Hi all a friend of mine found this Optimus 300 B We are looking for some advices is there some catalogue where we could find a hint of this lamp I think the production is sometimes after the second war, but ...??
The experts will doubtless correct me if I'm wrong but from the fibre wheel and fuel cap it looks pre-WWII to me. An excellent discovery!
Congratulations on the find. This is a model that is still on my wish list. Phil is right, this lamp is from the mid to late 1930s. Being a B model, it is hard to be precise but if it was a kerosene model I would put it closer to the middle of the 1930s.
That lantern reminds me of the Petromax 825 which was also designed to burn petrol. It had the pricker dial on the side of the (straight one-piece) vaporizer, and the fuel shutoff valve on the opposite side. The needle rod had to be inserted into the vaporizer from the lower side via a screw plug. The PX 825 also known as a very rare beast.
That's not surprising as the first Optimus models were copies of the Px models of the time (1930). I didn't know about the Px 825 though.
You can find one here at CPL in the reference library. Maybe I'll put some pictures in of the PX 825 I once owned. However, I abandoned/sold it because the plating was almost completely corroded and the tank had lots of stress cracks.
Optimus models 200B and 300B are listed but not illustrated in Optimus catalogue 1500 which I believe is from 1939. ::Neil::
I have just been looking through the catalogue material I have and can see the first mention of the "B" models is in 1933. They are mentioned again in 1939 (the catalogue Neil mentions) and once more in 1954. There are other catalogues around these dates and in between that don't mention them though. The ones that do are English language catalogues, so it is quite likely that they were only export models. Some must have escaped onto the European market, but not many. There aren't many all up, so not a popular seller apparently.
