long, knurled tube of anodised aluminium, heavy enough with its batteries in to feel like a tool rather than a gadget. A rubber button sits under the thumb; twisting the head moves the reflector to throw the beam narrow and far or wide and soft. O-rings seal both ends against water, and a spare bulb lives in the tail cap.

Its maker was a machinist before he was anything else. Anthony Maglica was born in New York, raised in Croatia, trained on lathes in Europe, and came back to America in 1950 with little English. He worked other men's machines in Long Beach and East Los Angeles, and in 1955 put $125 down on a lathe of his own and set up in his garage. The job shop grew, and in 1974 he incorporated it as Mag Instrument.

In 1976, dismayed by the quality of the flashlights he saw, he set out to make a better one, and made it the way he made machine parts: turned from aluminium and anodised against corrosion instead of moulded from plastic. The Maglite reached police officers, firefighters and paramedics in 1979, and for years was standard issue in American patrol cars. From there it moved into hardware chains and department stores, and into design collections, among them the Victoria and Albert Museum's, whose catalogue praises a surface that is a pleasure to see and touch.

In 1982 Maglica moved production from Los Angeles to a new factory in Ontario, California, where Mag Instrument still makes its whole range, leaning on automation to keep its costs within reach of imports. LED heads now outshine the original krypton and xenon lamps many times over, but the incandescent D-cell model is still made, and either fits the same machined body that came out in 1979.