R. E. Dietz Company

R.E. Dietz Company was a lighting products manufacturer best known for its hot blast and cold blast kerosene lanterns. It was started in 1840 when its founder, 22-year-old Robert Edwin Dietz, purchased a lamp and oil business in Brooklyn, New York. Though famous for well-built indoor and outdoor kerosene lanterns, it was a major player in the automotive lighting industry from the 1920s into the 1960s.

Dietz also produced the majority of road work warning lights, the first of which were oil lanterns (with their Traffic-Gard trademark) and road torches which looked like cannonballs with large wicks. Kerosene was normally used in these lamps. Later they developed some of the first transistorized warning lights (Visi-Flash trademark) using standard 6-volt lantern batteries, which either blinked in timed intervals or had a steady light.

In popular culture

The 1992 made-for-cable television film The Water Engine stars William H. Macy as an employee of the Dietz Company who invents an engine that runs on distilled water. Unscrupulous lawyers attempt to take possession of the invention based on the claim that it was built from parts and tools owned by Dietz.

See also

• Lantern
• Visi-Flash

External links and sources

• Dietz Traffic-Gard history
• R.E. Dietz company timeline