GRAFLEX
SKYWALKER
It all started in 1976 when Roger Christian, a Star Wars Set Decorator, went down to a photography store in London to get a couple of lenses for Luke’s binoculars. This was around the time Roger was looking for something he could make the lightsaber out of. Something that felt right. He asked the store owner, “Do you have anything interesting in boxes, anything you don’t use, that I could take a look at?”
“Oh, under that shelf there, that stuff hasn’t been looked at in 10 years, have a look at it.”
Inside the box, he found some flashguns for Graflex "Speed Graphics" Cameras, and he instantly knew he had found it. He bought the lot and raced back to the studios, into his set decorating room where he kept all kinds of things. He took 7 pieces of some black T-shaped plastic strips and put them on the flashgun as handles. In the clamp, he put a bubble strip from a calculator he had broken down, a Texas Instruments Exactra 19 from 1974.
When he handed it to George Lucas, he just held it… And smiled.
George asked him to put a D-ring on the bottom, and the Graflex Lightsaber was born.
MPP
VADER
Created by Roger Christian, Darth Vader’s lightsaber was developed by following the logic of the Gra ex. If one cam- era ash had the perfect look— then why wouldn’t another? The black and chrome look of the MPP ashgun must have seemed like a perfect t on rst sight.
The MPP, which was actually a British knock-off of the much more ubiquitous Heiland Synchronar, underwent a nearly identical transformation as the Graflex.
Technically, the first Sith lightsaber designed was Darth Vader's. However, there were no early plans to make Vader's weapon distinct from the other lightsabers depicted, beyond the black styling on the hilt itself.
The concept art of Vader's lightsaber hilt was based upon George Lucas's descriptions of the weapons as jewel-studded cylinders. Ultimately, the hilt carried by David Prowse in A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back was made from the flash attachment of a British 3-cell MPP Microflash.
A flash tube attachment used on forties-era press cameras, with the ridged grip made by gluing portions of hard plastic 'T' track used for the sliding doors of display cabinets (often mistaken for wiper blades) onto the bare cylinder, and the switch plate fashioned from the LED display of a 1974 calculator.
MK1
OBI - WAN
Obi-wan Kenobi’s weapon was the result of having just the right junk at hand. Roger Christian has said that a lot of the production design, on Tatooine especially, came from the acquisition of airline and military scrap. At the time, it was very cheap and they bought it in bulk.
Jet engines were taken apart to build blasters, droids, snub fighters and through some sheer luck, it would seem that a handful of parts with similar diameter came together perfectly to form what was for a long time, the most mysterious saber of the saga.
With only a handful of images and diagrams to work from, the exact construction of Obi-Wan’s saber was a mystery un- til 2005. Created from an assortment of scrap, and disas- sembled and recycled after ANH was done shooting, it was near impossible to get any new or closer looks at the prop outside of the occasion BTS image popping up from a crew member’s personal collection.