- Manufacturers:
The Ronson lighter company started as The Art Metal Works in 1897 and was incorporated on July 20, 1898, by Max Hecht, Louis Vincent Aronson and Leopold Herzig, in Newark, New Jersey.[1][2]
Louis V. Aronson was a huge creative driving force for the company; and, with a few business adjustments, including the addition of Alexander Harris (1910-11)[4][5] as Business Manager, the company soon became World Famous.[6]
American inventor George G. Blaisdell founded Zippo Manufacturing Company in 1932 and produced the first Zippo lighter in early 1933, being inspired by an Austrian cigarette lighter of similar design made by IMCO.[7] It got its name because Blaisdell liked the sound of the word “zipper“, and “zippo” sounded more modern.[8] On March 3, 1936, the U.S. Patent Office granted a patent for the Zippo lighter.[9]
Alfred Dunhill Limited was developed by Alfred Dunhill after he inherited his father’s saddlery business on London’s Euston Road at the age of 21 in 1893. Alfred Dunhill developed a line of automobile accessories called “Dunhill’s Motorities”. This first collection included car horns and lamps, leather overcoats, goggles, picnic sets and timepieces, which provided the company with the strap line of “Everything But The Motor”. Within a few years, the business moved towards the luxury market with the opening of two Dunhill Motorities stores in Mayfair. In 1904 Dunhill had patented a “Windshield Pipe” to help a driver smoke while driving.
Clipper is the brand name of a type of refillable butane lighter, designed by Enric Sardà and owned by Flamagas S.A.[1] since 1959.
The lighters are mostly produced in Barcelona (Spain), while others are manufactured in Chennai (India) and Shanghai (China).[2] Clipper has a wide range of lighters, gas refills and other accessories. The first Clipper lighter was made in 1972, and now the worldwide level of production is around 450 million units a year, making it the second largest lighter manufacturer in the world (behind BIC).
In 1945, Marcel Bich and his partner, Édouard Buffard, bought an empty factory in the Paris suburb of Clichy, where they began production of pen holders and pencil cases.[4]
In 1970, Gillette purchased S. T. Dupont Paris, whose principal product was luxury cigarette lighters. During this time Dupont explored the possibilities of marketing a disposable lighter, developing an inexpensive disposable lighter called Cricket, which it introduced in the United States in 1972. Later that year Bic was test marketing a disposable lighter that could provide 3,000 lights before wearing out; Bic introduced this lighter in 1973.[15] Typically the cheapest lighter on the market, the Bic disposable lighter was extremely popular and remains so today.
