Vintage Imco Made in Austria Camp Fire Lighter Spark Device Coghlan's Winnipeg

Description

Vintage Imco Made in Austria Camp Fire Lighter Spark Device Coghlan's Winnipeg. Original blue color handle. Has some age related wear, good complete working condition - see my 8 photos.
IMCO was an Austrian manufacturer of cigarette lighters. Established in 1907 by Julius Meister, who was formerly a manufacturer of brass buttons for the Austro-Hungarian Army. Unable to make much money just from making buttons, Meister struck on the idea of manufacturing something that everybody would need, and that everybody would use – not just the army. And that something was the newfangled ‘cigarette lighter’.
Cigarette lighters as we recognise them today were invented in the late 1800s. Early models were unbelievably crude by modern standards, but IMCO got the idea that if they could come up with one good, cheap, simple design, then they could mass produce them, and become the Henry Ford Company of cigarette lighters!
Of course, for the lighters to be cheap enough for everybody to afford them, they had to keep costs down. So that meant that they needed a cheap, readily available source of metal. This wasn’t easy in the 1910s, when Austria-Hungary was fighting with Germany and Turkey, against Russia, France, Belgium, Britain, Canada, and the United States! Any plans to start manufacturing lighters during the First World War were quickly shelved as being wholly impractical. It wasn’t until after the war in 1919, and 1920, that IMCO actually began manufacturing.