You light up my lighter.

October 12, 2024 9:04 PM

Old cigarette lighters are more than just lighters. A one minute video showing the imaginative design and function of cigarette lighters from the last century. No smoking involved.
posted by storybored (13 comments total)

The new ones are more as well:

Can you get root with only a cigarette lighter? (da.vidbuchanan.co.uk)
posted by aleph at 9:11 PM on October 12

The Scripto clear plastic bottom ones were the coolest. The held various things. Tiny dice. A fishing lure, a small 45 ramp record. They floated in a liquid of sorts, not the lighter fluid. They were wildly popular... Available on eBay still.
posted by Czjewel at 9:12 PM on October 12 [5 favorites]

lit
posted by HearHere at 10:48 PM on October 12

It’s interesting to think about how much less common it’s become to directly handle fire. Obviously some people still smoke and use fireplaces and charcoal grills, but it’s so much less common than 100 or even 50 years ago.
posted by smelendez at 11:04 PM on October 12 [1 favorite]

Amazing! Thanks for posting!
posted by JoeXIII007 at 11:10 PM on October 12

I had a collection of cigarette lighters as a kid even though I never smoked, although my parents did, and I used them to set all kinds of things on fire, but never our house. That I set on fire with matches.
posted by jamjam at 11:42 PM on October 12 [3 favorites]

Tracked down the original post on Tiktok (much higher quality)
posted by Rhomboid at 12:33 AM on October 13 [3 favorites]

Wow I’m thinking of the first time since primary school maybe of what I would come to understand as an urban legend: that a piezo igniter, properly timed and triggered against the coin slot, could be used to get free games on arcade machines or make pay phone calls.
posted by MarchHare at 1:58 AM on October 13 [1 favorite]

Fortress Phones (an extremely common rotary payphone model in the US in the 60s and 70s) used to have a vulnerability whereby an appropriate electrical pulse to the microphone (such as by grounding out or interfering with a piezo transducer of some sort) could indeed trigger the first dime to be registered.

There's a bit of a nod to this in the movie Wargames, although Broderick finds it unrealistically easy to unscrew the mouthpiece. And making the pulse by grounding the mic out with a pull tab is possibly The Most Seventies Thing Ever.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 3:01 AM on October 13 [2 favorites]

I'm pretty sure that my thankfully-brief flirtation with little cigars in college was simply so that I would have an excuse to get a Zippo lighter.
posted by Halloween Jack at 5:43 AM on October 13

Nice! My grandfather had Ronson Crown Lighter back in the day. Lost or stolen some time in the past, curse the light-fingered.

I'm pretty sure...

No such excuse for my highschool flirtation with snuff.
posted by BWA at 6:33 AM on October 13

Cool, I am hanging out with friends this weekend and for some reason they want me to bring a lighter that can light ten times in a row.
posted by credulous at 8:36 AM on October 13

→ Ronson Crown Lighter

My gran had one. It didn't get frequent use after she was the only smoker, but previous generations turned after-dinner smoking into an art-form.

Which is probably why most of them died before I was born.
posted by scruss at 1:46 PM on October 13