Oil lamp

Appeared about 1853, the oil lamp is a luminary made up of a tank containing of the illuminating Pétrole (oil distillate), which goes up towards the Bec thanks to a wick. The whole is overcome by a chimney of glass.

It is thus a lamp with lighting Flamme, which takes again all the progress brought to the Oil lamp as from 1780, but simplified compared to it, thanks to the fluidity of oil and with its aptitude to be gone up by Capillarité in the wick until ten centimetres.

Oil lamps for domestic lighting

In Europe, the oil lamps were with cylindrical wick: there are many types, having each one their well defined nozzle and their glass:

the nozzle Kosmos, still of use nowadays, is accompanied by glass with throttling, which stretches the flame in height to increase the apparent brightness;
the nozzle Matador, with horizontal disc, produces a broad flame: glass comprises a characteristic bulge making it possible the flame to open out.

America especially knew lamps with wick punt, simple or double, and very reinflated glass known as “pyriforme”, such as one can see them in the Western S.

Voir: Oil burners (Museum of old lightings).

Blowtorches

The gasoline, resulting from oil, famous extremely dangerous, will remain waste without value until the advent of the car.

However, some will be risked and succeeded in creating sure blowtorches with this cheap fuel: the memory of the lamps Pigeon is still present in all the families. It was simple small a Flamme emerging from a cylinder of Laiton containing a stuffing of Feutre in hair of LAMA, the non-explosible guaranteed whole.

Storm lantern

The storm lantern is a transportable oil lamp, whose flame is protected from the wind.

There are two models, improved during the 20th century, with recycling of air:

the old type, with recirculation of hot air, now abandoned;
the current model, with recirculation of cold air, definitely more effective.

The two models are with wick punt, with convex glass, more or less lengthened or pyriforme.

See: Two types of storm lantern

Lamps with pressure (with incandescent sleeve)

The innovation of the lamp with pressure (developed about 1910) is the use of the Mantle incandescent with the Rare earths (Cérium, Thorium, then Yttrium), discovered in 1885 by the Austrian physicist Carl Auer von Welsbach. This sleeve hitherto exempts a light considerable, unknown, and able to compete with the electric lighting. It was adopted from the start for all the Réverbère S with gas and the maritime Phare S, in the whole world.

In its portable version, the incandescent sleeve lamp is made up of a tank, provided with a pump to push oil towards the burner, protected by cylindrical glass. This object, although known in France (it appears in good place in the catalogs Manufrance of the years 1920), forever succeeded in being established in the French hearths despite everything its qualities.

Still today, it is an object popular in much country of Europe and America, and always very useful everywhere in the world where electricity did not arrive yet. It is also an excellent lighting of building site.

There exist three big families of lamps with pressure:

oil lamps of German origin (standard Petromax), today in manufacture in many countries under various marks;
English oil lamps (Tilley, Bialaddin/Vapalux);
the American and Canadian lamps (Coleman) which, they, are generally with gasoline.

According to the example of the lamps with pressure, certain atmospheric lamps (without pressure) with oil, gasoline or even with alcohol were equipped with an incandescent mantle of conical form, in Germany, in France (Tito-Landi lamps), and more still in America (Aladdin lamps), where they are always in favor, inter alia, in the community Amish, which makes a daily use of it, jointly with the conventional oil lamps.

See: Lamps with pressure: history, technique, use

External bonds

Oil lamps and history of lighting
History of lighting

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