The Evolution of Bicycle Lights

These small LED bicycle lights are amazingly bright, rechargeable, and low-cost.  The can put out a steady beam, or flash for attention. In short, a terrific advance from what we used to have when I was a kid.

This is the setup we had for bike lights in the early 1970s — a big light on the front (nothing on the back), powered by a generator that rubbed against the tire, with wires stretched from the back of the bike to the front. There were a dozen points of potential failure, and even when it worked perfectly, the light was weak and completely nonexistent when you stopped at a sign or crosswalk.

I was the last generation to use carbide lamps. In my case, we used these for caving, not biking, but they were more-or-less the same product with the same mechanics. Little gravel-sized rocks of calcium carbide were loaded into the lamp, and then a bit of water through a flip-top fixture. The resulting chemical reaction produced acetylene gas which was lit with a flint wheel-striker fixed inside the parabolic reflector. The resulting light was fairly weak and somewhat susceptible to wind, a problem fixed in bike lanterns with a glass front and a “chimney” top for air and heat escape.