An outdoor staple

By CONNIE MERTZ

In 1900, a young man, poor in vision, was impressed with lamps that he saw in a drugstore window. It used mantles, not wicks, and gasoline rather than coal oil. Thinking he could easily sell them to make money for his last year of law school, he became the company’s salesman. But residents in Kingfisher, Oklahoma had been burned by another salesman who cheated them, and they weren’t about to purchase another new product.

Knowing this was an excellent product, he decided to sell a lighting service instead with a “no light, no pay” clause. Customers then became interested and his meager business expanded west into San Diego and Las Vegas. Two years later, he moved the business to Wichita, Kansas.

The man was Sheldon Coleman, and today we know his enterprise as The Coleman Company. His lanterns, “the light of a thousand uses,” changed society. Farmers took one to their barns, women could work indoors after dark and in WWI the government declared it an essential item with nearly 70,000 distributed! It literally changed rural America.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of The Coleman Company. Its motto, “Every Coleman product must be the best of its kind,” still speaks of its trusted products, which have expanded far beyond the lanterns.

• Admiral Bird carried a Coleman lantern on his expedition to the South Pole.
• One of the first night football games in the U.S. was lighted by Coleman lamps suspended from poles along the sidelines.
• Coleman’s biggest customer became the U.S. military. During WWII, its Wichita plants cranked out projectiles for the Navy and parts for B-17 and B-29 bombers.
• The greatest invention for the enlisted men was the GI Pocket Stove, which kept them warm and heated their food and water.