Innovation just goes round and round

It's strange, when you think about it, how innovations usually aren't really that innovative. Take, for example, the recent spate of green torches that use a handle-powered dynamo to charge a capacitor that's then used to light up LEDs. These torches are brilliant and we use them in Shopper's labs all of the time when we're working inside computers. They seemed like an incredible bit of innovation.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I was clearing out my late Grandfather's possessions and found an earlier example of a dynamo-powered torch. I'm not talking about the hand-powered models that were briefly popular in the early 80s, but something much older.

It turns out that the dynamo-powered torch I found was in fact invented by Philips (the consumer electronics company) in 1943 during World War 2. The reason it was invented is that the use of energy was severely restricted, so there was a need for self-powered electrical lights, such as this torch.

As you can see from the pictures, the design isn't so different from modern dynamo-powered torches. Instead of a handle to turn, though, there's a lever you push with your thumb to generate the electricity to light the bulb. There's no capacitor inside, either, so you need to keep pumping away to generate light. In the Netherlands the torch was apparently given the nickname knijpkat (squeezed cat), after the whirring noise it made when in use.

Incredibly, the torch I found still works, despite spending the best part of 60 years in a box; how many of this year's 'innovations' will do the same in 60 years' time?