A glimmer man (also rendered as "glimmerman"; Irish: fear fannléis) was a somewhat pejorative name unofficially, but almost universally, applied to inspectors who were employed by the Alliance and Dublin Consumers' Gas Company, the Cork Gas Consumers Company and other supply companies in the smaller towns and places in Ireland to detect the use of gas in restricted periods during the years of the Emergency in Ireland from March 1942[1] and in some places as late as 1947.[2][3] The term derived from the copy of advertisements published in the media and on posters which enjoined the population not to waste gas ...not even a glimmer.[citation needed]
Ireland has negligible indigenous coal resources and production of coal gas was dependent on the importation of coal which was severely restricted as a result of the war in Europe. An extract from a letter states it was "a drastic fuel famine."[4]
The only problem he cited was a short question about a glimmer man, a gas inspector during the 'emergency' in Ireland, a job many students would not be familiar with.