Old timey photography flash lamps: Did the tray have any specific name?

For reference. The whole apparatus would have been called a ‘flash lamp,’ but did the little tray containing the powder have a specific name?

I’ve only heard them called a generic “flash powder holder.”

OMG, I know this one!
And only because I found a new show on TV called ‘How we got to ‘Now’’.
Very similar to an old favorite show by James Burke; ‘Connections’.

It’s called - a - wait-for-it… flashgun

And I can tell you that they used a layer of gunpowder and a layer of ground manganese.
The gunpowder was put in first. It both lifted the manganese and set it off.

Manganese not magnesium?

At least at some point “flash powder” was in fact flash powder, a mixture of oxidizer and metallic fuel.

CMC fnord!

Hmmm… is there a name for the phenomenon when you think one word and somehow your fingers type a slightly different word?

A lesser man might blame spellcheck

Thanks, all!

A hod.

Typically larger, used by masons to carry wet cement or bricks or other such masonry material. But could be used for the OP’s meaning too.

It’s sort of like a brain fart, but it happens in your fingers. How about calling it a “Finger Fart”? :cool:

Or you could say “I just washed my hands and can’t do a damned thing with them.”

Flash pan, which I am assuming gave rise to the saying a flash in the pan.

Declan

No, that is part of a blackpowder gun.

The text of the patent you linked to simply calls it a “trough”.

As MrDibble said, this comes from a flintlock weapon. Here are the parts of a flintlock (the pan is under the frizzen):

A “flash in the pan” occurs when the powder in the pan ignites but fails to ignite the main charge in the barrel. You get the big flash in front of your face (the flash in the pan, literally), but the weapon doesn’t fire. This is a fairly common type of misfire with a flintlock.

Here is a video of a real flash in the pan:

As others noted, perhaps not for the saying but the term “flash pan” is good. This link points out that an earlier light source gave us the term “in the limelight”