In just the last video, we took a look at these hurricane lanterns, their history, and how they work. If you havenāt seen that, Iād recommend
watching it first because this video will be building upon it. Oh, uh, real quick ā someone asked for a simulated hurricane. I canāt quite do that but hereās a leaf blower! [whooshing of blower] Pretty impressive. Anyway, flat wick kerosene lamps and lanterns were ubiquitous, every-day sources of lighting outside of cities for decades, and unfortunately remain so across wide swaths of the developing world. While burning a fuel to create light is certainly
not the best way to do it for a plethora of reasons, a development of the late 19th century
made the process a whole lot more useful. This kerosene lamp is much brighter than any
of the others weāve seen so far, burns cleanly, and is green. And the technology that makes it so bright is what weāll be talking about today. But first, we need to step back from lanterns
and talk about the towngas industry. Someone, and I donāt remember who so Iām
sorry I canāt thank you personally, recommended this book to me. Disenchanted Night, The Industrialization
of Light in the Nineteenth Century. Itās a fascinating read and focuses mainly
on the development of centralized lighting systems, both gas and electric. I had mentioned coal gas in the last video
and a number of you wondered what that was, so hereās what that was. Also we need to talk about it anyway. Before the natural gas we know today, gas that was delivered to the home was manufactured from coal, and less commonly wood. It took me until last week to realize thatās why we call it natural gas. Its predecessors literally were not natural! Anyway, coal can actually be processed into
a number of different products much like petroleum, and it was known since the late 17th century
that if you distill coal in a retort ā thatās one of these mad scientist chemistry set things,
not just a devastating comeback ā one of the byproducts was an inflammable spirit. Iām going to quote from the first known
written discovery of this phenomenon, written in a letter to Robert Boyle by amateur chemist
John Clayton. This was in 1691. [soft jazz begins playing]
I got some coal, and distilled it in a retort in an open fire. At first there came over only phlegm, afterwards a black oil, and then likewise a spirit arose, which I could no ways condense; but it forced my lute, or broke my glasses. Side note:
I have no clue what āforced my luteā is supposed to mean. I also donāt know if the āor broke my glassesā might be clarification done by Schivelbusch, the author of the book. I googled the phrase āforced my luteā
and the only results were of this exact letter, many of them being quoted from this very book. Iām choosing to interpret it as one would
āgrinds my gearsā or āruffles my feathersā because thatās fun! Itās probably wrong, but anyway, to continueā¦ Once, when it had forced my lute, coming close
thereto in order to try to repair it, I observed that the spirit which issued out caught fire
at the flame of the candle, and continued burning with violence as it issued out in
a stream, which I blew out and lighted again alternately for several times. I then had a mind to try if I could save any of this spirit; in order to which I took a turbinated receiver, and, putting a candle to the pipe of the receiver, whilst the spirit arose, I observed that it catched flame, and continued burning at the end of the pipe though you could not discern what fed the flame. I then blew it out and lighted it again several times. As would I, Clayton. As would I. The discovery of this inflammable air, as it was often called, was a real mind-bender. Whatās burning? People asked. How can there be fire with no oil and no wick? Seemed like an impossibility and nothing more. But of course it wasnāt. However it would take quite a long time, in fact more than a century from when that letter was written for it to be put to use. It was the factories of England, thanks to their owners who wished to see greater productivity out of their workers, where we could find the first permanent application for this wondrous stuff. Specifically, at Watt & Boulton of Soho. As it happened the owners had already expressed
interest in improved lighting technologies, and they knew Argand personally and used his lamps. But one of their associates, William Murdoch, would develop the coal-gas production and storage methods which were to quickly become the standard. More or less. Oh and quick side note, at basically the exact same time a French guy named Phillippe LeBon was doing similar work and developed something called the thermolamp, but his idea centered around producing the gas at the hyper-local level, as in you would have a gas distilling apparatus in your home, and ultimately the concept fizzled out. Originally experimenting with balloon-like
containers to store and perhaps even transport the gas, Murdoch eventually found that the
only reasonable way to make use of this gas was with pipes to distribute it, and so-called gasometers for storage. Which, funnily enough, were devices conceived
by none other than our old pal Antoine Lavoisier. Murdoch, by the way, is responsible for calling it
a āgasometerā which annoyed many scientists because it is not a measuring implement of any sort. Those with a particular keenness towards accuracy much
prefer the term gas holder. Nevertheless, gasometer stuck around. Anyway, first done at the rather small scale
of on-site gas production and storage for lighting a single factory, this idea quickly scaled up and spread out. As luck would have it, producing coal gas
used basically the same exact process as producing coke from coal, which had already been in routine production
for the high temperature furnaces used in metalworking. In fact the gas was a byproduct of the coke
production process. So basically, we already had the knowledge
and equipment for this new gas stuff, and just needed to tweak how the coal was distilled
a little bit and make an effort to collect and store the gas. Before long, central coal gas supplies were
feeding entire neighborhoods, and an imaginative revolution in lighting was swiftly upon us. This manufactured gas contained a lot of so-called illuminants, or components which helped produce a bright flame. I mentioned it in passing, but what actually makes
the flame of a candle glow are small particles within the flame that are incandescing. Thatās a very complicated topic and there are a number of reasons those particles can A) exist and B) glow, but youāll only get a bright flame if there's something in the fuel which will glow brightly with the heat of combustion. A natural gas flame hardly glows at all because the fuel is quite pure and burns completely thanks to a well-designed burner. In fact the blue color of that flame is the
result of an entirely different chemical process. A flat-wick kerosene lamp not only burns a
less-pure, or you might say ādirtierā fuel, but much more importantly that combustion
isnāt as complete, so little bits of unburned fuel end up as soot which will glow in the heat of the flame. The same goes for a candle. And for this new coal gas. By tweaking the coal distilling process, and also by using different sources of coal, the illuminating ability of the gas could be maximized. And since the gas was already a vapor and
didnāt rely on a wick to evaporate and burn, the flames could be much larger without becoming sooty, and thus they could be brighter. A common design for a burner produced a sort
of fan-shaped flame, and with a limitless-to-the-user supply of fuel in the wall, brighter lights were easy to accomplish. Just add more burners as desired. The decades that followed saw countless designs
for new lighting fixtures. We also developed the first light switches, which in this case were valves that could stop and start the flow of gas. Those quickly started being placed near the entry of rooms, pretty much exactly where we put light switches today. This coal gas infrastructure looked an awful
lot like the electric lights that would replace them in no small part because those electric
lights were emulating how the gas ones worked. Now, just as it is today, gaslighting was unpleasant. Oh sure, it was marvelously better than candles and when we first started using it everybody was wowed out of their minds. But we quickly found its many problems. This coal gas was very toxic and it was not
hard at all to be poisoned by it. Unlike gas of today, there wasnāt much pressure
in the pipes so you couldnāt actually hear the gas escaping even from a normally-operating fixture. This made leaks undetectable in many cases. Deadly gas explosions werenāt exactly uncommon, either. And the infrastructure which moved it around
would pollute soil and groundwater when it leaked. Even when things were going well, we also
ran into problems because we were burning so much of the gas that we were using up all the oxygen in a room. There was a downside to more light, we just hadnāt run into that limitation yet because candles and oil lamps realistically didnāt consume enough oxygen to be problematic. While we would eventually develop fixtures which had
their own ventilation (this also helped cut back on how hot the lights made the rooms in which they were used) even then places which needed a lot of light would run low on oxygen. It was very common for people to find going
to the theater to be an unpleasant, headache-inducing experience because they were literally being partly
asphyxiated the whole time. Oh and also if youāve heard about how over
time the byproducts of this gas would do things like darken walls and cover paintings in layers of goopy soot, well that was also a thing. Over the decades people simply lost their affinity for the stuff. And itās no wonder. And so now we are back to this. Up ātil now, more light meant more fire. We still relied on the illuminating particles
in the gas to provide the visible light we wanted. But this was about to change. In 1886, Austrian chemist Auer von Welsbach invented the
incandescent gas mantle, and itās what makes this lamp so bright. Here, we are simply using the heat of the
flame to our advantage. We no longer care if it produces light of
its own, we just want it to get the mantle very hot which causes the mantle to glow. This principle was known long before Welsbach
invented the gas mantle. Limelight, mainly used in theaters, was a direct predecessor. Here a piece of calcium oxide, or quicklime, was heated to incandescence by an oxyhydrogen flame. If you want to see what that looks like, thereās
a video linked in the description or you can check out the card here. Of note is that a second phenomenon, candoluminescense,
is known to be going on here as well. This phenomenon causes certain materials to
emit more visible light than a blackbody radiator would at the same temperature, and, well, the explanation on that is a little confusing to me and honestly it doesnāt seem like the knowledge of the mechanism is entirely settled yet so weāre just gonna acknowledge itās a thing!
And move on. What Welsbach figured out was how to make
the same general principle of limelight work with the low intensity flames of ordinary gas. Now, we need to make a quick clarification here. The coal gas of this time period didnāt
have to burn with a visible flame like a candle. Burners meant for lighting would of course do that, but with better control of the air as it mixes with the gas,
a cleaner, hotter flame could be attained. This is what the Bunsen burner was designed for. And indeed, Welsbach would use Bunsen-type
burners for his new gas mantles. And the Aladdin lamp makes use of those gas mantles. By the way, this is the same Aladdin lamp
company that invented the touch lamp! So there you go. Now, I must admit that weāre going a little out of order here. The gas mantle was in-effect adapted for
use in kerosene lamps like this one. Welsbach was working with Bunsen burners and
coal gas, and this implementation actually has some significant drawbacks which weāll get to, but for narrative reasons Iām explaining it with this lamp first. If you noticed that the burner and chimney
look very different from the Dietz lanterns and the dead-flame lamp, well thatās on purpose. This tubular wick burner, which is not really an Argand burner, again that was a red herring,
it just sorta looks like oneā¦ anyway. The skinny and tall chimney, combined with the hollow wick, creates a central-draft burner that burns kerosene much more intensely than these guys. If you noticed when I removed the mantle and
showed the flames - how high they went - yeah. This is a very different animal. Atop the burner sits the mantle. Its lace-like appearance suggests it could be a sort of fabric, but itās not. However, it was! Weāll get there, that part is extremely clever. In its current state, though, this is a very fragile lattice of effectively ash. This has very little mass, a large part of why itās so fragile. And itās made fromā¦ did you know thereās controversy regarding the phasing out of thorium in gas mantles? Some very picky campers certainly do but most
of you probably donāt. Happened like 30 years ago. Weāll talk about that later. But, uh, right. Anyway, this mantle is probably composed
mainly of yttrium oxide which is a ceramic material with a very high melting point. About 2,400 degrees Celsius, or 4,400 degrees Fahrenheit, or just shy of 2,700 degrees Kelvin. Because it can get that hot without melting, it can incandesce brightly. And that means it will produce a lot of visible
light when heated with fire. Take a look, hereās me holding a lighter to it. You see a glowing hot-spot pretty much as
white as an incandescent light bulb. But, youāll notice that it glows best near
the hot, blue part of the flame. If I switch to a torch-style lighter, which uses a burner not unlike a Bunsen burner, youāll see it makes a brighter and more
uniform spot on the mantle. The best flame for illuminating the mantle
is clearly a pure and hot one. Getting that sort of flame with kerosene and a wick is the reason the Aladdin lamp is somewhat special. The burner is able to do just that. In practice, you light this lamp by removing the entire top section, known as the gallery. This holds the chimney and mantle. That grants you access to the wick. Then you simply light it and put the gallery back on. Then, when you lift the wick, the strong draft created by the tall, slender chimney along with the hollow wick and flame spreader combine to create an astonishingly clean-burning, high-heat kerosene flame. The mantleās shape helps confine the flame and its heat energy so that it acts upon it as much as possible and voila. A very bright, surprisingly usable kerosene lamp. And this burns so cleanly itās entirely odorless. Seriously. This is amazing to me, you really only get heat from this thing.
Thereās no smell at all, and yet itās burning the same kerosene as these Dietzes. But its burner, while clearly unique, isnāt the star of this show. The reason the mantle can glow so brightly, aside from the fact that itās made from a heat-tolerant material, is that itās so incredibly light. I wasnāt exaggerating that this is basically ash, this stuff is hardly even there. Having such a miniscule thermal mass allows
it to easily get to incandescent temperatures without relying on an oxyhydrogen flame as limelight did. But if itās so light and fragile, how on Earth are you supposed to install one? And why does it look like a tiny hairnet? Well, hereās the clever bit. This mantle was a fabric mesh. But the strings which made that mesh were coated
in a solution containing salts of yttrium nitrate and potentially some other chemicals, too. Hereās a different mantle which, spoiler, will come up later. This one hasnāt been used yet and it's soft, fairly strong,
and quite flexible. The actual fibers that make up the mantle can be made of cotton, rayon, really a number of things so long as they can soak up and retain the salt solution. The yttrium oxide doesnāt exist yet in this form, but it will when we burn it. The mantle of the Aladdin lamp is a little different
as it comes coated in this blue stuff which holds its shape. And when you set light to it, this happens. That initial burn-off converted the salts of
yttrium nitrate in the fibers into solid yttrium oxide and also burned everything else away. Normally the mantles donāt just up and fwoomp
like that - that blue stuff (Iām not sure what it is - it might be collodion or possibly celluloid - let us know if you know) it accelerates the process greatly. But the end-result is the same. The ghostly remains of the newly-formed yttrium
oxide and pretty much nothing else. It takes the form of the fabric net because
thatās where the nitrates were just a moment ago. And now that itās here,
all you need to do is get it hot and it will glow. And importantly, it doesnāt burn away. The benefit here is that you get much more
light with the same amount of fuel. This lamp does burn fuel more quickly than
a Dietz lantern, but itās an order of magnitude brighter. The light is also much whiter - no longer the yellow of a flame but a true white. In the city where the fuel was gas, you could have much more light with fewer burners. Now you donāt have to use up all the oxygen in the room, and youāll have a much smaller gas bill. In a way, this was an early energy-efficiency technology. How ābout that. Also, the need to burn the fuels more completely
in Bunsen-type burners undoubtedly created a healthier environment. Itās quite interesting that this lamp produces no odor when its kerosene and flat wick compatriots all do. I had assumed that there might be some catalytic
reaction going on with the gas mantle, but I havenāt found any evidence for that. Instead I think itās just the fact that the burner actually manages to burn the kerosene completely. You can even see how the flame is bluer, almost like
a stovetop under the mantle. Just like a bunsen burner. While I havenāt found any contemporary reports
of the switch to gas mantles providing healthier indoor air, I canāt imagine that didnāt happen. Although, this discussion is muddied by the
fact that the gas mantle was invented at just about the same time that the electric light bulb
was being perfected. One of the things Schivelbusch mentions regarding
electric light which is largely lost today is that the big deal of the carbon filament lamp was that, finally, we had an electric light that mimicked gaslight. Yes. You heard that right. Electric light was around long before whoever
gets to rightfully claim invention of the carbon filament lamp invented the carbon filament lamp, but the arc lights of that time were way too bright to find their way into small spaces. The carbon filament light bulb was about the
same brightness of contemporary open-flame gas lights. Electric light hadnāt so much been invented
as it was tamed. The gas mantle therefore represented a brighter
than electric light (for the home anyway) for a short time. Once the tungsten filament was developed in
the early 1900ās electric light achieved parity, but there was a short time where the
gas mantle could legitimately be viewed as superior. And so, in a funny way, the gas mantle ended
up slowing the progress of electrification. I mean, why go through the trouble of signing
up for electricity when youāve got gas already, youāre gonna keep it for cooking, and these new mantles make it just as bright as these newfangled electric lamps which seem scary and new! It was a pretty rational choice to ignore electricity.
For a while anyway. But what about outside of cities? Rural areas certainly werenāt the first in line for electrification or indeed gas service, so portable lamps and lanterns would
remain the king for quite a while. And thatās the niche that the Aladdin lamp fits into. But itās certainly not perfect. It will be hard to show this on camera, but this particular lamp seems to have a defective wick. It does not burn uniformly at all, thereās a substantial hot spot on one side. Try as I might I cannot completely tame this, Iāve used the included wick cleaner and even gone so far as to use an X-Acto knife to cut off a few millimeters of wick and make it level. But itās still there, one spot of the wick seems to be simply thicker than the rest,
I think. Itās not a huge problem but I cannot run
this lamp at its full brightness because if I turn it too high, that hot spot
actually produces a visible flame that leaves the mantle. And it starts depositing unburned fuel on it. This is actually kind of fascinating because,
so long as this doesnāt go on for too long, you can reduce the intensity and that carbon buildup will burn away. But if it does go on too long, it could damage
the mantle and indeed the lamp itself. At some point Iāll replace the wick, but
that is a significant downside to this style of lamp. Speaking of downsides, perhaps the biggest
one for this style of lamp is that, even with a perfect wick, they demand near-constant attention. Thereās a rather small sweet spot for operating it. Too low and the mantle doesnāt glow, and itās a very small distance on the wick lifter between not glowing and the flame is way too high. Since the kerosene will evaporate more quickly
as the lamp heats up from cold, it gets brighter on its own in the first ten minutes or so
of operation, and in fact the instructions provided tell you to
make sure youāre checking on it every 30 minutes. Really, this thing is just in a very delicate
balance. Take a look at this. [blows into lamp base] Thatās terrifying. So then... it wonāt surprise you to learn that these
things cannot be used outdoors. Thereās just no way youāre going to get
the necessary stability of the flame with really any wind at all. But the Aladdin lamp is, and has always been, a weird case. And thatās why showcasing it here isā¦ well not really how gas mantles were used most of the time. The Aladdin lamp shows that you *can* use
kerosene and a wick to drive a gas mantle, but the best thing to use isā¦ gas. But now, hereās a question. How do you make that portable? Well, hereās one option. This is a modern propane camping lantern. [spark from ignitor and whooshing of fuel] Itās really nothing more than a modified
propane torch. Instead of being a, well, torch the gas comes out of these two orifices which have a gas mantle tied around them. This is a remarkably bright lantern, something close to 100 watts incandescent equivalent at its full brightness, but... well these little bottles of propane are a rather recent thing. They werenāt around when these lanterns were first invented. Instead, these lanterns were originally made to run on, wait for it, gasoline! Or in some countries kerosene. Or even margarine ā wait no, not that one. but lots of different liquid fuels could be used in lanterns like these. However, that presents a challenge. For instance, gasolineās flashpoint is way too low to use with a wick, unless your goal is to set yourself on fire, and besides we donāt want a wick-style flame anyway. We want a Bunsen flame. Sure we can get that from propane because
it is a gas at atmospheric pressures. Just let it out of the bottle. But how do you do that with a liquid fuel
like kerosene? Or gasoline? Well, weāll talk about that in the next video. And weāll also talk about that thorium debacle. Itās a real thor spot for some campers out there. By the way, if youāre wondering where I got an Aladdin lamp, well much like these Dietz lanterns these just never stopped getting made. However, at this point theyāre clearly more
of a collectorās item. Theyāre also not cheap, costing more than
of $200 for a basic lamp like this one. But, unlike a Dietz lantern, theyāre safe-ish to use indoors (I would certainly never leave this unattended for a moment) But also they're just much more
useful by virtue of being, ya know, a bright light that doesnāt smell terrible. I actually used this during a power outage, and it was pretty ideal actually. They produce a lot of heat so not great in
the summer, but itās also not tremendously much. Something like 800 or 900 watts. However, that heat is very pronounced. The narrow chimney and strong draft mean it
is painful to put your hand anywhere near the top of it, like, even here that's really painful if you can even see that. Now, that also means that the chimney needs to be made
of borosilicate glass to withstand the enormous temperature swing from cold to extremely hot. The metal frame holding the mantle glows red
hot at the top after itās been in use for a while. And the biggest downside to the Aladdin lamp is
that you have to use kerosene. You canāt use any of the various alternatives,
which is by the way why Iāve been burning straight kerosene in the Dietz lanterns. Thatās not a huge problem as kerosene is
widely available, but youāll likely be buying it exclusively for the lamp. Unless you had, maybe, a kerosene heater, too. But really itās just a rather niche fuel at this point. Oh, and one of my very favorite things about this? You actually blow it out. Iām serious, you donāt just lower the wick all the way. If you do that you'll notice there are still flames at the bottom. Instead, you lower so far that it stops glowing, and then you have to disturb the draft to completely extinguish it. So you simply cup your hand behind the chimney and blow across the top. *whoosh* Thatās what I call neat. ā« incandescently smooth jazz ā« It was the factoriā¦ It was in the factories ofā¦ nope. Thatās not in the sentence! Which, funnily enough, were devices conceived
by nuh-thother heh fleurrghhhhh By tweaking the coal distilling process and
also by using different sourceā¦ No! That was correct! Why did you stop? And also theyāre much more useful by birtue ofā¦ by birtue? But we quickly found its various downsides. Shoot. But itās so light and fragile, how on Earth
are you supposed to install one? Ah, I skipped the word āifā It takes the form of the fabrit neck... I believe I just said āfabrit neck.ā The actual string, really, can beā¦ oops! For those sticking around, we've solved the "forced my lute" mystery. Apparently lute was a sort of sealant used with glassware in the mad scientist alchemy days and whatnot. So "forced my lute" probably meant "broke the seal." Also, you're right, this is in a pinned comment already. The post-credits captions aren't that special this time, huh. Dagnabbit.
They're radioactive, too!
Lute is material used to seal pipes against leaks. What he was saying is the pressure of the gas produced blew out the seals in the piping and/ or blew up the glassware he was using to contain it. I assume those problems were eventually remedied
Gas mantles.. 29 min? Sounds good to me.
If you like books about the early development of technology, and its effects on the environment and society, check out The Domestic Revolution, by Ruth Goodman. I'm half way through it, and so far it has been entertaining and a very informative read, with lots of quotes from probate documents, listing what kind of fuel and furnaces people owned when they died.
Fun fact: Collecting peat actually increased the natural production of peat, and repeatedly lopping off the top of a tree, for firewood, makes the tree live longer, but only if its started when the tree is young.
this one was super interesting. these last few have made me realise just how much i don't know about older tech.
also, i hope it isn't rude to comment on your appearance, but i really love the longer hair! it looks so nice on you!
I love the longer videos!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lute_(material)
Just found this sub. Love his channel!
I was trying to find a video like this just after the hurricane lamp video. Stop reading my mind