R. E. Dietz Company

R. E. Dietz Co., Ltd.

Dietz Lantern Factory, c. 1910
Formerly	R. E. Dietz Company (1840–1956)
Company type	Private
Industry	Lighting
Founded	1840 in New York, United States
Founder	Robert Edwin Dietz
Headquarters	Kowloon , Hong Kong
Key people	William Henry Dietz Amasmus French
Products	Carcel lamp Hot Blast Tubular Lantern
Website	redietz.com

R. E. Dietz Co., Ltd. (formerly R. E. Dietz Company) is a lighting products manufacturer best known for its hot blast and cold blast kerosene lanterns. The company was founded 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.

Gerry Dietz reestablished the company in Hong Kong and as of 1956, they moved their production outside of the United States, first to Hong Kong until 1988 when they moved production to China.

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.

Dietz Tubular Lanterns

• 
  Dietz No. 2 D-Lite New York USA Lanterns

See also

• Lantern

External links and sources

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