~~Lighting has progressed a great deal in the last century. Prior to 1800, light was made with a torch, crude lamps or candles. The torch was usually nothing more than a handful of reeds soaked in some kind of oil or pitch, or a resin impregnated stick or in some cases just a rag soaked in a flammable material, wound around a stick and set afire. These were smoky and gave very little light.
~~The lamp was more than likely discovered sometime in the Stone Age. One of our very early ancestors probably noticed that a sliver of wood lying in an animal fat filled depression on a fire hearth had caught fire. The first lamps were probably nothing more than a shallow spot in a rock with some kind of a natural fiber wick that soaked up a flammable material such as animal fat or grease, tallow or oil.
~~As man's manufacturing skills developed, these lamps were made of stone, shells, clay, bronze, iron and ultimately steel.
~~During American Colonial times they were known as Betty Lamps. Betty Lamps were used up into the early 1800s. My collection contains a Betty Lamp that came from a logging camp in Maine. It had provisions for 4 wicks, a pick to dig in the fuel (which probably was pine pitch ) and a spike that attached it to the wall.
~~Candles were developed about 3000 B.C. They were originally made of tallow, a form of rendered animal fat. In the 17th and 18th centuries, sperm oil was the favored candle material. Today, the much less odorous paraffin wax is used (a development that just preceded that of kerosene!). As we all have experienced, candles are slow burning and smoky. The wick is a cord located in the center of the candle. Candles still have a place in our homes today, but mostly for decoration or emergency lighting.
~~In the early 1800s, lamps burned whale oil. It was very expensive (around $2.00/gal which relates to about $200/gal in todays money); not many families could afford it. They used lard oil or some other rendered fat, or still relied on candles and the fireplace for light. Their day usually went from sun up to sun down.
~~Whale oil lamps can be identified when the burner is present by looking at the burner. The wick holders are one or two short tubes generally about 1/4" in diameter placed close to each other. Keeping the oil fluid enough that it could be absorbed by the wick was a problem. The fuel tended to thicken when cool, so the flame was located close to the font, in order that heat might be conducted down the tubes to warm the oil and make it draw better. This lamp's burner is similar to a whale oil burner but probably burned colza oil which is an oil derived from the seeds of Kale, a species of cabbage. It was a general purpose lantern manufactured by W. Porter circa 1850.
~~As whale oil became more and more expensive, a new fuel was discovered. It was called "Burning Fluid" and was a combination of turpentine and alcohol. It was a volatile, dangerous fuel that tended to spontaneously ignite, and even explode. It too was relatively expensive, so people concocted their own mixtures. This behavior proved to be disastrous. A great number of homes were lost to fires and people were badly burned as a result. Burning fluid lamps can be identified by the burner. The wick tubes are divergent, extend about 1" above the top of the burner and the bottom of the tubes do not get near the fluid to prevent heating of the fuel.
~~In 1850 James Young of Scotland patented a process of coal distillation that produced a LUBRICANT he called Paraffin Oil. His patent does mention the possibility of using it as a fuel, but Young himself never took the step to fully liquefy it.
~~Young's process is essentially the same that Dr. Abraham Gesner, a Canadian geologist developed to produce an illuminating gas he called "Kerosene gas." Although Gesner DID demonstrate a liquid product that would burn in a lamp, he didn't really produce what is called kerosene in the US either!
~~With the discovery of the first oil well in Ontario, Canada and later The Drake Well in Pennsylvania, whale oil and burning fluids were doomed. It was discovered that by refining oil from the ground, an inexpensive, almost clear lamp fuel could be produced, cheaper than the coal distillate that had been developed from Young's Paraffin lubricant. Refining oil into Kerosene was the way of the future. Burner patents were numerous but real leaps in illumination levels were not possible until the invention of the incandescent mantle.
~~One key intermediate step in lighting development was the Argand burner invented by Francois-Pierre Argand about 1783-4. It burned whale oil or colza, (also know as Rape seed oil) and is the first use of an adjustable round wick with air for combustion coming up through the center draft tube.
~~This invention generated more light than several candles. Van Gogh's famous painting of the Potato Eaters shows an example of this burner style. The light was minimal and it smoked badly but it was better than candles, fat lamps or nothing.
~~The last major invention in modern liquid fuel lighting was the mantle. Carl Auer Von Welsbach drew on previous experiments to produce a durable, relatively inexpensive lamp adjunct that increased the amount of light from an Argand or Bunsen burner five to ten fold. The mantle is a small bag-like attachment, today made of rayon mesh, and impregnated with oxides of rare earth minerals. After the collodion that allows shipment is flamed off, the ash residue becomes incandescent in the very high heat produced by a Bunsen flame.

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