Zippo Legacy
George G. Blaisdell founded Zippo Manufacturing Company in Bradford, Pennsylvania. In late 1932 he set out to rebuild an Austrian lighter he had seen a friend struggle to use. He kept a chimney around the wick, put the mechanism in a rectangular case with a hinged lid, and made it operable with one hand. He named it Zippo because he liked the sound of the word “zipper.” The first Zippo pocket lighter was produced in 1933.
That shape is still the one people recognize: a flat rectangular case, a hinged lid, and a chimney. Zippo backed it with the company’s own lifetime guarantee, “It works or we fix it free.” That promise belongs to Zippo Manufacturing Company. It is not a repair offer from Blazing Laser.
Zippo’s own account says that when the United States entered the Second World War in 1941, the company stopped making lighters for the consumer market and turned production over to the U.S. military. The design stayed familiar in American service and in ordinary life afterward. The Zippo/Case Museum in Bradford presents that history. Bradford, Pennsylvania is Zippo’s story. It is not an address for Blazing Laser, which is in Manchester, New Hampshire.
