Oil Lamps: Beautiful Objects and Clever Inventions

In the very beginning, humans used melted animal fat with a braided plant wick.
The oil lamp appeared in antiquity.

While in the Middle Ages in France, locally produced oil was used, wicks gradually improved: hemp, wool, linen, and cotton in the 17th century.

THE OIL LAMP

Advances would be crucial in both mechanics and the improvement of wicks and burners.
In 1780, the chemist Proust invented the oil lamp with a side reservoir.

The advances:

• The French chemist Joseph Louis Proust invented the oil lamp with a side reservoir around 1780: the oil, located higher than the burner, is pushed towards the burner by its own weight.
• The Swiss physicist and chemist Aimé Argand invented the cylindrical wick and the sheet metal, then glass, chimney in 1782. Associated with Lange (or L'Ange), another inventor, he produced a lamp known as the "Argand lamp".
• Pharmacist Antoine Quinquet, in 1784, combined these three innovations into the lamp that bears his name, mounted on a stem. This lamp was well-developed and remained in common use until the advent of petroleum.
• The Carcel lamp, from 1800, was more complicated and expensive: it featured a clockwork mechanism and a pump to raise the oil. The reservoir was no longer lateral; it was now under the burner.
• Isaac-Ami Bordier-Marcet, Argand's successor, created the "astral" lamp in 1809 with a flat reservoir arranged around the burner.
• Finally, the moderator lamp, by Neuburger in 1837, reused the piston mechanism principle but added a mobile regulating needle.

"Mr. Neuburger was able to give spring lamps an illumination duration almost double that of ordinary moderator lamps; he managed to extend it for ten and twelve consecutive hours, without the lamp needing to be rewound." March 1855 Bulletin for the Society for the Encouragement of National Industry.

THE KEROSENE LAMP

From 1853, oil finally became fluid.