The use of lamps extends far back in human history as archaelogical research

has revealed that oil-burning lamps were in use while the ancient civillisations
- Babylonian, Egyptian, Greek and Roman - flafourished.

These lamps made in pottery or metal were of a simple type comprising a

reservoir, a burner opening or nozzle, an air inlet and a wick. The capillarity of
a woven or braided wick was discovered at an early date to give more
satisfactory results than burning the oil fuel direct and was the first in a long
series of evolutionary steps which finally produced the incandescent mantle
lamp as known today.

The fuel used in these early lamps and for many centuries afterwards was oil
derived from animal or vegetable sources and the illuminating power was so
low that candles were preferred and were employed as indoor illuminants until
well into the nineteenth century, when the discovery of mineral oil gave a
fresh impetus to the development of lamps. The importance of candles as
illuminants is emphasised by the fact that among the 81 Livery Companies in
the City of London, two; the Wax Chandlers and the Tallow Chandles were
makers of candles but there was no Company devoted to lamp manufacture.
It is not the purpose of this paper to give a complete history of oil lamps, but
some early examples must be described as at various times they introduced
features such as central draught, annular wick, inner and outer air supply and
flame spreader all of which were eventually brought into combination to
construct an oil burner capable of producing a blue flame and one to which an
incandescent mantle could be applied.

The first step in the long, series of inventions which ultimately produced the
incandescent mantle lamp was made by Ami Argand (1755-1803), a Swiss
resident in London who obtained a Patent in 1784. The invention was designed
to avoid waste of fuel in the form of smoke or soot and consisted in causing a
current of air to pass through the inside of the flame and another current of air
on the outside of the flame by the use of a "chimney, dome, funnel, tube or
pipe" through which the fresh air was to pass. Unfortunately, Argand's
specification was not accompanied by a drawing, but this burner established a
type which is referred to by his name in a number of later publications and
consists of a burner in which the wick is in the form of a hollow cylinder so
that air rises within and without the flame, producing more complete oxidation
and therefore a brighter light. The addition of a cylindrical chimney creates a
greater draught, at the same time promoting steadiness in the flame by
preventing side draughts. A "demand for improved lighting grew up in the
late eighteenth century as a concomitant of the Industrial Revolution.
There was a steady improvement in the quality of lamps available; between
1783 and 1836 there were introduced in succession the flate-woven wick- and
the circular oil burner with cylindrical wick and glass chimney known from its
inventor's name as Argand (Fig. 1 and Fig. 2). But the better lamps only
emphasizeed the poor illuminating quality of both the vegetable and the
animal oils in use. Gas-lighting was unquestionably superior, but its virtual
restriction to large rooms and to urban areas encourages the attempt to find a
satisfactory alternative" (Short History of Technology, Derry & Williams,
oxford Univ. (1960) 516).

The reference in the page quoted above to the year 1836 is presumably to
Houghtons lamp (Fig. 3). This was a draught lamp with an annular wick and
an outer annular air passage. The lamp is unusual in that it includes a spring
actuated piston for forcing the liquid fuel upwards to the burner. This burner
was of the Argand type and Houghton's drawings include an illustration of the
Argand burner then in common use.

At this period difficulties were still being exerienced in providing an air supply
sufficient to effect complete combustion of the oil fuel and the Bude light
invented by Gurney & Rixon in 1839 is an example of how earlier inventors
endeavoured to overcome the air supply difficulty (Fig. 4).

This burner, which was of the Argand type, was described by its inventors as
the "Olio-oxygen or Bude Light" and was designed to burn inflammable gas
obtained by distillation from coal, oil, bituminous substances, etc. It was
primarily designed as a signalling lamp and, to enable an clear, bright light to
be obtained (using the fuels then available) a jet or stream of oxygen was
introduced through a central tube to the interior of the flame at the top of a
tubular wick.

The widespread use of oil lamps in the latter half of the cenury was due
directly to the discovery of how to distil light fractions from the heavy mineral
oils alrady known to exist in various parts of the world. In 1848 James Young
started a works in Derbyshire to refine petroleum from a spring discovered in
connection with a coal seam and patented a process of low temperature
distallation in 1850. Markets were soon created for lamp oil which Young
called "paraffin oil" and introduced suitable lamps for burning it as an
illuminant and according to The Dictionaiy of Applied Chemnistry (Sir Edward
Thorpe, Vol. V, (1924) 66).

"Paraffin oil rapidly became the light of the people all over Britain."

Petroleum from oil springs began to be produced in quantity in Pannsylvania

in 1859 and for many years thereafter the United States continued to be the
principal source of paraffin for lamps. From the 1850's onwards there was a
wide use of paraffin lamps, as large areas in Europe and America were still
without coal gas supplies and electric lighting did not come into general use
until the end of the century.

The great demand for oil lamps provided an incentive to inventors and
throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century numerous burners were
evolved to eliminate the emission of smoke and smell. Many of these early
lamps employed a flat wick whose upper end projected through a slot in a
burner cone which was surrounded by a glass chimney to induce an air supply
and protect the flame from side draughts. A typical example of such a lamp is
that patented in the U.S.A. in 1877 by J. H. Boardman, which had a flat wick
adjustable by means of a spiked pinion and emerging at its upper end through
a slot in the burner in the base of which is an annular inlet for air to support
combustion (Fig. 5).

The patentee was aware of the dangers attending to use of lamp oil since he
emphaises the principal feature of his invention as a heat and gas-stopping
attachment. This form of design was gradually improved by the introduction of
the annular wick which was later to prove an important factor in the design of
incandescent burners. An example of one of these late nineteenth century
lamps is Sepulchres invention in 1893, wherein upper end of the annular
wick is surrounded by a double cone to supply air to the tip of the wick and a
supply to the flame which was diffused into a bowl-like form by a disc flame
spreader.