Was Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber made in Rochester?
On April 8, Rochester will go to the dark side, briefly, during the total solar eclipse. But a long time ago (relatively), it worked for The Force.
The makings of Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber originated in Rochester, rather than in a galaxy far, far away.
The discovery came to light a few years ago. Eagle-eyed “Star Wars” fan Pablo Hidalgo was watching “Star Wars: Episode V — The Empire Strikes Back” (1980) at home when he noticed that “NEW YORK” was visible on the bottom of Luke’s lightsaber and tweeted about it.
Further investigation revealed that the movie’s set designer, Roger Christian, had created the prop (originally for 1977’s “Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope”) by assembling some old camera parts he bought in a vintage photography shop in London, according to the George Eastman Museum.
Those parts included a Graflex flashgun handle made in Rochester.
Flashguns were bulky devices that held flashbulbs you might see used by a newspaper photographer during the 1940s.
Graflex was founded in the late 1800s in New York City as Folmer & Schwing Manufacturing Co. But in the early 1900s, the company came under the ownership of Eastman Kodak Co., which changed the name to Graflex.
On X (formerly Twitter), the Eastman Museum quoted Christian as saying: “I put chrome tape around the handle to hide the Graflex name. And I had a calculator bubble-strip, which was where the illuminated numbers would come up, and that I put into the grip, and we added the D-ring on the end so we could hang it on Luke’s belt. And that was it!”