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In just the last video,

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we took a look at these hurricane lanterns, their history, and how they work.

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If you haven’t seen that, I’d recommend
watching it first

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because this video will be building upon it.

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Oh, uh, real quick — someone asked for a simulated hurricane.

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I can’t quite do that but here’s a leaf blower!

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[whooshing of blower]

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Pretty impressive.

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Anyway, flat wick kerosene lamps and lanterns were ubiquitous,

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every-day sources of lighting outside of cities for decades,

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and unfortunately remain so across wide swaths of the developing world.

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While burning a fuel to create light is certainly
not the best way to do it for a plethora of reasons,

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a development of the late 19th century
made the process a whole lot more useful.

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This kerosene lamp is much brighter than any
of the others we’ve seen so far,

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burns cleanly,

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and is green.

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And the technology that makes it so bright is what we’ll be talking about today.

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But first, we need to step back from lanterns
and talk about the towngas industry.

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Someone, and I don’t remember who so I’m
sorry I can’t thank you personally,

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recommended this book to me.

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Disenchanted Night, The Industrialization
of Light in the Nineteenth Century.

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It’s a fascinating read and focuses mainly
on the development of centralized lighting systems,

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both gas and electric.

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I had mentioned coal gas in the last video
and a number of you wondered what that was,

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so here’s what that was.

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Also we need to talk about it anyway.

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Before the natural gas we know today,

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gas that was delivered to the home was manufactured from coal,

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and less commonly wood.

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It took me until last week to realize that’s why we call it natural gas.

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Its predecessors literally were not natural!

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Anyway, coal can actually be processed into
a number of different products much like petroleum,

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and it was known since the late 17th century
that if you distill coal in a retort

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— that’s one of these mad scientist chemistry set things,
not just a devastating comeback —

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one of the byproducts was an inflammable spirit.

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I’m going to quote from the first known
written discovery of this phenomenon,

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written in a letter to Robert Boyle by amateur chemist
John Clayton.

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This was in 1691.

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[soft jazz begins playing]
I got some coal, and distilled it in a retort in an open fire.

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At first there came over only phlegm,

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afterwards a black oil, and then likewise a spirit arose,

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which I could no ways condense;

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but it forced my lute, or broke my glasses.

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Side note: 
I have no clue what “forced my lute” is supposed to mean.

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I also don’t know if the “or broke my glasses” might be clarification

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done by Schivelbusch, the author of the book.

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I googled the phrase “forced my lute”
and the only results were of this exact letter,

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many of them being quoted from this very book.

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I’m choosing to interpret it as one would
“grinds my gears” or “ruffles my feathers”

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because that’s fun!

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It’s probably wrong, but anyway, to continue…

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Once, when it had forced my lute, coming close
thereto in order to try to repair it,

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I observed that the spirit which issued out caught fire
at the flame of the candle,

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and continued burning with violence as it issued out in
a stream,

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which I blew out and lighted again alternately for several times.

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I then had a mind to try if I could save any of this spirit;

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in order to which I took a turbinated receiver, and,

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putting a candle to the pipe of the receiver,

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whilst the spirit arose, I observed that it catched flame,

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and continued burning at the end of the pipe though you could not discern what fed the flame.

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I then blew it out and lighted it again several times.

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As would I, Clayton.

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As would I.

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The discovery of this inflammable air, as it was often called,

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was a real mind-bender.

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What’s burning? People asked.

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How can there be fire with no oil and no wick?

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Seemed like an impossibility and nothing more.

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But of course it wasn’t.

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However it would take quite a long time,

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in fact more than a century from when that letter was written

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for it to be put to use.

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It was the factories of England,

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thanks to their owners who wished to see greater productivity out of their workers,

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where we could find the first permanent application for this wondrous stuff.

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Specifically, at Watt & Boulton of Soho.

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As it happened the owners had already expressed
interest in improved lighting technologies,

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and they knew Argand personally and used his lamps.

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But one of their associates, William Murdoch,

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would develop the coal-gas production and storage methods which were to quickly become the standard.

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More or less.

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Oh and quick side note, at basically the exact same time

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a French guy named Phillippe LeBon was doing similar work and developed something called the thermolamp,

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but his idea centered around producing the gas at the hyper-local level,

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as in you would have a gas distilling apparatus in your home,

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and ultimately the concept fizzled out.

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Originally experimenting with balloon-like
containers to store and perhaps even transport the gas,

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Murdoch eventually found that the
only reasonable way to make use of this gas

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was with pipes to distribute it, and so-called gasometers for storage.

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Which, funnily enough, were devices conceived
by none other than our old pal Antoine Lavoisier.

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Murdoch, by the way, is responsible for calling it
a “gasometer”

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which annoyed many scientists because it is not a measuring implement of any sort.

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Those with a particular keenness towards accuracy much
prefer the term gas holder.

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Nevertheless, gasometer stuck around.

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Anyway, first done at the rather small scale
of

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on-site gas production and storage for lighting a single factory,

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this idea quickly scaled up and spread out.

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As luck would have it, producing coal gas
used basically the same exact process as producing coke from coal,

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which had already been in routine production
for the high temperature furnaces used in metalworking.

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In fact the gas was a byproduct of the coke
production process.

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So basically, we already had the knowledge
and equipment for this new gas stuff,

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and just needed to tweak how the coal was distilled
a little bit

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and make an effort to collect and store the gas.

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Before long, central coal gas supplies were
feeding entire neighborhoods,

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and an imaginative revolution in lighting was swiftly upon us.

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This manufactured gas contained a lot of so-called illuminants,

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or components which helped produce a bright flame.

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I mentioned it in passing, but what actually makes
the flame of a candle glow

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are small particles within the flame that are incandescing.

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That’s a very complicated topic

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and there are a number of reasons those particles can

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A) exist and B) glow,

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but you’ll only get a bright flame if there's something in the fuel which will glow brightly with the heat of combustion.

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A natural gas flame hardly glows at all

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because the fuel is quite pure and burns completely thanks to a well-designed burner.

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In fact the blue color of that flame is the
result of an entirely different chemical process.

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A flat-wick kerosene lamp not only burns a
less-pure,

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or you might say “dirtier” fuel,

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but much more importantly that combustion
isn’t as complete,

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so little bits of unburned fuel end up as soot which will glow in the heat of the flame.

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The same goes for a candle.

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And for this new coal gas.

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By tweaking the coal distilling process,

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and also by using different sources of coal,

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the illuminating ability of the gas could be maximized.

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And since the gas was already a vapor and
didn’t rely on a wick to evaporate and burn,

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the flames could be much larger without becoming sooty, and thus they could be brighter.

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A common design for a burner produced a sort
of fan-shaped flame,

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and with a limitless-to-the-user supply of fuel in the wall,

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brighter lights were easy to accomplish.

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Just add more burners as desired.

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The decades that followed saw countless designs
for new lighting fixtures.

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We also developed the first light switches,

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which in this case were valves that could stop and start the flow of gas.

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Those quickly started being placed near the entry of rooms,

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pretty much exactly where we put light switches today.

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This coal gas infrastructure looked an awful
lot like the electric lights that would replace them

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in no small part because those electric
lights were emulating how the gas ones worked.

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Now, just as it is today,

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gaslighting was unpleasant.

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Oh sure, it was marvelously better than candles

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and when we first started using it everybody was wowed out of their minds.

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But we quickly found its many problems.

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This coal gas was very toxic and it was not
hard at all to be poisoned by it.

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Unlike gas of today, there wasn’t much pressure
in the pipes

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so you couldn’t actually hear the gas escaping even from a normally-operating fixture.

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This made leaks undetectable in many cases.

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Deadly gas explosions weren’t exactly uncommon, either.

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And the infrastructure which moved it around
would pollute soil and groundwater when it leaked.

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Even when things were going well, we also
ran into problems

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because we were burning so much of the gas that we were using up all the oxygen in a room.

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There was a downside to more light,

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we just hadn’t run into that limitation yet

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because candles and oil lamps realistically didn’t consume enough oxygen to be problematic.

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While we would eventually develop fixtures which had
their own ventilation

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(this also helped cut back on how hot the lights made the rooms in which they were used)

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even then places which needed a lot of light would run low on oxygen.

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It was very common for people to find going
to the theater to be an unpleasant,

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headache-inducing experience

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because they were literally being partly
asphyxiated the whole time.

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Oh and also if you’ve heard about how over
time the byproducts of this gas would do things like

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darken walls and cover paintings in layers of goopy soot,

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well that was also a thing.

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Over the decades people simply lost their affinity for the stuff.

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And it’s no wonder.

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And so now we are back to this.

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Up ‘til now, more light meant more fire.

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We still relied on the illuminating particles
in the gas to provide the visible light we wanted.

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But this was about to change.

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In 1886, Austrian chemist Auer von Welsbach invented the
 incandescent gas mantle,

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and it’s what makes this lamp so bright.

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Here, we are simply using the heat of the
flame to our advantage.

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We no longer care if it produces light of
its own,

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we just want it to get the mantle very hot which causes the mantle to glow.

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This principle was known long before Welsbach
invented the gas mantle.

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Limelight, mainly used in theaters,

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was a direct predecessor.

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Here a piece of calcium oxide, or quicklime,

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was heated to incandescence by an oxyhydrogen flame.

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If you want to see what that looks like, there’s
a video linked in the description

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or you can check out the card here.

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Of note is that a second phenomenon, candoluminescense,
is known to be going on here as well.

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This phenomenon causes certain materials to
emit more visible light

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than a blackbody radiator would at the same temperature,

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and, well,

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the explanation on that is a little confusing to me and honestly it doesn’t seem like the knowledge of the mechanism is entirely settled yet

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so we’re just gonna acknowledge it’s a thing! 
And move on.

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What Welsbach figured out was how to make
the same general principle of limelight

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work with the low intensity flames of ordinary gas.

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Now, we need to make a quick clarification here.

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The coal gas of this time period didn’t
have to burn with a visible flame like a candle.

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Burners meant for lighting would of course do that,

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but with better control of the air as it mixes with the gas, 
a cleaner, hotter flame could be attained.

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This is what the Bunsen burner was designed for.

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And indeed, Welsbach would use Bunsen-type
burners for his new gas mantles.

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And the Aladdin lamp makes use of those gas mantles.

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By the way, this is the same Aladdin lamp
company that invented the touch lamp!

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So there you go.

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Now, I must admit that we’re going a little out of order here.

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The gas mantle was in-effect adapted for
use in kerosene lamps like this one.

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Welsbach was working with Bunsen burners and
coal gas,

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and this implementation actually has some significant drawbacks which we’ll get to,

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but for narrative reasons I’m explaining it with this lamp first.

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If you noticed that the burner and chimney
look very different

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from the Dietz lanterns and the dead-flame lamp,

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well that’s on purpose.

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This tubular wick burner,

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which is not really an Argand burner, again that was a red herring, 
it just sorta looks like one… anyway.

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The skinny and tall chimney,

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combined with the hollow wick,

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creates a central-draft burner that burns kerosene much more intensely than these guys.

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If you noticed when I removed the mantle and
showed the flames - how high they went - yeah.

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This is a very different animal.

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Atop the burner sits the mantle.

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Its lace-like appearance suggests it could be a sort of fabric, but it’s not.

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However, it was!

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We’ll get there, that part is extremely clever.

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In its current state, though,

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this is a very fragile lattice of effectively ash.

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00:14:02,309 --> 00:14:06,492
This has very little mass, a large part of why it’s so fragile.

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00:14:06,492 --> 00:14:08,212
And it’s made from…

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00:14:08,212 --> 00:14:13,073
did you know there’s controversy regarding the phasing out of thorium in gas mantles?

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00:14:13,073 --> 00:14:16,600
Some very picky campers certainly do but most
of you probably don’t.

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Happened like 30 years ago.

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We’ll talk about that later.

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But, uh, right.

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Anyway, this mantle is probably composed
mainly of yttrium oxide

228
00:14:26,129 --> 00:14:29,414
which is a ceramic material with a very high melting point.

229
00:14:29,414 --> 00:14:31,278
About 2,400 degrees Celsius,

230
00:14:31,278 --> 00:14:33,385
or 4,400 degrees Fahrenheit,

231
00:14:33,385 --> 00:14:37,412
or just shy of 2,700 degrees Kelvin.

232
00:14:37,412 --> 00:14:39,955
Because it can get that hot without melting,

233
00:14:39,955 --> 00:14:42,201
it can incandesce brightly.

234
00:14:42,201 --> 00:14:46,196
And that means it will produce a lot of visible
light when heated with fire.

235
00:14:46,196 --> 00:14:49,084
Take a look, here’s me holding a lighter to it.

236
00:14:49,084 --> 00:14:52,942
You see a glowing hot-spot pretty much as
white as an incandescent light bulb.

237
00:14:52,942 --> 00:14:57,455
But, you’ll notice that it glows best near
the hot, blue part of the flame.

238
00:14:57,455 --> 00:14:59,743
If I switch to a torch-style lighter,

239
00:14:59,743 --> 00:15:02,215
which uses a burner not unlike a Bunsen burner,

240
00:15:02,269 --> 00:15:06,709
you’ll see it makes a brighter and more
uniform spot on the mantle.

241
00:15:06,709 --> 00:15:11,835
The best flame for illuminating the mantle
is clearly a pure and hot one.

242
00:15:11,835 --> 00:15:15,239
Getting that sort of flame with kerosene and a wick

243
00:15:15,239 --> 00:15:18,420
is the reason the Aladdin lamp is somewhat special.

244
00:15:18,420 --> 00:15:20,699
The burner is able to do just that.

245
00:15:20,699 --> 00:15:24,824
In practice, you light this lamp by removing the entire top section,

246
00:15:24,824 --> 00:15:26,264
known as the gallery.

247
00:15:26,264 --> 00:15:28,410
This holds the chimney and mantle.

248
00:15:28,410 --> 00:15:30,401
That grants you access to the wick.

249
00:15:30,401 --> 00:15:33,641
Then you simply light it and put the gallery back on.

250
00:15:33,641 --> 00:15:35,219
Then, when you lift the wick,

251
00:15:35,219 --> 00:15:38,390
the strong draft created by the tall, slender chimney

252
00:15:38,390 --> 00:15:41,290
along with the hollow wick and flame spreader

253
00:15:41,290 --> 00:15:46,865
combine to create an astonishingly clean-burning, high-heat kerosene flame.

254
00:15:46,865 --> 00:15:50,943
The mantle’s shape helps confine the flame and its heat energy

255
00:15:50,943 --> 00:15:54,724
so that it acts upon it as much as possible and voila.

256
00:15:54,724 --> 00:15:58,471
A very bright, surprisingly usable kerosene lamp.

257
00:15:58,471 --> 00:16:02,893
And this burns so cleanly it’s entirely odorless.

258
00:16:02,893 --> 00:16:04,719
Seriously. This is amazing to me,

259
00:16:04,719 --> 00:16:08,896
you really only get heat from this thing. 
There’s no smell at all,

260
00:16:08,896 --> 00:16:13,342
and yet it’s burning the same kerosene as these Dietzes.

261
00:16:13,342 --> 00:16:15,676
But its burner, while clearly unique,

262
00:16:15,676 --> 00:16:18,088
isn’t the star of this show.

263
00:16:18,088 --> 00:16:20,689
The reason the mantle can glow so brightly,

264
00:16:20,689 --> 00:16:23,771
aside from the fact that it’s made from a heat-tolerant material,

265
00:16:23,771 --> 00:16:26,518
is that it’s so incredibly light.

266
00:16:26,518 --> 00:16:29,681
I wasn’t exaggerating that this is basically ash,

267
00:16:29,681 --> 00:16:31,982
this stuff is hardly even there.

268
00:16:31,982 --> 00:16:37,288
Having such a miniscule thermal mass allows
it to easily get to incandescent temperatures

269
00:16:37,288 --> 00:16:41,481
without relying on an oxyhydrogen flame as limelight did.

270
00:16:41,481 --> 00:16:43,926
But if it’s so light and fragile,

271
00:16:43,926 --> 00:16:46,718
how on Earth are you supposed to install one?

272
00:16:46,718 --> 00:16:49,132
And why does it look like a tiny hairnet?

273
00:16:49,132 --> 00:16:51,510
Well, here’s the clever bit.

274
00:16:51,510 --> 00:16:54,651
This mantle was a fabric mesh.

275
00:16:54,651 --> 00:17:00,871
But the strings which made that mesh were coated
in a solution containing salts of yttrium nitrate

276
00:17:00,871 --> 00:17:03,628
and potentially some other chemicals, too.

277
00:17:03,628 --> 00:17:08,576
Here’s a different mantle which, spoiler, will come up later.

278
00:17:08,576 --> 00:17:14,267
This one hasn’t been used yet and it's soft, fairly strong,
and quite flexible.

279
00:17:14,267 --> 00:17:16,562
The actual fibers that make up the mantle

280
00:17:16,562 --> 00:17:19,888
can be made of cotton, rayon, really a number of things

281
00:17:19,888 --> 00:17:23,666
so long as they can soak up and retain the salt solution.

282
00:17:23,666 --> 00:17:27,657
The yttrium oxide doesn’t exist yet in this form,

283
00:17:27,657 --> 00:17:29,730
but it will when we burn it.

284
00:17:29,730 --> 00:17:35,680
The mantle of the Aladdin lamp is a little different
 as it comes coated in this blue stuff which holds its shape.

285
00:17:35,680 --> 00:17:37,834
And when you set light to it,

286
00:17:37,834 --> 00:17:39,429
this happens.

287
00:17:39,429 --> 00:17:43,569
That initial burn-off converted the salts of
yttrium nitrate in the fibers

288
00:17:43,569 --> 00:17:48,334
into solid yttrium oxide and also burned everything else away.

289
00:17:48,334 --> 00:17:51,773
Normally the mantles don’t just up and fwoomp
like that -

290
00:17:51,773 --> 00:17:59,566
that blue stuff (I’m not sure what it is - it might be collodion or possibly celluloid - let us know if you know)

291
00:17:59,566 --> 00:18:02,242
it accelerates the process greatly.

292
00:18:02,242 --> 00:18:04,198
But the end-result is the same.

293
00:18:04,198 --> 00:18:08,226
The ghostly remains of the newly-formed yttrium
oxide

294
00:18:08,226 --> 00:18:09,832
and pretty much nothing else.

295
00:18:09,832 --> 00:18:15,986
It takes the form of the fabric net because
that’s where the nitrates were just a moment ago.

296
00:18:15,986 --> 00:18:20,969
And now that it’s here, 
all you need to do is get it hot and it will glow.

297
00:18:20,969 --> 00:18:24,341
And importantly, it doesn’t burn away.

298
00:18:24,341 --> 00:18:29,733
The benefit here is that you get much more
light with the same amount of fuel.

299
00:18:29,733 --> 00:18:33,678
This lamp does burn fuel more quickly than
a Dietz lantern,

300
00:18:33,678 --> 00:18:36,849
but it’s an order of magnitude brighter.

301
00:18:36,849 --> 00:18:39,029
The light is also much whiter -

302
00:18:39,029 --> 00:18:42,437
no longer the yellow of a flame but a true white.

303
00:18:42,437 --> 00:18:44,569
In the city where the fuel was gas,

304
00:18:44,569 --> 00:18:48,064
you could have much more light with fewer burners.

305
00:18:48,064 --> 00:18:50,607
Now you don’t have to use up all the oxygen in the room,

306
00:18:50,607 --> 00:18:53,436
and you’ll have a much smaller gas bill.

307
00:18:53,436 --> 00:18:57,457
In a way, this was an early energy-efficiency technology.

308
00:18:57,457 --> 00:18:58,715
How ‘bout that.

309
00:18:58,715 --> 00:19:03,271
Also, the need to burn the fuels more completely
in Bunsen-type burners

310
00:19:03,271 --> 00:19:06,367
undoubtedly created a healthier environment.

311
00:19:06,367 --> 00:19:10,509
It’s quite interesting that this lamp produces no odor

312
00:19:10,509 --> 00:19:14,952
when its kerosene and flat wick compatriots all do.

313
00:19:14,952 --> 00:19:20,235
I had assumed that there might be some catalytic
reaction going on with the gas mantle,

314
00:19:20,235 --> 00:19:22,940
but I haven’t found any evidence for that.

315
00:19:22,940 --> 00:19:29,086
Instead I think it’s just the fact that the burner actually manages to burn the kerosene completely.

316
00:19:29,086 --> 00:19:34,449
You can even see how the flame is bluer, almost like
a stovetop under the mantle.

317
00:19:34,449 --> 00:19:36,626
Just like a bunsen burner.

318
00:19:36,626 --> 00:19:42,472
While I haven’t found any contemporary reports
of the switch to gas mantles providing healthier indoor air,

319
00:19:42,472 --> 00:19:45,175
I can’t imagine that didn’t happen.

320
00:19:45,175 --> 00:19:50,014
Although, this discussion is muddied by the
fact that the gas mantle was invented

321
00:19:50,014 --> 00:19:55,730
at just about the same time that the electric light bulb
was being perfected.

322
00:19:55,730 --> 00:20:01,336
One of the things Schivelbusch mentions regarding
electric light which is largely lost today

323
00:20:01,336 --> 00:20:06,390
is that the big deal of the carbon filament lamp was that, finally,

324
00:20:06,390 --> 00:20:09,593
we had an electric light that mimicked gaslight.

325
00:20:10,785 --> 00:20:12,897
Yes. You heard that right.

326
00:20:12,897 --> 00:20:18,139
Electric light was around long before whoever
gets to rightfully claim invention of the carbon filament lamp

327
00:20:18,139 --> 00:20:20,051
invented the carbon filament lamp,

328
00:20:20,051 --> 00:20:26,681
but the arc lights of that time were way too bright to find their way into small spaces.

329
00:20:26,681 --> 00:20:33,631
The carbon filament light bulb was about the
same brightness of contemporary open-flame gas lights.

330
00:20:33,631 --> 00:20:39,200
Electric light hadn’t so much been invented
as it was tamed.

331
00:20:39,200 --> 00:20:44,851
The gas mantle therefore represented a brighter
than electric light (for the home anyway)

332
00:20:44,851 --> 00:20:46,404
for a short time.

333
00:20:46,404 --> 00:20:49,357
Once the tungsten filament was developed in
the early 1900’s

334
00:20:49,357 --> 00:20:51,511
electric light achieved parity,

335
00:20:51,511 --> 00:20:57,361
but there was a short time where the
gas mantle could legitimately be viewed as superior.

336
00:20:57,361 --> 00:21:03,567
And so, in a funny way, the gas mantle ended
up slowing the progress of electrification.

337
00:21:03,567 --> 00:21:09,242
I mean, why go through the trouble of signing
up for electricity when you’ve got gas already,

338
00:21:09,242 --> 00:21:11,114
you’re gonna keep it for cooking,

339
00:21:11,114 --> 00:21:16,083
and these new mantles make it just as bright as these newfangled electric lamps

340
00:21:16,083 --> 00:21:18,000
which seem scary and new!

341
00:21:18,887 --> 00:21:23,750
It was a pretty rational choice to ignore electricity. 
For a while anyway.

342
00:21:23,750 --> 00:21:26,267
But what about outside of cities?

343
00:21:26,267 --> 00:21:30,121
Rural areas certainly weren’t the first in line for electrification

344
00:21:30,121 --> 00:21:31,969
or indeed gas service,

345
00:21:31,969 --> 00:21:36,534
so portable lamps and lanterns would
remain the king for quite a while.

346
00:21:36,534 --> 00:21:40,553
And that’s the niche that the Aladdin lamp fits into.

347
00:21:40,553 --> 00:21:43,690
But it’s certainly not perfect.

348
00:21:43,690 --> 00:21:45,882
It will be hard to show this on camera,

349
00:21:45,882 --> 00:21:50,186
but this particular lamp seems to have a defective wick.

350
00:21:50,186 --> 00:21:53,123
It does not burn uniformly at all,

351
00:21:53,123 --> 00:21:56,498
there’s a substantial hot spot on one side.

352
00:21:56,498 --> 00:21:59,541
Try as I might I cannot completely tame this,

353
00:21:59,541 --> 00:22:04,217
I’ve used the included wick cleaner and even gone so far as to use an X-Acto knife

354
00:22:04,217 --> 00:22:07,973
to cut off a few millimeters of wick and make it level.

355
00:22:07,973 --> 00:22:09,552
But it’s still there,

356
00:22:09,552 --> 00:22:13,955
one spot of the wick seems to be simply thicker than the rest, 
I think.

357
00:22:13,955 --> 00:22:18,299
It’s not a huge problem but I cannot run
this lamp at its full brightness

358
00:22:18,299 --> 00:22:24,750
because if I turn it too high, that hot spot
actually produces a visible flame that leaves the mantle.

359
00:22:24,750 --> 00:22:28,391
And it starts depositing unburned fuel on it.

360
00:22:28,391 --> 00:22:32,914
This is actually kind of fascinating because,
so long as this doesn’t go on for too long,

361
00:22:32,914 --> 00:22:37,047
you can reduce the intensity and that carbon buildup will burn away.

362
00:22:37,047 --> 00:22:42,300
But if it does go on too long, it could damage
the mantle and indeed the lamp itself.

363
00:22:42,300 --> 00:22:48,736
At some point I’ll replace the wick, but
that is a significant downside to this style of lamp.

364
00:22:49,240 --> 00:22:53,547
Speaking of downsides, perhaps the biggest
one for this style of lamp is that,

365
00:22:53,547 --> 00:22:55,346
even with a perfect wick,

366
00:22:55,346 --> 00:22:58,979
they demand near-constant attention.

367
00:22:58,979 --> 00:23:02,554
There’s a rather small sweet spot for operating it.

368
00:23:02,554 --> 00:23:05,031
Too low and the mantle doesn’t glow,

369
00:23:05,031 --> 00:23:13,096
and it’s a very small distance on the wick lifter between not glowing and the flame is way too high.

370
00:23:13,096 --> 00:23:17,661
Since the kerosene will evaporate more quickly
as the lamp heats up from cold,

371
00:23:17,661 --> 00:23:22,178
it gets brighter on its own in the first ten minutes or so
of operation,

372
00:23:22,178 --> 00:23:28,753
and in fact the instructions provided tell you to 
make sure you’re checking on it every 30 minutes.

373
00:23:28,753 --> 00:23:32,264
Really, this thing is just in a very delicate
balance.

374
00:23:32,264 --> 00:23:33,567
Take a look at this.

375
00:23:33,567 --> 00:23:36,100
[blows into lamp base]

376
00:23:37,236 --> 00:23:38,806
That’s terrifying.

377
00:23:38,806 --> 00:23:39,686
So then...

378
00:23:41,847 --> 00:23:46,267
it won’t surprise you to learn that these
things cannot be used outdoors.

379
00:23:46,267 --> 00:23:52,976
There’s just no way you’re going to get
the necessary stability of the flame with really any wind at all.

380
00:23:52,976 --> 00:23:56,610
But the Aladdin lamp is, and has always been,

381
00:23:56,610 --> 00:23:58,468
a weird case.

382
00:23:58,468 --> 00:24:00,902
And that’s why showcasing it here is…

383
00:24:00,902 --> 00:24:04,834
well not really how gas mantles were used most of the time.

384
00:24:04,834 --> 00:24:10,432
The Aladdin lamp shows that you *can* use
kerosene and a wick to drive a gas mantle,

385
00:24:10,432 --> 00:24:12,218
but the best thing to use is…

386
00:24:12,744 --> 00:24:14,055
gas.

387
00:24:14,055 --> 00:24:15,902
But now, here’s a question.

388
00:24:15,902 --> 00:24:18,090
How do you make that portable?

389
00:24:18,090 --> 00:24:21,025
Well, here’s one option.

390
00:24:21,025 --> 00:24:24,395
This is a modern propane camping lantern.

391
00:24:24,395 --> 00:24:26,600
[spark from ignitor and whooshing of fuel]

392
00:24:26,600 --> 00:24:29,841
It’s really nothing more than a modified
propane torch.

393
00:24:29,841 --> 00:24:33,700
Instead of being a, well, torch

394
00:24:33,700 --> 00:24:38,424
the gas comes out of these two orifices which have a gas mantle tied around them.

395
00:24:38,424 --> 00:24:40,849
This is a remarkably bright lantern,

396
00:24:40,849 --> 00:24:45,281
something close to 100 watts incandescent equivalent at its full brightness,

397
00:24:45,281 --> 00:24:46,957
but...

398
00:24:46,957 --> 00:24:51,093
well these little bottles of propane are a rather recent thing.

399
00:24:51,093 --> 00:24:54,518
They weren’t around when these lanterns were first invented.

400
00:24:54,518 --> 00:24:58,955
Instead, these lanterns were originally made to run on,

401
00:24:58,955 --> 00:25:00,380
wait for it,

402
00:25:00,380 --> 00:25:01,988
gasoline!

403
00:25:01,988 --> 00:25:03,953
Or in some countries kerosene.

404
00:25:03,953 --> 00:25:06,570
Or even margarine — wait no, not that one.

405
00:25:07,623 --> 00:25:11,793
but lots of different liquid fuels could be used in lanterns like these.

406
00:25:11,793 --> 00:25:14,889
However, that presents a challenge.

407
00:25:14,889 --> 00:25:19,385
For instance, gasoline’s flashpoint is way too low to use with a wick,

408
00:25:19,385 --> 00:25:22,015
unless your goal is to set yourself on fire,

409
00:25:22,015 --> 00:25:25,201
and besides we don’t want a wick-style flame anyway.

410
00:25:25,201 --> 00:25:27,112
We want a Bunsen flame.

411
00:25:27,112 --> 00:25:31,711
Sure we can get that from propane because
it is a gas at atmospheric pressures.

412
00:25:31,711 --> 00:25:33,755
Just let it out of the bottle.

413
00:25:33,755 --> 00:25:38,808
But how do you do that with a liquid fuel
like kerosene? Or gasoline?

414
00:25:38,808 --> 00:25:41,889
Well, we’ll talk about that in the next video.

415
00:25:41,889 --> 00:25:44,934
And we’ll also talk about that thorium debacle.

416
00:25:44,934 --> 00:25:48,029
It’s a real thor spot for some campers out there.

417
00:25:48,029 --> 00:25:51,569
By the way, if you’re wondering where I got an Aladdin lamp,

418
00:25:51,569 --> 00:25:57,163
well much like these Dietz lanterns these just never stopped getting made.

419
00:25:57,163 --> 00:26:01,477
However, at this point they’re clearly more
of a collector’s item.

420
00:26:01,477 --> 00:26:07,380
They’re also not cheap, costing more than
of $200 for a basic lamp like this one.

421
00:26:07,380 --> 00:26:09,952
But, unlike a Dietz lantern,

422
00:26:09,952 --> 00:26:13,166
they’re safe-ish to use indoors

423
00:26:13,166 --> 00:26:16,713
(I would certainly never leave this unattended for a moment)

424
00:26:16,713 --> 00:26:21,259
But also they're just much more
useful by virtue of being, ya know,

425
00:26:21,259 --> 00:26:24,180
a bright light that doesn’t smell terrible.

426
00:26:24,180 --> 00:26:29,370
I actually used this during a power outage, and it was pretty ideal actually.

427
00:26:29,370 --> 00:26:31,978
They produce a lot of heat so not great in
the summer,

428
00:26:31,978 --> 00:26:34,917
but it’s also not tremendously much.

429
00:26:34,917 --> 00:26:37,800
Something like 800 or 900 watts.

430
00:26:37,800 --> 00:26:40,770
However, that heat is very pronounced.

431
00:26:40,770 --> 00:26:47,489
The narrow chimney and strong draft mean it
is painful to put your hand anywhere near the top of it,

432
00:26:47,489 --> 00:26:51,829
like, even here that's really painful if you can even see that.

433
00:26:51,829 --> 00:26:56,370
Now, that also means that the chimney needs to be made
of borosilicate glass

434
00:26:56,370 --> 00:27:01,741
to withstand the enormous temperature swing from cold to extremely hot.

435
00:27:01,741 --> 00:27:07,665
The metal frame holding the mantle glows red
hot at the top after it’s been in use for a while.

436
00:27:07,665 --> 00:27:12,342
And the biggest downside to the Aladdin lamp is
that you have to use kerosene.

437
00:27:12,342 --> 00:27:19,521
You can’t use any of the various alternatives,
which is by the way why I’ve been burning straight kerosene in the Dietz lanterns.

438
00:27:19,521 --> 00:27:23,083
That’s not a huge problem as kerosene is
widely available,

439
00:27:23,083 --> 00:27:26,707
but you’ll likely be buying it exclusively for the lamp.

440
00:27:26,707 --> 00:27:29,002
Unless you had, maybe, a kerosene heater, too.

441
00:27:29,002 --> 00:27:32,486
But really it’s just a rather niche fuel at this point.

442
00:27:32,486 --> 00:27:35,505
Oh, and one of my very favorite things about this?

443
00:27:35,505 --> 00:27:37,957
You actually blow it out.

444
00:27:37,957 --> 00:27:40,605
I’m serious, you don’t just lower the wick all the way.

445
00:27:40,605 --> 00:27:43,659
If you do that you'll notice there are still flames at the bottom.

446
00:27:43,659 --> 00:27:47,046
Instead, you lower so far that it stops glowing,

447
00:27:47,046 --> 00:27:51,192
and then you have to disturb the draft to completely extinguish it.

448
00:27:51,192 --> 00:27:54,628
So you simply cup your hand behind the chimney

449
00:27:54,628 --> 00:27:56,163
and blow across the top.

450
00:27:56,495 --> 00:27:57,249
*whoosh*

451
00:27:58,274 --> 00:28:01,230
That’s what I call neat.

452
00:28:02,134 --> 00:28:04,714
♫ incandescently smooth jazz ♫

453
00:28:06,000 --> 00:28:07,209
It was the factori…

454
00:28:07,209 --> 00:28:08,518
It was in the factories of…

455
00:28:09,321 --> 00:28:11,420
nope. That’s not in the sentence!

456
00:28:11,420 --> 00:28:16,551
Which, funnily enough, were devices conceived
by nuh-thother heh fleurrghhhhh

457
00:28:16,551 --> 00:28:21,512
By tweaking the coal distilling process and
also by using different source…

458
00:28:21,862 --> 00:28:22,863
No! That was correct!

459
00:28:22,863 --> 00:28:23,763
Why did you stop?

460
00:28:24,124 --> 00:28:27,070
And also they’re much more useful by birtue of…

461
00:28:27,458 --> 00:28:28,531
by birtue?

462
00:28:28,725 --> 00:28:32,035
But we quickly found its various downsides.

463
00:28:32,090 --> 00:28:33,018
Shoot.

464
00:28:33,018 --> 00:28:38,580
But it’s so light and fragile, how on Earth
are you supposed to install one?

465
00:28:38,580 --> 00:28:40,524
Ah, I skipped the word “if”

466
00:28:40,524 --> 00:28:43,095
It takes the form of the fabrit neck...

467
00:28:45,034 --> 00:28:47,446
I believe I just said “fabrit neck.”

468
00:28:47,446 --> 00:28:50,256
The actual string, really, can be… oops!

469
00:28:51,503 --> 00:28:54,754
For those sticking around, we've solved the "forced my lute" mystery.

470
00:28:54,754 --> 00:28:58,640
Apparently lute was a sort of sealant used with glassware in the mad scientist alchemy days and whatnot.

471
00:28:58,640 --> 00:29:01,366
So "forced my lute" probably meant "broke the seal."

472
00:29:01,366 --> 00:29:04,104
Also, you're right, this is in a pinned comment already.

473
00:29:04,298 --> 00:29:06,523
The post-credits captions aren't that special this time, huh.

474
00:29:06,523 --> 00:29:07,212
Dagnabbit.