About three years ago I bought a new otoscope and ophthalmoscope set from Welch Allyn. (An otoscope is the thing doctors and other healthcare workers use to look in your ears, and an ophthalmoscope is the same but for eyes.) They’re fairly simple devices conceptually, just a light source plus various lenses and filters. Welch Allyn is probably the best-known manufacturer of these and generally considered a reliable brand. You’ll find their diagnostic sets on the walls of many hospitals. Like most reputable medical manufacturers they charge a premium price; I think my set cost about $600 Australian dollars, and it was one of the cheapest available.

Within two years the switches on both devices were flaky. They wouldn’t turn on at all, or would only turn on when I pressed and moved the switch in just the right way with just the right pressure, or they would flicker. Supremely frustrating when trying to examine a patient under time pressure, and galling that I paid so much money for a product less reliable than a torch I could buy at the local supermarket.

I needed a replacement and I was determined not to give a cent more to Welch Allyn, but I was struggling to find an alternative that wasn’t just ‘give $1000 to a different supposedly reputable big corporation and hope they have better quality control’. Then I found some forum posts from doctors in the UK that mentioned the Arclight. I’d never heard of it but it looked interesting and was only $102, so I bought one to try it out.

The Arclight was invented by an ophthalmologist who trying to find a way to get health services in developing countries easier access to essential equipment like ophthalmoscopes, and an optometrist ‘tinkerer’ who was experimenting with simplifying the traditional ophthalmoscope design. It combines a radically simplified ophthalmoscope and an otoscope into a single device, which can also act as a light source and loupe (magnifier) for general examination. It uses LEDs for a reliable and low-energy light source, and can be charged by both USB-C and an integrated solar cell. Every spare surface of the Arclight has useful features crammed onto it, too many to list them all: a pocket clip and a lanyard loop, a ruler, visual references for examining different parts of the eye. Even the specula – the pointy plastic bits that go inside your ear while it is being examined, usually a single-use consumable – have been carefully designed: cheap enough to be single-use, but also easy to sterilise and re-use. If all of this wasn’t enough, the Arclight actually has better optics than my old Welch Allyn set: better magnification, bigger field of view, light sources that have been carefully considered to deliver different colour temperatures depending on their function and with adjustable brightness.

It’s hard to put into words how good it feels to use the Arclight. I’m so used to products designed to make a profit, to reduce manufacturing costs, to steal my attention, to impress my neighbours, to harvest my data, to create friction that makes me want to upgrade or accessorise, to make me buy cartridges or refills or other consumables, to make me buy a subscription, to look good on a billboard, to satisfy the marketing department, to satisfy the shareholders, to satisfy the purchasing department because it ticks boxes on a feature list or because ‘nobody ever got fired for buying IBM’. The Arclight is designed purely to be a tool that helps me get my job done: pragmatic, simple, reliable, beholden to no interest other than the task at hand. It’s incredibly cheap compared to the alternatives, and the Arclight project charges higher prices to customers in developed countries so they can subsidise them for developing countries. Even if the switch breaks after two years and I have to replace it, I’ll still have the satisfaction of knowing I’m getting excellent value for money while helping out people who need it.

I don’t believe that everything should be designed like the Arclight. There’s room for ornamentation, for form over function, for luxury, for sturdier and more durable materials and build quality at accordingly higher prices. I do however wish very strongly that more of the things I use every day were like the Arclight, or at least had an alternative like it that I could choose if I wanted.