By pressing the switch once, the light operates in high mode to produce a full power 130 lumen light beam with a long 4 hour runtime.

ENGADGET: Explosion-proof flashlight could be the first to outlive its owner

Designing them to light up an entire room or shine a beam over a long distance is far more technically challenging and requires higher production costs.

FORBES: Startup Soraa Launches LED Light For Shops, Museums

This generates the coherent light of a laser beam in the core of a long, thin optical fibre.

ECONOMIST: Solar power from space

It invented a sophisticated device that emits sound waves in a lethally focused beam of energy but never proved that ultrasound provides long-term relief or is more effective than existing procedures.

FORBES: Not Hot Enough

Pier Oddone, Fermilab's boss, plans to follow it with the Long Baseline Neutrino Experiment (LBNE), which will send a yet-more intense beam of the particles to an underground laboratory in South Dakota.

ECONOMIST: The future of physics (1)

As long as there is a birds-eye view from one building to the next, the laser beam can transmit to and from a high-speed transmission center.

CNN: Terabeam aims to solve 'last mile' data jam

More modern versions of the tool add in a laser beam projector, which allows builders to level out the device and "draw" a long line of light across a wall, indicating an exactly level surface.

FORBES: No. 18 The Level