Allan Sterling, age 13, of Danville, Ill., for his question:
WHEN WAS THE FIRST LAMP USED?
A lamp is any device used for artificial lighting. The first lamp goes back to ancient times, when the earliest forms of lamps were burning sticks or glowing coals held in braziers.
Later, long burning torches were used for illumination. These torches consisted of branches of twigs or splinters of resinous wood that were bound together and dipped in fat or oil to improve their burning qualities.
The exact origin of the oil lamp, which was the first true lamp, is obscure, but such lamps were in general use in Greece by the 4th Century B.C. The first such lamps were open vessels made of stone, clay or shell in which fat or oil was burned.
Later lamps were partially enclosed reservoirs containing fat or oil into which a wick of flax or cotton was inserted through a small hole. The fuel was drawn up the wick by capillary action and burned at the end of the wick.
Large Greek and Roman lamps were equipped with many wicks to give brighter light.
In northern Europe, the most common form of lamp was an open pot of stone filled with grease, into which a wick was placed. Lamps of this type are still used by the Eskimos.
A great improvement in lamps occurred in the 18th Century, when flat wicks, which gave a larger flame, were substituted for round wicks. A Swiss chemist named Aime Argand, who lived from 1755 to 1803, invented a lamp that used a tubular wick enclosed between two cylinders of metal. The inner cylinder extended below the bottom of the fuel reservoir and provided an internal draft.
Argand also discovered the principle of the gas lamp chimney, a tube or cylinder of glass that improved the draft of the lamp, causing it to burn more brightly. The chimney allowed the lamp to burn without smoke and also provided protection from the wind.
The chimney also improved the draft of the lamp, thus improving the glow. The cylindrical bottom draft was later embodied in an adaption of the gas lamp and the quality of light improved even more.
As early as colonial times in America, wick lamps were fitted with screws for adjusting the flame.
After the introduction of illuminating gas in the early 19th Century, this fuel came into common use for lighting in cities and towns. Three types of gas lamps were in common use: the Argand burner, the fishtail or batwing burners in which gas was issued from a slit or a pair of holes in the burner tip to form a sheet of flame and the incandescent lamp, in which the gas flame heated a finely woven mesh sleeve made of thorium oxide into white heat.
Whale oil was the chief fuel for lamps until about the middle of the 19th Century. This oil was then entirely supplanted by kerosene, a fuel that had the advantage of being clean, inexpensive and safe. At the close of the 19th Century, the electric lamp took over.