Although both Primus and Optimus were supposedly two separate companies until the 1960’s, they seem to have produced almost identical stoves prior to that. In this case we have an Optimus 80 and elsewhere in this collection you’ll find a Primus 71. Other than the name, packaging and a few minor features there is little to choose between them One of the minor features was that Primus put a date stamp on the base of their stoves whereas Optimus didn’t which makes the year of manufacture more tricky to find. However, we do know that this particular stove was part of a large order purchased by the Ministry of Defence in the late 1960’s for use by the Royal Marines in their Arctic Warfare Training in Norway. This one was acquired by Mick Tighe at the time and seems to be in pretty much mint condition.