Praising the torch
Tech Sunday gives the humble pocket torch the green light.
My name is Stanley Borg and I was born in the dark ages. Well, not literally of course. But back in the 1980s, electricity in a small village on the rugged outskirts of Malta was more tunnel than light.
By default, every day we woke up, but the electricity meter didn’t. In the mornings, this was no issue at all. We still went to school because classes didn’t run on electricity – we didn’t have any computers (we didn’t even know what they were) or interactive white boards.
And in the evening, we did our homework, read books or generally bruised and scratched our knees under the beating sun – we didn’t have to check our e-mails because back in those days, our lives weren’t connected.
It was only when night fell and we had to rush to Museum classes (what ballet?) that we missed the light. We would run there, and back home, in a loud yet frightened gaggle of kids, chasing shadows and huddling together for protection.
But then, one year, a huge shipment of torches must have arrived in Malta because for our birthday, all the children in the village got a new pocket torch as a present. And these battery-operated miracles saved our little lives from the monsters (admittedly, imaginary) lurking around the corners. It was like the discovery of fire: redux.
Not only that, but we endowed these simple devices with a life of their own. We all had the same model, of course, but there were different colours.
The red torches appeared brighter and were perfect for a swift and lethal midnight robbery. We imagined that the yellow ones were powered by sunlight. The white ones were so powerful that at night, we would shine them on the moon – and the man on the moon would give us an intergalactic wink.
And there was a hidden button in the sleek,black ones which transformed the torch into a lightsaber, humming with enough deadly power to open Darth Vader from head to toe, like a butterflied prawn.
This month, the torch patent is 109 years old. And in more than a century, the technology hasn’t changed a bit – yet is still as effective. So let’s celebrate this ingenious technology by conjuring up an army of monsters and going into battle with our torches and plenty of imagination.