Gas lamps, which used a “mantle” to heat a gas flame, were prevalent in cities and suburbs before electricity became widespread and economical. Gas was transported through pipes to the lamps, which were placed on posts. Lamplighters cared for these lamps, lighting them in the evening and putting them out in the morning. By 1799, the thermolampe was invented.
Before electricity, fire was the only weapon against darkness. Ancient civilizations used torches, but oil lamps were made out by 4500 B.C. Gas lamps were used almost exclusively for lighting in the 19th century. Experiments with gas began in the 18th century, with William Murdoch being the first to use gas on a large scale. Dahlhaus Lighting developed a baffling system for exterior lights, using an internal pyrex glass to prevent the flame from blowing out.
The change in light source occurred from open flame to gas to electricity, with Rembrandt Peale’s manufactured gas gamble in 1816 working wonders. The light is produced either directly by the flame or by using special mixes of illuminating gas to increase brightness. Coal gas combined with oxygen in the air to produce carbon dioxide, water vapour, heat, and light.
Gas lanterns are incandescent lights that burn a fuel like propane, white gas, or kerosene to produce heat, which causes the mantles to produce light. A gas discharge lamp is a spark in an inert gas that allows conduction when it is very hot, making electrons jump up to higher energy. The gas was purified, filtered, and pressurized, which was then piped to homes, businesses, and street lights. The introduction of incandescent light bulbs marked the beginning of the end for traditional lighting methods.
📹 How the gas mantle made lamps 10X brighter
This was a really bright idea. Links ‘n Stuff Video on Limelight: https://www.youtube.com/embed/TZhrRINQ738 Previous lantern …
How did indoor gas lighting work?
Gas lighting is the production of artificial light from the combustion of fuel gases like methane, propane, butane, acetylene, ethylene, hydrogen, carbon monoxide, coal gas (town gas), or natural gas. The light is produced directly by the flame using special mixes of illuminating gas, such as propane or butane, to increase brightness. It is also indirectly used with components like the gas mantle or limelight, with the gas primarily functioning to heat the mantle or lime to incandescence.
Before electricity became widespread and economical, gas lighting was prevalent for outdoor and indoor use in cities and suburbs where gas distribution infrastructure was practical. Common fuels for gas lighting were wood gas, coal gas, and water gas. Early gas lights were ignited manually by lamplighters, but later designs are self-igniting.
How did gas lamps work in the 1800s?
During the Gaslight era, coal gas was used to light spaces, manufactured by heating coal in a sealed oven to keep oxygen out. The gas was purified, filtered, and pressurized before being piped to homes, businesses, and street lights. In the late 19th and early 20th century, electricity replaced gas as the source of lighting, leading to the development of dual-fuel fixtures. Installation of these unique hybrid fixtures required specific skills and equipment.
How do modern gas lanterns work?
The lantern employs rayon mantles coated with rare earth elements to emit light, which is ignited by pressurized white gas fuel in the base, thereby causing the mantles to glow brightly when heated.
Is gas lighting illegal?
Gaslighting is a form of coercive control that involves manipulating someone into doubting their beliefs or sanity. It can occur in any relationship or friendship and is illegal. The process of gaslighting can begin with small lies and often involves putting someone down to disorientate them. It can be part of other forms of abuse, such as verbal or physical abuse.
The beginning of gaslighting can be discrete, such as refusing to listen to someone’s feelings. Over time, frequent gaslighting can change a person’s self-esteem and make them dependent on the gaslighter for emotional support and a sense of reality. This creates a power imbalance where the manipulator has a lot of control.
Gaslighting is often used to make someone stay in an abusive relationship as the person becomes more trusting of the gaslighter than themselves. It often happens gradually after a lot of manipulative behavior, making it difficult for those being manipulated and gaslit to notice it. If the person has been isolated from their friends and family, it can be even more difficult to spot and take action.
What are the 4 types of gaslighting?
Gaslighting is the act of repeatedly lying to someone to manipulate and control them and their relationship. It can be divided into four types: outright lying, manipulation of reality, scapegoating, and coercion. Gaslighting often occurs over time, with the abuser discreetly victimizing someone in a passive manner, chipping away at their confidence and sense of self. While some abuse is intended to cause harm, those who gaslight others may not be aware of it.
Unintended gaslighting can be due to fear of being alone or abandoned, unstable relationships, or personal experiences of abuse. Gaslighting is a particularly manipulative form of psychological and emotional abuse.
Why were there open flame gaslights?
Open Flame Illumination is a technology that adds drama and romance to outdoor settings, providing a warm, flickering light of an open gas flame. American Gas Lamp Works offers these lamps in Single Straight or Maple Leaf Flames, which can be complemented with matching gas mantle, GasGlow® LED, or electric candelabra base fixtures for superior illumination and breathtaking ambiance. These lamps are maintenance-free and can be used in entrances, walkways, and other outdoor settings.
What is mistaken for gaslighting?
Gaslighting is often mistaken for aggressive behaviors, such as addressing conflict directly. However, it’s important to distinguish between conflict resolution and gaslighting. Victims of gaslighting often question their reality due to false information, leading to self-reflection. Conflict resolution aims to address each side’s interests, encourage open dialogue, and find common ground to find a beneficial solution.
According to Dominique Mortier, an associate therapist at Bloom Psychology and Wellness, conflict can be beneficial if it inspires growth and harmony. However, it can become unhealthy when one person attempts to shift the power dynamic through gaslighting. The term “gaslighting” has become a popular term, but it’s often used in the wrong context.
What is the highest form of gaslighting?
Reality manipulation is a damaging form of gaslighting that can cause emotional and psychological distress, affecting a person’s sense of self, trust, and autonomy over their lives. It can be categorized into various types and impacts. Maggie, a mental health support service, primarily serves women with anxiety, panic, and perinatal mental health issues. Dr. Heidi Moawad, a neurologist with over 20 years of experience, specializes in mental health disorders, behavioral health issues, neurological diseases, migraines, pain, stroke, cognitive impairment, and multiple sclerosis.
When did people stop using gas lanterns?
In the aftermath of the Second World War, the necessity for gas street lighting was superseded by the advent of electric lighting, which was fully implemented by 1968. This was due to the extensive damage caused by the war and the subsequent advancements in electricity.
How did lanterns work in the 1800s?
In the nineteenth century, kerosene was employed as fuel for lanterns, with the earliest models constructed from pierced tin-plated steel sheets. Cow horn was employed for the fabrication of transparent components; however, this material was subsequently supplanted by mica and glass. The construction of lanterns was rudimentary until the mid-1800s, with pierced lanterns remaining in use until the early 1900s.
Were gaslights safe?
Gas was once considered a dangerous form of lighting, but it was not a dangerous one when installed correctly. A recorded explosion in 1813 caused concern among skeptics, leading to fake news and Parliament becoming concerned. The Directors of the Gas Light and Coke Company published an advertisement in October 1813 to settle the issue, stating that the accident did not originate from pipe failure or regular gas lighting.
Parliament proposed restricting gas holder size due to concerns about exploding gasometers. Engineer Samuel Clegg struck a hole in the gas holder’s side with a pickaxe and applied light, causing panic among bystanders. The gas burned from the hole and the holder sank steadily, proving that any size of gas holder would perform the same way. Clegg then lit lamps himself, proving that gas was not a dangerous form of lighting.
📹 Pressure lamps: gaslighting on the go
The pressure’s getting to me. Links ‘n Stuff The gas mantle video: https://youtu.be/F3rncxf4Or8 The Technology Connextras …
Hey! We found what “forced my lute” meant! Back in ye olde chemistry days, lute was a substance used to make seals between your various chemistry apparatus. So, Clayton was probably saying the 330 year old equivalent of “blew the seals” (or indeed, the pressure was sufficient to break the glass!). Oh, and somehow I missed pointing out when the Aladdin lamp was first produced. The trademark was obtained in 1908 and the first lamps went on sale in 1909. Also of note, one source claims lamps made after 1935 were technically side-draft designs, meaning air doesn’t actually travel through the center of the wick. So “central draft burner” as used in my script here might be considered a misnomer.
As a hard of hearing / deaf person, I really appreciate that you always make sure that your articles have captions. I’m a fellow engineer and I love it when you release new content, even if I already know about it. I’ve been meaning to post that comment for a while, but figured I would do it on this article that you just released and it already has captions. Thank you!
I live in a part of California that loses power a lot so my family used to have a lot of lanterns in the cabin. I always loved when there would be a blackout because then our cabin would look like something from the 1800’s, especially since my dad loves antiques. My favorite was always my little railway lantern, but when dad wanted to do some wood carving or something in the living room, he would light up one of those aladdin lamps and boy howdy did they glow bright! Thank you so much for this entire lantern series! It has been a blast to learn more about the history of these marvelous illuminators!
Lute, In Chemistry: it is a liquid clay or cement used to seal a joint, coat a crucible, or protect a graft. As for “protect a graft”, again, in chemistry, it is referring to something like a long, thin, glass tube inserted through a hole made in the side of large glass beaker; the graft being that ‘connection’. Whereas, again in chemistry, a “joint” is specifically where two ends are ‘joined’ together. Thus, the phrase, “…forced my lute”, means that it broke through material that sealed and connected the 2-piece glass made item together.
I’m fascinated by anything which burns kerosene for energy, I have fridges, irons, stoves, heaters, but my favourite collection is over 200 Aladdin lamps from model 1 which was a brass body lamp through to the current glass models. Here in Australia Aladdin revolutionised kerosene lighting with their mantle lamps for all the reasons you’ve mentioned and Aladdin lamps are still used in some Outback locations today. Electricity is sometimes impractical to supply to extremely remote locations, so kerosene is still popular, it’s cheap, can be easily bulk stored, more easily than propane, and it doesn’t need wind or sun to run, plus the non pressurised Aladdins are silent. Aladdins are expensive though, even today, particularly some of the rarer models collectors are interested in. My mother told me when she was a young girl growing up on the farm with no electricity and only kerosene wick lamps and candles for lighting, only rich folk could afford an Aladdin lamp! Love the show. PS I’ve spent hours trying to get Aladdin burners to burn more evenly, it’s almost impossible, particularly model 23’s. I like your theory about wick thickness inconsistency, never looked at that closely. Steve from Aus.
Please heed the safety instructions! The lamps must be monitored during use. DO NOT light and walk away, as the flame increases as the lamp heats. I did this once, lit, turned flame very low, got distracted, smoke alarms went off and red flame was roaring out the top of the chimney. The lamps are still used in rural areas, by the Amish, they tell me, and mantles, wicks and burner parts are sold in one local hardware. I collect them, they’re fun to tinker with, a pain to trim the wicks, but fun to just turn off the lights and watch the lamp run.
I’ll never forget the first time I went camping in the 90s, and my dad lit up a Coleman lantern. Damn near blinded me, and he said the trick is to set it up in a direction you don’t need to look. We’d toss a rope over a sturdy tree branch, hoist the lantern up to about 8 feet off the ground, and tie off the line. It was like having a shop light in the woods!
“It forced my lute.” When devices were made that had pipes or other attachments added to them which need to be made air tight or pressure resistant, a paste of some sort was prepare and applied to the joint. This paste was referred to as “luting.” Moonshiners used a paste of barley or rye flour mixed with water.
Interesting and informative article. I remember many years ago having a Coleman lamp with the bag shaped mantles like at 17 minutes. When new, you had to burn off some material that was blue if my memory serves me right. After that, they worked well, putting out a lot of light. The fuel it used was naptha.
“lute” means something like putty or cement… So I would interpret “forced my lute” as “It broke the seals on my still” (so pressure was building, becuase a gas originates from the heated coal and this gas could not be condensed, as the guy wrote before)… And it “broke my glass”, so after he enforced the seals, the glass broke, because it couldn’t hold the pressure…
“Lute” can be defined as “a clay or cement used for sealing a joint or coating a crucible.” So, I imagine, in this case, “forced my lute” might mean the gas cracked the cement he used to attempt to seal the gas inside a container? Maybe indicating that the gas was under a lot of pressure somehow? Just a guess…
There are still a lot (about 1750, I think) of gas lamps in London. They’re scattered around Westminster and the city. Others that look alike have been fitted with electric lamps. A team of six people maintains them, which includes winding up the clockwork timer that opens and closes the valve. The mantles come from Germany.
As a young boy in rural Philippines, I enjoyed perusal my father light our Petromax lantern that had a mantle. I still remember my elation whenever the mantle would suddenly burst into brightness as it got heated and immediately flooded our dark living room with an intense light. Yes, whenever the mantle needed replacing, he would buy one from the town hardware and the new mantle would seem to me like a sock that he would fit over the lamp’s burner. I did not quite understand how it worked then and I was just fascinated by it. I brings me happiness, now as old man, to remember these things.
Loved this!! I grew up on a boat with my parents and we had both an Aladdin lamp and pump up Tilley lamps, we used the Aladdin lamp below in the saloon to save electricity on a nightly basis for many years. The Aladdin lamp was a pain to constantly monitor and if it got very sooty one trick was to sprinkle salt onto the mantle to help burn it off. Thanks for the memories!!
I was born in a farm cottage that was lit with “Aladdin” lamps (mid-1950s)…if I remember correctly my dad converted a couple into electric table lamps (these were ones with metal fuel tanks, so he drilled holes in them to run cables). They even had lampshades because the original light from the mantle was so white and harsh.
“Forced my lute” means the gas pressure broke the connection to glass collection vessel meant to condense the gas vapor distilling from the retort. Typically, the gas would condense into a liquid, but the temperature would not have been low enough to condense the gas from the coal, so the pressure built up and forced the connections apart.
Cool article. When I was in the Canadian Forces from 1980 -1997and I was posted to Comox BC in 1991, one of my secondary duties was as a member of the Nuclear Emergency Response Team (NERT). When training with the equipment to used to detect and locate radioactive material, we used live Radioactive material and of course a much safer training material. That training material was the new (unburnt) Coleman mantels for the lantern which worked well as a training aid.
Here’s another interesting connection. When electric lighting was first being installed in buildings, they already had a route to run the wires: the gas pipes. The electric fixtures went up right where the gas fixtures had been, and the wires were pulled through the pipes that were already there. This way, electric conduit was “invented”.
Thank you…I now understand what this gas mantle “thing” is. I encountered it as a concept for the first time today, and once I saw what new ones, ready to be used, look like, I was very confused as to how a fabric net bag became a helpful and desirable item once subjected to flame. GOT IT NOW. Much thanks, no more confusion. Very clever invention to improve the usability of the then-available technology. Can you imagine people being smart and careful enough to use this in their homes now? Drivers have trouble nowadays simply remembering to turn the headlights on for their cars at night…
As a BSA assistant scoutmaster, I’ll say that we used propane lamps in the center of our campsite in the evening. When lights out time came, we would leave one lamp burning as a night light on case the boys had to use the latrine. One bottle of propane lasted from sundown until 3 or 4 in the morning, and if we dialed it down low enough, it might still be burning by dawn. The mantle’s usually lasted several overnights, but sometimes the car trip to camp or the boys rough handling damaged the mantle.
So I did a ton of undergrad research into lanthanides like the yttrium used in that mantle and I can say there is no catalytic reaction going on. What is happening is just that the correct fuel to air ratio is occurring and a non dirty flame is happening. That dirty kerosene smell that comes from the Dietz lamps is due to the candle not being able to burn hot enough with enough air to actually burn all the fuel. The aladdin lamp is providing both enough airflow and draft that the flame can get hot enough to burn cleanly.
2:18 Fun fact, that letter would have been written while there were still indepedent Maya city-states. The last one to fall to Spanish campaigns only did so in 1697, 6 years later. I wish I could provide an additional tangent that ties Mesoamerican civilizations into the topic of the article, but sadly there is no extremely clever pre-European adaption of fossil fuels for lighting in Mesoamerica, though if we’re talking about things like sanitation/hygine practices and processes, medical, botanical, and agricultural science, etc, I can think of a number of examples. If you ever cover toilets, dyes recycled from human waste, gardening, aquaculture, herbal remedies, Nixtamalization, cements, surgical rods for setting bones, etc, I’ll have a lot to talk about!
Your articles are consistently impressive and informative. I remember my first encounters with these mantles, initially on white gas-fueled Coleman lamps, later in propane lamps. You answered the many questions I had up until today. It was also interesting and eye opening to gain the perspective that filament electric light was readily adopted because of it’s similarity to the popular gas light.
@14:08: “Did you know there’s controversy regarding the phasing out of thorium in gas mantles? Some very picky campers certainly do but most of you probably don’t.” Dude. We are perusal a half-hour article that it is itself a sequel to another half-hour article about lighting technologies that were deader than disco well before YouTube even became a thing. I think you can expect a certain degree of nerdery. 😀
My dad spent 47 years working at our local gas & water company. At the time he joined in the early 1950’s, they were transitioning from Coal Gas (he called it “wet gas”) to Natural Gas (termed then as dry gas). He used to tell stories of the new “dry gas” eroding (drying out) the packing used on pipe joints and having to dig up areas with packed joints and replacing the old wet pack joints that would dry out because of the natural gas and replace them with threaded pipe dope joints. My aunt and uncle had gas lights in her house and my father was furious when my uncle brought in electricians while he was in Korea during the war to run wires inside the gas lines and install electric lights. He told them at the time they should have left one gas light in each room because “electricity was unreliable”.
Am I the only one who: 1. wasn’t using gas lanterns before 🔦 2. understands and digests all the information we are being given about how they are no longer the best option 💡 3. and yet now finds them romantically appealing and wants to start using them perhaps in limited capacity? 🏮 I can’t be the only one feeling that, right? 😉
It’s cool to know a lot of these things going into it and still learning more about them. Every year, my church holds international camp meetings, and in the cabins, they used to used kerosene lanterns, but eventually switched over to those propane lamps. They’re really nifty, and boy do you feel the heat from them.
Fascinating! My childhood home during the early 1950s in an Australian rural town had electric light, but that had been installed quite some years after the house had been built. It was still plumbed for coal-gas lighting, and we used those lights during the fairly common power outages. We lived directly across the street from the town’s coal-gas plant and its gasometer, all of which stank. For outdoor night lighting we still used hurricane lanterns, and our first refrigerator was powered by kerosene.
I’ve got an Aladdin lamp made for a train car. Bought it brand new in box at a flea market for about 70 dollars. It’s definitely a steal. It mounts to the wall. The mount has vertical and horizontal leaf springs for vibration dampening. The fuel tank is made from nickel instead of glass, too. There is also a lamp shade to go around the chimney and a heat breaker that mounts to the ceiling to prevent a fire from the chimney heat. It swings back and forth on a chain.
Great job! Never leaving a kerosene lamp of any sort unattended is great advice. There is a better way to dress the edge of any center or side draft round wick though, scissors or an Xacto will always leave loose fibers to create hot spots later. Once you have installed your new wick, run the carrier down until it drops below the draft tube, then raise the wick back up until about 1/8-1/4 of an inch of wick is exposed. Wet the end of the wick with kerosene, light, replace the chimney on the gallery and allow the flame to burn until it goes out undisturbed. Once the lamp has cooled, remove the chimney and flame spreader, and run your finger around the top of the wick, (I usually hold my finger stationary and rotate the base of the lamp underneath) as the fuel in the wick was consumed, the wick was turned to ash only down to the level of the inner and outer draft tubes. Running your finger around the top of the tubes will knock the ash off and leave as close to a perfectly level surface as you are liable to have on one of these lamps. Once that is done, reassemble the lamp, fill with fuel, allow the wick time to completely soak, and you’re ready to go. The mantle style lamps, of which Aladdin was but one maker, were the pinnacle of kerosene lamp development. Tracing the development of lighting technology from the solid round wick whale oil lamps, to the flat wick, folded round wick, center draft round, Argand burners etc., all the way to the mantle lamps is a highly interesting field of study indeed.
I remember the Thorium nets. We had a lamp with one when I was a kid and used it on all our camping trips. My father, then a physics teacher, had access to a Geiger counter and just for giggles he brought it home and pointed it at the lamp. The noise that followed was quite scary. We didn’t stop using it though. Different times. 😳
I do appreciate more and more the cleverclogs concept of the mantle, and the entertainment factor of alarming people with a roaring geiger counter never gets old, I still forever associate them with the seared-in memory of being utterly blinded by that hissing nightmare on camping trips. “Enjoying all those stars? Here lets light up the GODDAMN SUN right at eye level”
This is a similar burner to a kerosene fridge which I have had experience in the 70’s The trick I found to get the wick to burn evenly was to rub across the top of the used wick with the edge of a matchbox ( the striker strip), this seemed to grind all the top burnt material into the circular wick cavity. Care also had to be taken that the wick was wound up to the level position not down to the level position as the play in the winder would wind unevenly. I hope this helps. Note; the kerosene fridge could make ice cubes if setup properly.
I lived in a really old house, there was a plumber came to move a gas line and he screamed some 4 letter words then ran upstairs. he scraped some paint off the light fixture in the hallway, turned a nob on the side and lit a gas flame out of the top. live bare wires were run through a active gasoline on purpose, like it was a duel gas electric fixture… on purpose
This was the first experiment I taught to my Introductory Physical Science classes. Wood splints were heated in a test tube retort and it was observed that a new solid (charcoal), a flammable liquid (wood alcohol) and a flammable gas was produced. The wood could be decomposed into new substances, but not put back together. A great experiment raising many questions.
I was blown away 20-30 years ago, taking the family camping, I picked up a Coleman propane lantern and had to figure out how to tie those little mesh bags onto the pipes. I could not believe how bright that thing lit up and never understood it. It was so amazing, it’s stuck in my memory to this day. Finally, today perusal your article I get it. Kind of. Thanks!
When I was younger, the Coleman lantern was the choice for camp lighting. I recall a 21 year old intoxicated me grabbing a Coleman that “brewed up” in a friend’s camp and setting it on a rock ledge outside where it could burn itself out safely. It was a fun stay. Later that night we watched FB-111’S flying in and out of Plattsburgh AFB 20 miles away. The next morning, we were all recovering from the night before… eating eggs and rabbit hash out on the ledge when an A-10 flew up the valley. We were looking down at the pilot, who saw us waving and waggled his wings. Good times.
4:02 “(It) seemed like an impossibility, and nothing more.” I’m not sure if those are your words or a quote, but that phrase so well captures (early) scientific discovery. “We did the experiment; something impossible happened but we put it aside for the moment because we were actually trying to do something else. But the impossible thing was neat too.”
IN the 1960s, there were power strikes in the UK for three hours at a time. I was staying with my aunt in London at the time, in an old house which still had working gas fittings in some rooms, although they’d not been used since the 1930s, when electricity had been installed. With some difficulty, I found a shop still selling gas mantles and fitting them enabled us to continue with gas lighting during the power cuts. It was a pity that the TV wasn’t a gas one, too, but we did have a battery-operated radio!
I’m only hear because I saw an old stile camping mantle, they always fascinated me when I use to go camping….. So when I started perusal I had no idea what you was babbling about but you did such a good job at it, you force my lute to watch the whole article, then come to find out at the end you edited out all the verbal bloopers, but even after all that you certainty do have a good speaking gift, so good that I’ll watch another article about these lights……….
Gasometers were a part of my childhood (and deserve an episode of their own). They were everywhere in those days (50s and 60s) and you could while away hours and hours ‘watching’ them rise and fall (much like clocks, you knew they were doing it, but could never actually see them move!). The sections were sealed with water (or rather the lower sections were stored in a circular trench of water), so when they were full, the top section looked OK, but the lower sections got progressively more rusty. We had an old disused one outside our flat until quite recently (early 2000s), and I’ve not seen any others locally since it was dismantled, so it must have been one of the very last ones still standing. Although they were, of course, used for storing gas, their main use was to maintain a steady pressure in the gas main. A very simple answer to a very tricky problem.
This is the first time I’ve ever heard or read the name “Auer von Welsbach” from anyone outside of Austria. He did a crazy amount of different stuff, I can only recommend everyone to give it a read. I happened to go to school with one of his descendents (not into chemistry himself of course, but kind of cool). Oh, and he used a Bunsen burner for his lamp because he was literally a student of the man it’s named after. He’s also the original founder of Osram.
I grew up with kerosene Aladdin lamps lighting up my family vacation cabin in Northern Michigan. I think they’re nice and rustic as my dad does; my mom always hated the smell. It is definitely a smell. They really are bright, too, almost as bright as modern electric lights (we eventually installed some of those to run off a generator. It’s a remote cabin.) We actually almost installed propane gas mantle lamps before we got a generator.
What wonderful memories this brought back to me! My maternal grandparents lived in a stone cottage in rural North Wales and, in the 1950s, had no electricity. It was so restful sitting in the “living room” in the winter, with the coal range and an Aladdin lamp on the table producing enough light to read by even if not at the table. Even though the fire was usually kept low to save coal, unless you were boiling a kettle or baking in the small oven built into the range, the room was indeed kept warm by the heat from the Aladdin lamp. At bedtime, you used an old-fashioned candle holder to walk down the narrow passageway to the bedroom, where it was much colder, and the candle was put out as soon as you were in bed, leaving you in total darkness. I would not be upset if I was forced to live like that again, especially in such a beautiful part of Wales.
I owned and occasionally used an Alladin between 1980 and 2018. It certainly was fussy–the wick had to be carefully trimmed, and if not watched it would shoot a flame two feet above the chimney and coat the mantle with soot. It may have been 10X brighter than a simpler oil lamp, but it was still only equivalent to a 40-watt electric lamp at best. so I always tried to operate it at the ragged edge.
Carbon Monoxide. That’s what you needed to mention when talking about town gas. Town gas is about 10% carbon monoxide, 50% hydrogen, and the rest short-chain hydrocarbons. CO is extremely toxic in relatively small quantities, so it killed lots of people. Apparently it was also popular for committing suicide and murder.
“But how do you (vaporize) a liquid fuel, like kerosene?” Me: Considering the time period, I’m going to guess ‘heat the liquid to it’s boiling point’ because people were bloody mental back then. How does it not explode? Cause you have the burner already turned on, and if that’s the path of least resistance, that’s where the now vaporized fuel will go… normally
I always found it cool that the actual infrastructure being pipes, made converting to electricity VERY easy, since often the wires could be literally pushed into one end of the pipe and often went straight through the pipes without a problem… some houses (in europe at least) still have old electrical cables which use even older gas pipes as a conduit (although i hope theyre not actually still in use since those cotton braided cables deteriorate over the years)
I was wondering when you would cover gas mantles. I still use them for camping and emergencies since they can be insanely bright for much longer than most battery lanterns and as long as you keep them away from children are pretty darn safe. I have two both are propane but my dad still has an liquid gas one that he runs with White Spirits and they just work
Here’s an interesting detail for you – the oxides are chosen because of their radiative properties. Thorium oxide and rare earth oxides like cerium oxide radiate well in the visible range, but poorly in the infrared range. This means more of the heat energy from the flame is converted into visible lumens. This is a special kind of selective surface, where the emission properties are not uniform across the electromagentic spectrum. White paint is the opposite – reflective of visible light, but emissive for infrared. Aluminium is a more normal material with uniformly poor emissivity across all wavelengths.
I did a search for ‘lute scientific matterial’ and found the wiki ‘lute (material)’ “Lute was a substance used to seal and affix apparatus employed in chemistry and alchemy, and to protect component vessels against heat damage by fire; it was also used to line furnaces. Lutation was thus the act of “cementing vessels with lute”. “
A bit of related trivia: when the mantles still contained thorium, it was a “mad scientist” secret among some horticulturists that by storing plant seeds with a mantle, the slight radioactivity would induce mutations in the plant’s DNA, sometimes producing desirable characteristics especially in ornamentals.
During Hurricane Gloria my dad had an Alladin Lamp. It was a BIG one. It had a lampshade too! The shade was maybe 18″ across… I’m guessing now because it was 38 years ago and I was 15 so perspective changes. I remember he said to never ever touch it and if you touch the mantle it would disintigrate. We had to stay at least 5 feet from it at all times.. I remember him blowing into the top to turn it off. too. (you reminded me of that).
I got my father’s Aladdin lamp after he passed. I don’t use it because I’m very skittish about having anything burning in my home, but I remember him bringing it out during blackouts when I was a child. He would set it on the kitchen island, and that thing would light the entire kitchen and family room. And since I grew up before even personal computers were widespread, let alone iPads, my brother and I would spend the evening doing jigsaw puzzles and playing cards (actual physical puzzles and cards! lol) until the lights came back on. Good times…
I like seeing how things are invented and created. And it just shows people new how to do it from way before they just never pressed on to actually master it and obtain utility. That is why I believe we are more advanced than we think, and we need to discover less and tie more ends to get what we want.
Does it burn as cleanly without the lattice on? My immediate thought is that the heat bulidup inside of the mesh dome is causing sort of a second burning of whatever unburnt fuel remains after the initial combustion. Akin to an afterburner, if you will. Flame has a difficult time moving through a mesh so I would assume that keeping the flame contained within works like a crucible of sorts, thus creating a higher temperature than could be achieved without it. But like I say, that’s just an initial thought without knowing much more about it.
“thor spot” is the kind of punch line that makes equally excited and embarrassed to share this website. and as a comic fan, it tickles me in an extra way. Btw, I’ve already shared too many of these articles. Thanks for the great and mentally required content. Sorry for the mistakes, still learning this dang western language.
Extremely interesting. Really appreciate bridging the gaps leading up to electric light. Your research and presentation ability, attention to detail and admission of imperfection in knowledge in some rare but understandable cases make your articles a true pleasure to watch. It amazes me how curious you are about such a wide range of topics.
These gas mantles are still used in petromax kerosene pressure lamps where the kerosene is first heated in the round tubular burner and as it gasifies it comes out with force and when lighted produces a gas flame that is surrounded by the mantle that amplifies the intensity of the light even more than before. Oh ya that was your next article.
Surprisingly I have a NOS from the 50’s Alladin Train Caboose lantern and it’s mount bracket that allows it to rock back and forth with the trains movement. The tank part of it is made from nickel so it still looks new. Plus original NOS mantles. There may be a wick too. But those parts are still sold by Alladin. You vaporize the gasoline the same way the old Coleman stoves worked. For those we always bought lead free gas from Amoco, the only company that sold lead free gasoline.
I was born in 1947 in the USA. I am familiar with gas lights that were in my Grandmother’s Victorian home. They were converted to electricity before I was born. I also remember outdoor kerosene lanterns that were used outdoors by road construction crews and railroads. I started collecting various bicycle, flat wick farm, railroad, and camping lanterns decades ago. Also have a few hollow wick lanterns and heater brass fuel reservoirs. My BSA Troop used Coleman white gasoline lanterns and camp cook stoves that had to be pumped up the be pressurized. The lamps were so bright that you could not look directly at them. Thank you for this walk back in time.
In my youth, there were two names used for the glowing sock lamps. A common name was “Petromax”. The other name, mostly in school text books, I seem to remember, was “Auer lamp”. I believe the second one related to the Austrian gentleman mentioned in this article. By the way, what I understood about the composition of the sock, it was thorium oxide in those days. The radiation scare came later and yttrium oxide was the answer to that.
Fairly neat, tons of good stuff in here! Having used the Coleman-style gas lights in the past (“lampes à manchon” in my case), I have nostalgia and remember them as being excellent yet quite finicky. I had been looking at them a few years ago when we started having the CA summer power outages, and instead went straight to LED-based solar-rechargeable lanterns (the “dalek” kind that Sir BigClive loves to take appart) and I do not regret my choice. Solar+LED is so much superior to any nostalgia I can get from gas lights.
Actually, gasometer makes perfect sense to me. I’ve always understood that one sense of the term “meter” actually means to release in a controlled fashion, especially with liquids and gases, but I annoyingly I can’t find this definition anywhere online. The root-word that it was derived from would be “mete”, as in dole out in small amounts. I was always had heard this term used in carbureted engines where typically a controlled supply of fuel would be “metered” into a fuel chamber inside the carburetor at low pressure. Then I found this: walbro.com/tech-tips/metering-lever-setting/
There have actually been a number of different gas types in use pretty much since the start of the Industrial Revolution. The process of making coke for use in blast furnaces produces it. As does the operation of the blast furnace itself. Initially it got used just to provide more heat for the furnaces, but there’s rather a lot of it, and the ability to control your fire precisely made it really nice for steam boilers and lighting and cooking. Many other industrial processes also produce combustible waste products, either gas or liquid, that we then adapted for use somewhere. (Indeed, the whole reason we use gasoline to power car engines is because it was a refinery waste product that was too volatile to be used for the same applications as kerosene, but not volatile enough to just shove into the gas pipeline, so what do we do with it?) But, of course, gas was only available near large industrial plants. Which is where the research into coal gassification for producing it elsewhere came from. Because it beats the pants off of hauling in solid fuel and hauling out ash all the time, with relatively little wasted energy. The individual, per-home gassifier didn’t exactly fizzle out entirely. It eventually morphed into a way to fuel internal combustion engines in places where petrol-based liquid fuels weren’t available. The upside is that it’s more portable, the down side is that a large portion of the combustible gas produced is carbon monoxide… Use with caution. For quite a while, acetylene was actually a pretty common fuel for gas mantle lamps.
At my cottage we have ALL of these different types of flame lighting, but i never realized what the exact differences were – i thought they were all just the same thing in different shapes. But now i know how extremely cool their differences are!!!! As a kid, i was always fascinated by the mantle on the Aladin lamps and much preferred them to the wick lamps – now i know why! (i’m also terrified of ever lighting them, as i was always made very aware of how dangerous they were. Oh parental units, how you scar me with both irrational AND rational fears!)
Your article was so much fun. I’m 66 and originally from the UK. When I was 5 my parents were really poor and we lived for a few years in an uncle’s holiday cottage that didn’t have electricity, so it was illuminated with gas mantles everywhere. This was before the advent of Methane/Natural Gas. One of the fun things you forgot to mention is that coal gas is heavier than air. So in the winter and if your house was sealed really well it could asphyxiate you and if you woke up and lit a candle it would blow the house and you to smithereens (lovely word). It had a distinctive smell much like essence of old engine oil, My parents reinforced the rule in both my sister and me that if we smelt it we were to yell and run outside. The only problem was that we always could smell it. I can’t wait for your next article and I’m assuming you have a Tilley lamp in the article. I have two for our power failure kit because they are staggeringly bright and only a bit explosive. They can run on all the kerosene derivatives (Jet A1 works particularly well) although red diesel seems to gunk up the tubes after a while. You would have to be mad to run a pressure vapour lamp on gasoline so I bought one of Coleman lamps but it definitely make me itch when it’s running. The Tilley lamp is hilarious because you usually set fire to a small bath under the mantle of methylated spirits to pre-heat the lamp to get it up to temperature. Once it gets going though it’s so bright you can illuminate a whole campsite.
I think “forced my lute” is a typo. Should be “forced my flute” as in the explosion forced the glass chimney, sometimes called a flute, to break. He is saying the explosion caused a force that applied to the flute then broke the glass. In fact it could be that the taper at the top of the chimney was specifically the part called the flute. So when the explosion occurred he refers to it specifically because that’s where it broke because that’s where the air gets compressed before leaving the chimney. Could also be that the flute acted as a rocket engine and forced the whole lamp down and he might have been holding it at the time and noticed the force.
From Oxford Reference lute A U-shaped loop in a pipe or tube in which a liquid is trapped and used to provide a seal for gas flow. For example, the pipe from a gravity-fed reflux from the condenser of a distillation column contains a lute. The distillation column has a higher pressure than the condenser and the lute prevents vapour entering from the wrong direction. The depth of the lute is determined from hydrostatics and is greater than the maximum vapour pressure difference between the column and the condenser outlet…. …
Kerosene, Gasoline, Propane, all bow before the mighty (dangerous) White Gas Coleman Fuel. Joking aside we still use white gas lanterns regularly at our cabins, and, even knowing the sciences and explanations on how they work; I am still struck with childlike wonder and jovial amusement every time I use one.
I’d like to mention the interesting case of Rahway, NJ. This was a town that, up to maybe 10-20 years ago, had gas lighting in its streets, provided (presumably) by Elizabethtown Gas. The interesting thing is that Nikola Tesla had lived there, only a few train stops down from Thomas Edison’s Menlo Park, and had made Rahway one of the earliest electrically illuminated towns. So why the late gas lighting? Why, indeed.
I’m late to the party but you mentioned that kerosene is a niche fuel, only it isn’t – At least not in the rural parts of the UK. We use a “heating oil” (Aka kerosene) boiler for our central heating as do many people in the UK who are not connected to the mains gas network. The other options for central heating in the rural parts of the UK are electric storage heaters, heat pumps and bulk LPG tanks – But oil is by far the most common fuel for rural central heating. Sadly most oil boilers aren’t even modulating, there’s only really one proper modulating oil boiler available and that is very new to the market.
Hey tech connection, your blower made me think of something really neat you should cover – fluidics. There’s a Toro leaf blower that has a special attachment that can make the stream of air go back and forth with no moving parts. The longer you make the feedback loop the longer the period of the motion and the greater the gain so you can really feel the blower going back and forth. What’s extra neat about this is that it’s the same thing that makes the washer nozzles in a car work. If you illuminate a windshield washer spraying with a strobe light you’ll see that the liquid is coming out in one stream that oscillates back and forth. This is to improve coverage for a given amount of liquid and flow over a traditional shear nozzle. Also the droplets are larger so more should reach the windshield. Another fun thing now that I’m thinking fluidics, you should also look at pressure compensating devices in faucets. They are everywhere and brilliant.
Today I built a crude inverted wick vegetable oil burner, because I noted that candles and lamps seem to always produce light more above them than below, and generally I need light like, down on what I’m working on. Now I want to knit my own gas mantles. I also want to find out if I could get wood-gas lighting with mantles bright enough to grow like, herbs and tomatoes through the winter. The heat and even the additional CO2 would be useful in-situ
Man! I love this series. I’ve been attempting to collect lanterns and lamps for years now. Some break, some get swiped and some lost, but I still have some. Always more interesting than than expected. Very much appreciated! Gotta love that initial burn off phase of gas mantles. Who knew that organized ashes could contain a hot gas ball?
Seeing that Coleman lantern brings back some childhood memories camping with my father. As dusk settled in, we would stop whatever we were doing and pump and pump and pump and pump those lanterns until they were pressurized enough to last us all night. I was actually really bummed when my stepmother convinced my dad to switch to propane lanterns as the lanterns had been in the family for decades by that point. I wish I still had them.
I discovered an Aladdin lamp in a garage sale, sans mantle and at the time didn’t know anything about them. A bit of research led me to a shop in Melbourne, Oz, that sold them and of course spare mantles. When I first got it to work properly I was truly amazed at how bright it was. I ended up buying some more and used them often just for the lovely light they produced.
I’ve read Disenchanted Night, I even had to write a paper about it! There’s a lot of incredibly interesting subject matter covered in it, and it would be awesome to see this website cover some of the more controversial lighting methods (e.g. the massive arc lamps on towers designed to light up multiple blocks in a city at once) that were tested in that developmental period of lighting tech as a separate article. Loved the article by the way, as great as ever!
We had ceiling lights like this in a old cabin when I was younger. I always wondered how they worked and not just burned everything! So cool to learn about it today! My dad was the one lighting them and at the end of the article I recalled.. yes! he actually had to (get on a chair and) blow on the ceiling light to turn them off when it was time to go to bed! Huh, nostalgia, such cool technology. Thanks
We used to have a gas plant here in the southwest portion of Indianapolis that had several of those large gasometers. It closed down sometime in the late 90s early 2000s. I remember you could clearly smell the gas whenever driving through the area and it was NOT a pleasant smell, like a rotten fruity smell. They claimed it would be a hundred years before the soil was ever usable again.
8:30 You missed the reason why we say “Turn on the lights”. It was because of the gas valve that needed to be turned to the ‘on position’. When electric lighting replaced gas lighting a switch replaced the valve. There were signs that read “This room is equipped with Edison Electric Light. Do not attempt to light with match, simply turn key on wall near the door” – Turn On The Light!
I used to do electric work to pay my way through college, and one house we wired was so old, it still had gas tubing inside the walls and ceilings for the light fixtures, and in the living room, hung a giant gas chandelier. We ended up running the wires through the tubing as it already lay in the same way the wiring would be.
I actually have seen those gas lights that you turn on by the door, when I was a kid. Here in Mississippi, those low pressure gas lights were commonly used until the 1950s or so in less developed areas. I am 24 years old, and even saw these lights being used in the area I grew up. It was really cool as a kid, but as I’ve gotten older, I realized how much more dangerous this design was.
I remember using a variant of those propane lanterns in boy scouts. They used the same tanks as the propane stoves, and we thought they were pretty neat. One of the biggest parts of the pre-departure routine was shaking the tanks we kept lying around in a shed to try and figure out which ones were full. (I also remember one time we snapped the nozzle off by accident amd sprayed propane all over the campsite. had to wait 10-15 minutes for the wind to clear it out). Also, I have a suspicion about how those gasoline lanterns work. I remember one of the leaders had a lantern that used a hand-pressurised tank of kerosene that came out through a sprayer type thing around which the mantel was placed. It first came out as a liquid in a small tray below the sprayer, where it was ignited to heat the feed pipe and sprayer to the point that the kerosine vaporized, after which point it would come out the sprayer and get the mantel to do its thing. I also remember him complain that it was getting harder and harder to find those specific kerosine tanks. Or at least I think that’s roughly how it worked. I onlynsaw it once or twice and my memory of it is a tad hazy…
While perusal this, I was reminded of my parents’ occasional mention of having a wind-powered generator that charged a car battery, so they could have (limited) electric lighting and power for the radio, back before rural electrification made it unnecessary. Is it possible you might do a segment on that technology?
Lute (from Latin Lutum, meaning mud, clay etc.) was a substance used to seal and affix apparatus employed in chemistry and alchemy, and to protect component vessels against heat damage by fire; it was also used to line furnaces. Lutation was thus the act of “cementing vessels with lute”. Im guess it overflowed some of the chemistry gear he was using. Odd phrase. And this was a very interesting and deep dive into an old forgotten world.
My Grandparents had a cottage on an island from the 80’s up to the early 2000’s. Up until about ’95, the whole place was powered with propane. Lights, stove, even the fridge, all propane powered. The water was pumped from the lake with a gasoline powered pump to a small water tower. After the electric upgrade (which would be wildly expensive today), the stove remained propane, and one light, in a little corner with a comfy chair, and a perfect view of the lake, the perfect spot to curl up with a book, was left alone, it still works.
During the awful 70s in 🇬🇧 my older father, an engineer by trade and an officer in WW2 RAF bomber Command, utilised many pressurised paraffin devices to keep the lights and heat on during the problematic period for our family. I was young then so didn’t understand what was going on politically, I get it now and though he passed away 30 yrs ago I loved him but would still never vote the way he did .
Since on the Topic of Aladdin Lamps, you should really do an Episode of Aladdin Blue Flame Kerosene Heaters, I’d sit for hours perusal it, I don’t know if it would be available for purchase in the US/Canada Region, but it would be great to show viewers the amazing blue flame heaters Aladdin produced in the UK