The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California

Turning Night Into Day

It was not until thirty-three years later that Argand, a Swiss, realized this fact, which you would think anyone would have seen at a glance.

Complicated Lamps

So, little by little, the lamp was made up, part at a time. At first only the bowl for holding the oil then the wick, and finally the glass chimney. But even this lamp with the glass chimney didn't burn any too well. It didn't give any more light than a candle. The oil didn't run up the wick very well; not so well as our kerosene. And you know there wasn't any kerosene in the world in those days.

Try dipping a piece of blotting paper in kerosene and in melted butter. You will see that the kerosene is sucked up very much faster. So the flame was small because the oil ran up the wick so slowly. Some way must be devised to force the oil to feed into the wick faster, if it wouldn't go of its own accord.

It was a mathematician, Cardan, who lived fifty years later than Leonardo da Vinci, who thought up how to do this. His idea was to put the bowl containing the oil above the burner so that the oil would flow down to the flame by the force of gravity, like water from a water faucet. He then connected this bowl with the burner by a little pipe through which the oil flowed down.

Another inventor, Karsel, had the idea of using a pump to force the oil into the burner. He devised an elaborate mechanical apparatus, a pump run by clockwork, which forced the oil into the burner.

Karsel lamps of huge size are still used in light-houses, because they give a very steady light.

Finally there was a third inventor who put a ring and a spring into the lamp bowl. The spring pressed on the ring and the ring pressed on the oil and forced it to rise up through a pipe into the burner. Such lamps were in use up to within a very short time; our grandfathers and grandmothers used them.

The Argand Lamp

However, none of these elaborate lamps burned so well as our present day kerosene ones, although they were so much more complicated. The trouble was that the wicks weren't good. They still used twisted wicks like those in tallow candles. And these wicks had the same kind of flame, too, as the candle, only it was larger. No wonder these lamps smoked. No air could reach the center of the flame.