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World's Largest Collection of Auto Cigarette Lighters Is A Hot Orange Blast from the Past

At least in the United States, cigarette lighters began to show up as standard equipment in cars sometime around 1925–1926, and by 1928, the Connecticut Automotive Specialty Company in Bridgeport patented their version of the cigarette lighter.
Car cigarette lighter collection 14 photos
Photo: Worldwide Auctioneers
Car cigarette lighter collectionCar cigarette lighter collectionCar cigarette lighter collectionCar cigarette lighter collectionCar cigarette lighter collectionCar cigarette lighter collectionCar cigarette lighter collectionCar cigarette lighter collectionAutomatic Car Cigarette LighterJM Morris cigarette lighter Lincoln LDashboard cigarette lighterRonson Robot LiterCigarette lighter patent
The first version was a very shady-looking piece of electrical wizardry that looked like a home-wired lamp cord attached to a primitive reel.

In practice and as they developed, the car cigarette lighter became a coiled nichrome wire heated until it glowing by electrical current. Then, as the driver pushed in the cigarette lighter, it made contact with two points in an electric receptacle, allowing the current to heat the coil.

The Lincoln L model - introduced in 1920 - was a luxury vehicle powered by a 358 cubic-inch V8 engine, and it was priced at $4,300. It also featured the ‘cigar lighter’ that extended from a reel to reach any location within the car’s interior.

JM Morris cigarette lighter Lincoln L
Photo: Worldwide Auctioneers
If you were born in the last couple of decades, it’s entirely possible that you’ve never seen a cigarette lighter in a car and that the hole in the dash which once held one is now nothing more than a socket to power up a smartphone.

But back in the day, the car cigarette lighter represented perhaps the first must-have automotive option, and it came along well before anyone dreamed of having an FM radio or air conditioning.

The inventor of the first electric ‘cigar lighter’ was once Fredrich Wilhelm, and he first registered his invention as a patent during the 1880s. However, as smoking cigarettes really didn't take off until the years following WWI, the lighter for cars was slow in coming.

In 1919, J.M. Morris registered a design for a spring-loaded “electrical lighting device for cigars and the like,” and it was essentially the version us, older folks are familiar with featured a knob with a coiled heating element on at the end provided a thoroughly dangerous-looking orange glow. Once plugged into a 12v socket, the lighter would pop out and be ready to take care of unhealthy but oh-so-satisfying and reliable business.

Automatic Car Cigarette Lighter
Photo: NMC
The patent read thusly: The present invention relates to an electrical lighting device of the type in which an incandescent element is employed for lighting cigars, the bacco, or the like, an object of this invention being to provide a device in which the incandescing element is mounted upon a part which is removably connected to a stationary part through which the electricity is supplied to the incandescing element, thus permitting the latter to be connected to or disconnected from the electrical current.

And all those lighter sockets came in handy when it was time to repurpose the lighter socket for all manner of portable electronic devices such as the suitcase-sized ‘portable’ car phones.

In an ironic twist, nearly every car on the market comes with the sockets, but no longer includes the lighters which made them necessary.

But as with nearly all items from the past, the lighters are now objects of interest for collectors for their nostalgic value. One auction house is, in fact, selling off what they say is “the world’s largest collection of car cigarette lighters” and they’re neatly presented on 10 boards.

Ronson Robot Liter
Photo: Ronson
The collection includes some 2,112 automotive cigarette lighters - most of which date from the 1940s to the 1990s - and they’re arranged on eight large boards contain 228 lighters each and two smaller boards which contain 144 each. Each of the lighters is made from a variety of materials such as the once-popular Bakelite, the obscure early plastic Parkesine, and a range of more familiar metals.

The lighters have been mounted on 24" W x 36" H and 12" x 40" H. boards for display.

The ashtray and cigarette lighters once ubiquitous in all cars began to disappear from dashboards during the 1990s.
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