Weâve taken a look at a few different lighting technologies in past videos, but so far theyâve all been of the electric persuasion. However,
[match is struck] technology isnât limited to the realm of electricity. This simple candle contains what was at one point a marvelous new invention: The self-trimming wick. See, most modern candle wicks are designed so that they curl as the candle burns away. That causes the tip of the wick to leave the body of the flame, allowing it to burn away in the oxygen-rich fresh air. And this is a surprisingly recent development. As late as 1800, people were lamenting how annoying wick trimming was. Imagine how annoyed youâd be if you needed special scissors to trim the top of your light bulbs every half-hour. See, the thing about a candle is the wick is not whatâs burning. Itâs the wax that burns. Candle wax is a solid, combustible fuel, and the wick is simply a clever way to get the fuel to melt, vaporize, and combust. Once liquid, capillary action causes the molten
wax to travel up the wick's fibers, and once near the top it will vaporize. The vaporized fuel mixes then with the oxygen-rich air, so it burns and creates a flame. The wick is just the fuel conveyance device, and the solid fuel is a convenient form factor. Before wicks like these were developed which could leave the flameâs path, the wick would simply get longer relative to the candle as it burned, or sometimes theyâd form a sort of mushroom shape which disturbed the flow of the fuel. This made candles burn poorly, often with lots of soot or sometimes too intensely, so periodic trimming of the wick was required as
the candle wax was consumed. This hasnât entirely gone away as anyone with an artisanal scented candle can attest. But this video isnât about candles. Instead, itâs ⌠well, OK, you saw the thumbnail and the title. Itâs about these things. The hurricane lantern. Now thatâs an interesting name, isnât it? Weâll get to that. Now, Iâve always had a bit of a fascination with these things. They have such a distinctive shape. Why? Whatâs with all this metal piping, and especially this weird big thing up here? Shall we connect some technologies? Yes, please! But first⌠lights! Aghh! Ugh... A funny thing about the human experience is that we had figured out fire long before we had really **figured out** fire. And when we first thought we had figured it out, we were very wrong. See, we used to think things which could burn were phlogisticated, meaning they contained phlogiston. Ya know, the burny stuff? And when we burned it, it used up all the phlogiston, so it became dephlogisticated. Oh and fires? Well, they go out in enclosed spaces because the air can only take on so much phlogiston. I like that word quite a lot, but itâs, uh, wrong. It wasnât until 1773, after Antoine Lavoisier had described combustion theory, that we knew how and why stuff burned. And once the science was settled, we could make improved devices using that newfound scientific understanding. Ainât progress neat? But hold on, weâve skipped something. Lanterns like this werenât the successor to candles, exactly. Well, OK they... they kinda were⌠we gotta talk about oil lamps for a second. Before even the candle we were using oil lamps, but not like this. Ya know that story about the guy who rubs
a lamp and a genie comes out or whatever? Yeah, like, like that one. At least, that was one style of lamp. If you were ever like, "thatâs a lamp?" Yes, thatâs... that's a lamp. Youâd fill it with some sort of oil, lots of oils will do the trick, and then youâd stick a piece of string or something through the spout. And once the wick soaked up the oil up you could light it,
and there you go. A lamp. Only about as bright as one of these candles but hey, it was better than nothing. Oil lamps have been around for millennia, with the oldest known example dating back to 10,000 BCE, possibly earlier. And they hold a lot of cultural significance in many parts of the world and in many religions, so theyâre still used but mainly ceremoniously. Anyway, the point is burning a liquid fuel with a wick actually predates the candle by a lot. As in, many thousands of years. This thing contains innovations that came
about thanks to our newfound knowledge of combustion, but the idea of using a liquid fuel was a return to form and not anything new. Ah but itâs not so simple. Thereâs also the fuel this burns, which was its own innovation, and thereâs the fact that the flat wick incorporated here was an invention that predated Levoisierâs combustion theory. See, rather than just a piece of string or cord, a flat woven wick created a long flat flame. This produced a wide flame, almost like a wall of fire, which is considerably brighter. But it was first tried in 1770, a few years before combustion theory was put forth. As a matter of fact the first true innovation that can be pegged as a direct result of combustion theory was the Argand burner, which didnât use a flat wick but a round one. Having heard this Lavoisier guy talk about
oxygen in the air being what drives the combustion process, François-Pierre-AmÊdÊe Argand was like [said in an inexplicably Southern-US accent]
âhey, what if I made a wick that had a big âol hole in the middle so air could make it through the center of the flame?â And so he tried it. And it worked! The wick looked a little something like this. Now, donât let the fact that this is green fool you. This is in fact a red herring. But, uh, weâll burn that bridge when we get there. Anyway, a glass chimney placed around the wick provided a directed path for the air. It would enter as fresh air from below, the oxygen would be consumed by the flame, and the combustion byproducts would travel up the chimney, conveniently creating a draft to pull in fresh air from below. Since fresh air could also travel through the wickâs center, more oxygen was available for the flame. The result was that this new lamp burned much
more cleanly than lamps before it, and produced a flame 6 to 10 times as bright as a candle. Wow! Good work, Argand! Oh, and he also devised a way to raise and
lower the wick, which allowed for finer control over the flameâs size. Pretty clever, this Argand guy. However, being an invention of the 1780s, the Argand lamp still burned stuff like vegetable oils. The fuel delivery method wasnât quite like what goes on here because oils of the time were too thick to simply be soaked up by a long wick. Oh, and speaking of oils of the time, experimentation eventually found that the best oil suited for the Argand lamp was, you may have guessed, whale oil. Now, for clarity, Argandâs new lamp wasnât the first thing or indeed lamp that used whale oil. The whaling industry existed long before then, so itâs not like Argand was the Thomas Midgley Junior of whales. Probably didnât help âem, though. He also wasn't Welsh. But now weâre going to ignore the tubular wick
and go back to the simple flat ones because, well, thatâs whatâs in these things. And now letâs ignore these things and instead we're gonna talk about this Cracker Barrel-esque table lamp. And actually, ignore the lamp for a second. Kerosene. Which some of you call paraffin to be confusing. Although to be fair, the word kerosene was
derived from the Greek word for wax, which is keros. What a mess. Oh and also itâs jet fuel. But from here on out Iâm calling it kerosene and itâs whatâs in here. Kerosene has a convoluted history which I
donât really want to get into right now, but it was among the first distilled petroleum
products and rather quickly superseded whale oil for illumination, which delighted whales the oceans over. It should be noted, though, that even relatively small cities had already moved away from
liquid fuel lamps and lanterns as central coal gas supplies and distribution were pretty common by the time kerosene was invented. Kerosene lamps were mostly relegated to rural or small-town life, and wherever portable illumination was required. Which is probably why these lamps and lanterns evoke the incredibly specific Old West and country vibes they do today. They simply werenât needed in the sprawling
metropolis of⌠Baltimore. Not exactly a joke, by the way. Baltimore had the first gasworks in the United States, built in 1816. At the time, Baltimoreâs population was something around 50,000 people. These days thatâs a pretty average suburb. Kerosene wouldnât even be invented for another
30 years at least, depending on how you look at it, leaving plenty of time for the town-gas
industry to be copy-pasted from city to city. Oh, and also thereâs camphine, a different liquid fuel made from turpentine and grain alcohol which saw use in-between whale oil and kerosene, so thereâs that complication. But anyway, weâre all over the place here. As usual. So, uh, letâs get back to country-fried steak by looking at this thing. One of the reasons kerosene as a fuel was a big deal was that it could burn cleanly without producing soot. Earlier attempts at making kerosene-like fuels failed in this regard. But youâll see that when I light this... Well, That's actually pretty smoky. I don't know how well you can see it. But thatâs only because the chimney isnât in place. Once I put it on, the flame changes shape, it stops producing smoke, and most importantly gets much brighter, too. With the chimney in place, the exhaust gasses have only one direction to go. Straight up. The shape of the glass also helps - the kink here creates a slight constriction which helps form a steady draft. And that draft does the most important thing for the flame. It pulls in fresh air from below. But itâs even more clever than that. Notice that thereâs nowhere for air to enter
this space except for the slit in the burner. There are plenty of holes allowing air into
the burner itself, you can see them from below quite easily, but it must pass right near the wick in order to get out. The result is a forcibly-induced supply of
fresh, oxygen-rich air delivered right to the point of combustion, giving a bright, smoke-free, and stable flame. Now I want to note that you donât always
see burners where the only source of fresh air is through the slit. Sometimes there are other holes down here,
which are mainly used to help cool the glass.. However, whatâs interesting about this is
that it is effectively a simplification of the Argand burner. After all, how beneficial is a hollow tube for a wick when you could simply pass fresh air over both sides of a flat one? Seemingly not a whole lot,
at least not in the age of kerosene. Tubular-wick designs didnât go away, exactly, but it seems we were OK with the flat wick in most cases. Now, Iâve been trying to find a definitive
answer for who invented this specific burner and when. And, well, I was about to say
âIâve seen the same answer a few times in a few places but itâs not super well-sourcedâ but then I remembered patents are a thing and this appears to be the one. I wasnât completely sure this was the first burner designed like this, especially since the patent opens with âMy improvement relates to that class of flat wick lamps provided with a cone or deflector, such as is now in general useâ and this part right here is called the deflector. Sounded like this was already an established thing. Except I kept reading! And I found⌠typos. But more importantly, the inventor complains
about the current state of the art. âThus constructed, experience has shown
that the combustion of the oil was imperfect, a large portion escaping in the room unconsumed, creating an exceedingly obnoxious odor, while the flame was far from being as brilliant, and hence as illuminating, as might be desired.â Ah, but he goes on. âThese defects, it has been discovered, are in great measure to be attributed to the manner in Which the air is supplied to the flame on the inside of the cone or deflector.â Aha! And further on⌠âTo obviate these defects and to provide
a flat-wick lamp that will give a clear, steady, and brilliant light with less consumption of
oil, or a more thorough combustion of the oil, is one of the objects of my present improvement.â This guy knows about combustion! Who is he? Well, this patent was submitted by Michael A Dietz in 1858. Thatâs right. That Dietz. Well, his brother anyway. Assuming the state of things as presented
in this patent is correct, not only were kerosene lamps prior to this one smelly obnoxious things, they could also sometimes explode because until Dietz came along, the only way anyone
had figured out how to keep the smell of this new fuel at bay was to seal the fuel tank as completely as possible. So pressure could build, there is after all a sizable fire right above it, and boom. It really seems like this was the first time
someone with a knowledge of combustion science tried to make a kerosene lamp. Or at least, a flat-wick kerosene lamp. And Dietz succeeded! OK but way back when the question I led with had to do with what the deal is with all this piping and stuff. Well, allow me to fill you in on the deets. While this lamp which would be at home on
a table next to a game of peg solitaire uses the same sort of burner that Dietz had come up with, this is whatâs known as a dead-flame lamp. In still air, it burns brilliantly and steadily. But introduce some wind, even just a little bit, and things donât go so well. Very little air disturbance is needed to throw
off the draft of this lamp, and indeed to blow it out. So, this design by itself was really only suitable for indoor use. And thatâs what these lanterns were invented to solve. Except this design wasnât the first successful one. That would be... this design. Now my fellow lantern aficionados and I, we call ourselves Dietz Nuts, can tell the difference apart from a mile away. Bofa deez (both of these) lanterns succeed at protecting their
flames from the wind, but the early design came with a serious drawback. Letâs take a look at how it protects the flame. Remember how in this lamp the air supply comes from below the burner? Well, take a closer look at where it comes from here. There are holes allowing air into the space of the glass volume, in this style of lantern thatâs called the globe, but theyâre not supplying the wick with combustion air. That still comes from the space below the burner. If we remove the burner we can see thereâs
an open space above the fuel tank. And that space is connected to these tubes. Follow them and of course we end up at the very top. This design, which today we call the hot-blast lantern, was invented by John H. Irwin in 1869. It ultimately brings in fresh air for combustion from up here. You may see a problem with that idea. Youâre correct to be concerned. But this does work. In front of a fan, the flame doesnât stay steady by any means but it stays bright and doesnât get sooty. Itâs not impossible for the light to go out, but it has much more protection than the dead-flame design. Their knack at being wind-resistant is where
they get their name from, by the way. Hurricane lanterns. The flame stays lit because the globe itself
prevents wind from directly hitting the flame, and the length of the tubes serves as a sort
of shock-absorber for the flameâs air supply, slowing down any gust of wind that might make
its way into the tubes at the top. Additionally, the split in direction helps
ensure any air that does get blown in gets applied to both sides of the flame equally, and doesnât serve to blow it in one direction and possibly out. And although the perforations surrounding
the burner donât help get oxygen to where the wick is, they do introduce air to the globe which keeps the glass from overheating. And, in a roundabout way, they probably do
end up providing necessary oxygen because of the glaring flaw in this design. So, uh, when something gets combusted the oxygen in the air that made that combustion possible gets used up. It ends up in combustion byproducts, mainly carbon dioxide and water vapor. And youâll notice that the intake of the fresh air supply is directly above the flame. This lantern collects some of its exhaust
gasses and sends them back to the burner. Obviously we donât have a perfect seal here by any means so enough fresh air gets introduced that combustion is still possible. But the recirculation of exhaust gasses isnât ideal. Iâm hoping this is visible on-camera but if it isn't, trust me that the flame of the hot-blast lantern is noticeably yellower than the dead-flame lamp. The fact that the wick is supplied with partially-spent
air in the lantern causes the flame to burn less intensely. This means it isnât as hot, so the incandescing soot particles that make the flame visible
and ultimately produce its light are also not quite as hot,
and thus they appear yellower and slightly dimmer. This is certainly a worthwhile trade-off for
wind-resistance, but it is a bummer. Luckily weâd fix that just a few years later. Indeed the same person, John H. Irwin, would patent this design in 1873. Or rather, a design which uses the same principle, anyway. The drawings donât look much like this at all. This new design, which today we call the cold-blast lantern, allowed for the best of both worlds. Youâll notice that now there is a seal at the top of the globe, and rather than a simple tube and funnel contraption we have this much more complicated chimney setup. However we have the same exact idea from the tubes downward. They end up in that same space above the fuel tank, and thatâs how the wick gets its combustion air. The key difference in this lantern is that fresh
air and combustion air (spent air - script error!) no longer intermingle. Hot, spent air from the flame travels up the chimney, but that chimney is actually inside this larger collar. Itâs now spring-loaded to put downward pressure
on the globe and keep it sealed. And the air-supply tubes are now open to the
space surrounding the chimney. And the difference is significant. Again, Iâm not sure if this will be visible
on camera, but the flame of the cold-blast lantern is much whiter and brighter than the hot-blast. In fact, these lamps are burning the same
exact fuel and their wicks are the same size, so the only difference between these two is
the design of the lantern itself. Cleverly, the currents produced by the exhaust
gases leaving the chimney actually help pull fresh air into the lanternâs intake tubes, although I must admit Iâm a little skeptical about that detail,
or at least how itâs worded. I mean, the flame itself will create a low-pressure
area behind it as the exhaust travels upward, and thatâs going to cause the atmosphere
to push fresh air into these tubes. I think the only real benefit here is the
separation of exhaust and intake but please do let us know otherwise. At any rate, thatâs why these lanterns look like this. The knowledge of Lavoisierâs theory of combustion, Argandâs clever hollow wick with lifting mechanism for more complete combustion and flame control, Dietz re-imagining it for kerosene and flat wicks, and Irwinâs designs for wind-resistance ultimately combined into this lantern. Well, not this exact lantern - Dietz alone sold plenty of different models, in fact, hereâs a larger one. The Blizzard. But this very recognizable design became the
de facto outdoor lantern of the country and other rural settings for decades. Oh, and one of the greatest benefits of this style of lantern (more generally called tubular lanterns) is that it must be upright in order for it to work. If for some reason they become tipped over, they quickly become starved of oxygen and will self-extinguish in a few seconds. This is important because
thereâs a tank full of some flammable liquid down there and it will eventually start seeping
out no matter what so when a lantern is knocked over itâs best for it to go out as quickly as possible Iâve been looking for a definitive explanation
of why this happens without much luck, but I think a reasonably explanation is simply the
flame ends up stuck inside the deflector, so exhaust gases can't rise out of it and
instead they fill up the deflector and eventually the tubes, snuffing out the flame. Honestly I think this safety feature was kind of a happy accident. And now I want to talk about a rather sad fact about these lanterns. These are new. These are not antiques, and in fact... I got them from Amazon. Now itâd be one thing if these were sold for nostalgiaâs sake or for emergency camping use but did you notice the holographic - or is this properly called prismatic? - anyway these stickers? Thatâs not Dietz being full of themselves or anything. In large swaths of the world, these are still in general use as everyday illumination, and to many folks this is a necessity of life. Knowing you got a real Dietz lantern and not
some knock-off is important. If this website I found is to be believed, the amount of kerosene used in these lamps and lanterns on an annual basis is about exactly the same as the annual consumption of jet fuel in the United States. Remember, jet fuel is essentially what these burn so thatâs pretty much an apples-to-apples comparison oddly enough. Now that statistic is from a book from 2012 and weâve probably made some progress in that regard, but isnât that, frankly, depressing? Huge numbers of people are stuck using what
is to us more than a century-old technology simply because electrification hasnât yet made
it to their part of the world. And to be clear, although the carbon emissions of that are way worse than I thought they could possibly be since, you know, itâs as bad as US air travel somehow, thatâs not what concerns me at all. This is a humanitarian problem that we need to be fixing. Like, these are charming and interesting and historically notable but theyâre also⌠bad! The reason Iâve not had them lit while shooting
most of this talking head is that⌠using them indoors is not exactly a great idea. Sure, they burn cleanly enough that we donât
see soot, at least when properly adjusted, but they are still smelly and unpleasant to be around. And we know long-term exposure comes with significant health risks. Besides that, theyâre still dangerous in the more immediate sense. Sure, theyâll go out if tipped over,
but youâll still have a puddle of kerosene to deal with if that happens. Theyâre very hot when running, refueling them is fiddly - I mean, the spout on these is really small - and like, itâs fire! Sure, itâs not an open flame which is good, but these can and do start fires. Thankfully organizations exist today that are doing the very overdue work of replacing these lanterns in the developing world. Youâve probably heard of some of them and
their clever ideas - like the GravityLight which uses the energy of a falling weight
to power an LED. And thatâs the thing - these are brighter than you probably expect,
especially if youâve never used one before. But itâs still not much light, maybe 10
watts incandescent equivalent? Something like that. With efficient LEDs, a small solar panel and pretty small
battery can easily beat these by a lot. But anyway, these lanterns did not represent
the end-point of fuel-combustion for lighting. Although, sadly, after the cold-blast lantern
we never made that next logical step which would of course have been the Baja-blast lantern. However, this green herring from before? This is an Aladdin lamp. This kerosene lamp uses technology that was
developed right at the end of the road for gas lighting. This is an incandescent lamp. It's not electric, mind you, but incandescent. And weâll explore it in a future video. Maybe even the next one! But you know me. Probably not. To close-out, I have two things. First, if the cold-blast lantern was such an
improvement over the hot-blast design, which for the most part it was, why didnât the hot-blast design become obsolete? Well, this does actually have an advantage. The recirculation of the exhaust, while it does make it burn less intensely, makes the lantern more fuel-efficient. If youâre concerned about the cost of fuel
more than you are light output and quality, it can be a better choice. Also, they tend to be less smelly thanks to that recirculation, so they can be a better option for indoor-use, though honestly I donât notice a difference between the two of these on that front. I take that back, when getting the B-roll shots it became apparent that the cold-blast lantern was *significantly* smellier than the hot-blast. Not that I would suggest you should use either one indoors. Seriously. Itâs unpleasant to the point that I needed to take breaks. The second thing I want to mention is Irwinâs focus on pre-heating the combustion air. He touts that as benefit in both of his patents, but I think this was entirely misguided. I mean, anyone who knows anything about wasting
their money on car modifications will tell you that you need a cold-air intake for more power. Which is exactly why the intake of your car is already
as far forward as possible so it's away from the hot bits of the engine but anyway, the hot-blast lantern definitely does pre-heat
the air but the cold-blast⌠it doesnât. Cold is in its name, after all. I mean, once itâs been lit for a while the
tubes do get pretty warm because theyâre made of metal and partly touch the other hot metal bits up here, but at the bottom theyâre barely warmer than ambient temp. Because only fresh air is going through them. In Irwin'sâ original drawings for this design preheating the incoming air was obviously something he still wanted to accomplish despite separating the intake and exhaust. But I can't figure out why. I donât know if he thought it was a logical
thing to do because of the success of the hot-blast lantern, and indeed in that patent he touts it as a benefit. But I donât really get it. Maybe he thought warmed air was more supportive
of the flame? Or maybe thereâs a real benefit to it that Iâm missing. But I really donât think it actually helps
make the lantern work better, and Dietzâs designs certainly donât do much to heat
the intake air. Itâs really just incidental. Anyway⌠toodles! ⍠phlogisticatedly smooth jazz ⍠Technology isnât limited to the realm of
electricity. This simply candle contains what was at one
point a marvelous new invention, simplifying the li - *laughs* And it didnât even light. However [match is struck] It is harder to light a match in complete darkness than you would think! However [match is struck] Failed to light a match again. Great track record. This simple candle contains an innovation
that was at one point a marvelous new invention, simplifying the⌠canât even light a dang candle. ...incorporated here was an innovation that
predated Levoisierâs combuston theory⌠conFORKIN' theory. Earlier attempts at making kerosene-like fuels
failed in this regard, but⌠[laughs] That was fun! Is there a burn mark? Oh, good. Tableâs First Burn Mark! ...was to seal the fuel tank completely as poss.. As completely. Oops. My fellow lantern aficionados and I, we call ourselves Dietz Nuts, can tell the difference apart from a mi [breaks into laughter] ..can tell the difference apart from a mile away. Bofa deez
[breaks into laughter again] Now, my fellow lantern aficionados and I, we call ourselves...
[yet again fails to not laugh] Bofa deez lanterns succeeded
at protecting their [heâs losing it] flames from the wind... [and more laughter] Bofa deez lanterns
[lost it again] Bofa deez lanterns succe...
[and there we go once more] Shoot. Well, that doesnât work! Learn something new every day. ...creates a long, flat flame. This produce⌠[brain.exe has stopped] As a matter of fact, the first true innovation can be pegged to⌠Glad that didnât go out yet, âcause that was [throat clear] But anyway, weâre all over the place here
(as usual) so. [clunk] I forgot this is here. Youâre really tall! Although to be fair, the word âparaffinâ
was derived shhhh thatâs the wrong word! I thought I had a good handle on how to light matches when I first set out to make this video. As you could see here, this turned out not to be the case. I honestly don't know where I went wrong in life. I guess for me, when I use a Diamond it'll be rough. See, it's a pun on "diamond in the rough." Shut up, it's hilarious.
I nearly died choking on "Dietz nuts". Your channel brings so much snarky light into my routine when I least expect it. đ
Hmm. I never kenw those were tubes, I thought they were to protect the glass from debris and hold the top on tightly. The design is actually fascinating!
Did he have to memorise the script to do it in the dark or is there light levels trickery? It looked darker than an autocue screen would allow.
I really really like when Alec picks a really random topic out of the two main sources: Audiovisual tech and HVAC tech. The ones about traffic lights and turn signals and retroreflectors and the colour brown are my absolute favourites.
What I love most about these videos, is that leave-no-stone-unturned approach. Any other person would make them 15 minutes and leave me with some trivial questions in mind, but with Alec there's always an extra 8-10 minutes left of video for me to satisfy my curiosity. He makes 30 minutes not feel long at all.
Technology Connections has quickly become the spiritual successor of the Engineer Guy.
For non-British people wondering about the t-shirt.
is it just me, or is this like a turbocharger for a lamp? exhaust gasses being used to accelerate intake gas?
It would be hard to overstate how excited I am about this and the next video.
I discovered the channel years ago when I finally got to bring home my grandmother's Sunbeam Radiant Control toaster that I had been fascinated with since I was a toddler.
This winter (in Texas with no power) I took the opportunity to restore and use my other grandmother's Aladdin lamp that they got as a wedding present in ~1940, and did a deep dive on those as well.
Top quality content as usual.
I don't think I heard you, at any point in the video, refer to these lanterns as "neat."
Haha Dietz nuts
The theory for cold-air intakes goes that cold air is denser, so you can cram a little more of it (and thus more oxygen) into the cylinder, and burn a little more fuel on each power stroke. That benefit (however large or small it may be on a given car) wouldn't apply to a lantern since it just sort of... burns, continuously, rather than in little self-contained spurts.
Pre-heating combustion air is done on the basis that you're spending energy on bringing the air up from ambient temperature to whatever the temperature of the exhaust gas will be. For applications like a boiler or furnace, it can be desirable to reduce that energy by bringing the air in already warm.
Now, whether that would be beneficial for a lamp, I don't know.