Streamlight Is Celebrating Its 50th Birthday All Year

When you’re standing knee-deep in a chilly pre-dawn decoy spread come November, it’s easy to get distracted on a starry night.

Especially as you glance heavenward towards Orion the Hunter, see a flashing meteor streak across the sky, and consider the enormity of the world we live in, all lying beneath the silence of the blazing Milky Way.

Yeah, the vastness of space and our meager attempts to explore it might not be a duck hunter’s first thought in the dark overnight woods when greenheaded mallards are chuckling off in the distance, but it could be his or her next thought if they stumble on an unseen root or rock and their light tumbles into the icy water.

Because if that light is a floating and waterproof Waypoint 300 Rechargeable spotlight made by Streamlight, a company born out of NASA technology a half-century ago in 1973, all a waterfowler has to do is bend over, pluck the light out of the icy water, and keep on tossing the blocks as dawn blushes up against the eastern horizon.

Now celebrating its 50th birthday this year, Streamlight is throwing a golden anniversary party all year long, starting with the SHOT Show a few weeks ago in Las Vegas as the company handed out free beverages and small Streamlight Keychain Flashlights on the show floor’s happy hour.

That might seem like a small gesture, but trust me, I’ve already learned from personal experience that this small but helpful product is worth its weight in gold when you’re fumbling with a bag of groceries at a dimly lit and locked front door.

All of the company’s innovations, big and small, got their start 50 years ago when the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) went looking for the right stuff to simulate bright sunlight outside of earth’s atmospheric filtering capabilities, the same kind of conditions that NASA astronauts would encounter in space as they rocketed beyond planet’s gravity and protective atmosphere.

That led to a group of highly-skilled engineers setting up a lab in Fairfield, N.J., eventually designing a product that could generate a staggering amount of light to the tune of 25 million candlepower. Yeah, that’s pretty bright, isn’t it?

That intense lighting technology a couple of generations ago eventually led to the production of a hand-held product that could produce one million candlepower of light, a product that was later marketed to military and law enforcement markets.

When a private investor from the Philadelphia took this young, fledgling company to Pennsylvania in 1973, what is now known to the world as Streamlight, Inc. was born. And the rest, as they like to say, is history, light-making history, that is.

Fast forward toward the first quarter mark of the 21st Century and today finds Streamlight as one of the most innovative, well-regarded, and prolific light makers in the outdoors, law enforcement, tactical, and military spaces. Following its move to the company’s current 240,000-square foot facility in Eagleville, Pa. a few years back, Streamlight now supplies all kinds of lighting products to the industries noted above, thanks to the dedicated efforts of a tight-knit, talented staff—or family, as the company likes to say—made up of more than 350 individuals.

While duck hunters will certainly appreciate lights like the waterproof, floating hand-held unit mentioned at the outset of this story, they’re not the only outdoors enthusiasts who might benefit from Streamlight’s vast product lineup.

Need to climb into a treestand perch some 20 feet up in a white oak tree come late October as the whitetail rut looms in a few days and bow season approaches big whitetail overload? Streamlight has a number of flashlights that will work in that situation, including a few with a hat clip, which might ought to be standard issue on any flashlight product aimed at a hunter’s Christmas wish list.

One such Streamlight model is the 350 Lumens ProTac 1L-1AA Everyday Carry Flashlight, a product that is waterproof to one meter for 30 minutes as well as impact resistant to a tested height of two meters.

Coming in black and coyote brown colors, this light is rugged, runs on a single lithium or alkaline AA battery, weighs only 2.8 ounces, slips easily into a jacket pocket or zippered hideaway in a hunting pack, and offers plenty of light to get in and out of a treestand, to store gear as dusk fades into night, and track the blood trail of a downed big antlered buck after a broadhead tipped arrow has flown true and hit its mark in the boiler room.

Perhaps the Streamlight product that a deer hunter needs is a headlamp, one that gets them down a snowy trail and into and out of a late-season ground blind guarding a cut-corn field. If that’s the case, then you might like the ProTac HL Headlamp, a unit that offers 635 Lumens in high-power mode, a 90-degree tilting head, machined aircraft aluminum construction, and a weight of less than seven-ounces with two lithium batteries, which are included.

Or maybe you'll need something on a Rocky Mountain trout stream as a spring hatch of blue-winged olive mayflies comes off on a dark, stormy day that demands a little illumination to change size #22 dry flies at the end of light 6X tippet. It could be that you’ll need to get the German shorthair pointer loaded back into the kennel next September after a long trek across the Montana prairie as you chase early autumn sharptails with your side-by-side shotgun as the light fades over the distant Crazy Mountains. It could even be that you're changing bucketmouth bass enticing topwater lures on a sultry July night on a lunker filled lake like East Texas’ famed Lake Fork when there’s not even a smidgen of moonlight overhead.

If any of the above outdoors situations apply to you this year, or any more of a couple of dozen plus other applications you can find hunting and fishing your way across America in 2023, then maybe what you need is something like the lightweight, easily stowable Enduro Pro USB Headlamp, which offers 200 Lumens for the spotlight mode, as well as a lower Lumens output to flood an area softly with light.

Hopefully, that won’t be changing a tire on the side of a two-track trail into the foothills as elk bugle next fall or checking under the trailer to find out what that noise is as you pull the boat out at the launching ramp near a tarpon rich flat in the Florida Keys.

Whatever your lighting need is, however, Streamlight has got you covered, whether that’s in a duck blind as a waterfowler pours an early morning cup of coffee, a turkey hunter fishes into the vest pocket for a supply of box call chalk, a nighttime danger zone is illuminated by a weapons light at the bottom of your conceal-and-carry 9mm, and all sorts of other outdoors, law enforcement, fire and rescue, tactical, military, and work situations.

Whatever your lighting need happens to be this year, there’s little doubt that in its 50th year of business, Streamlight has a lighting product that is tailor-made for such situations.

As one of the world’s leading manufacturers in the space today, Streamlight designs, makes, and markets all kinds of high-performance lighting options, from flashlights and headlamps to a weapon’s laser aiming device to scene-illuminating products you might see on a TV news shot this evening on the local news. With 525+ patents in the United States and beyond, not to mention some 135+ U.S. and foreign registered trademarks, there really isn’t a dark corner of this whole wide world that Streamlight hasn’t lit up on demand.

But it isn’t just making lights and selling them to consumers and government agencies that sets the Pennsylvania company apart these days. It’s also the product design, expert engineering, and approach to customer support and service that makes these lighting products so popular, reliable, affordable, and durable for everyone who needs them including hunters, anglers, law enforcement, firefighters and fighter pilots.

With a half-century of innovation and superior design continuing to fuel a company that was birthed out of spaceflight’s DNA a couple of generations ago, surely there’s a Streamlight product that will work just perfectly for your hunting, fishing, camping, automotive, or around the house application that any of us might have in 2023 as the company continues to light the way and celebrate birthday No. 50!

To find out, visit your favorite local Streamlight retailer, call the company toll-free at 1-800-523-7488, or visit Streamlight online.

Who knows, they might even save you a piece of birthday cake as Streamlight celebrates what is turning out to be a golden year and continues to faithfully light the dark spots in the world around us!