A top view of a Badger Brass Phare Solar carbide lamp. Model 75F, patented in 1899 and manufactured in 1903.
In 1898, four businessmen, Charles N. Frost, George A. Yule, Richard Welles, and E. L. Williams, founded the Badger Brass Manufacturing Company, Inc. where acetylene bicycle lamps (marketed under the Solar trade name) were produced until 1917. Production rates hit an all time low that year, and the C. M. Hall Company of Detroit, Michigan bought out the business in November 1917.