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Elegant lighting in the nineteenth century. (Books About Antiques).(Brief Article)
Nineteenth Century Lighting: Argand, Sinumbra, and Solar Lamps, by Gerald T. Gowitt (Schiffer Publishing, 800-288-2129), $69.95 (hardcovers).
Between the Neanderthal's bundle of burning faggots and the blinding blue glare of the modern headlight, man has brightened the darkness in a number of ingenious ways. One of the high points was achieved in the nineteenth century, when the candle gave way to a battery of other inflammables: ordinary whale oil rendered from the blubber; sperm whale oil, or spermaceti, from the cavity in the head of the sperm whale; colza, the oil extracted from rapeseed; so called "burning fluid" invented by a Bostonian in 1834 by mixing turpentine, alcohol, and other elements; camphene, a form of purified oil of turpentine developed by a New York City firm in 1839; and lard.
Each of these liquids had its drawbacks: whale oil smoked and smelled; sperm whale oil was very expensive; colza was viscous; burning fluid was given to exploding; camphene yielded only a dim light; and lard was a semisolid that needed a special burner. Nonetheless, lamps were developed to burn all these fuels.
The first and perhaps greatest advance was the burner invented by Ami Argand in 1784. It employed a tubular wick held between two metal tubes open at the bottom. This allowed air to circulate all around the burning wick, greatly increasing the brightness of the flame owing to the more complete combustion of the fuel. However, Argand lamps were difficult to refill, their fuel reservoir cast a shadow, and the lamp began to lose popularity about the middle of the nineteenth century, although the burner endured.
The sinumbra lamps, another French development, had a doughnut-shaped fuel tank around an Argand burner. This facilitated refilling and eliminated the cast shadow (thus the name, adapted from the Latin sine umbra, shadowless). Then, in the 1830s various developments in England and the United States coalesced to create the solar lamp, which depends on an inverted metal saucer with a hole in the middle about the size of the wick. Placed over ...
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