Bunsen burner
Mechero Bunsen
- Date
- 1855 · confidence high
- Place
- Heidelberg, Baden, Germany
- Credited to
- Robert Bunsen and Peter Desaga
- People
- 👤 Peter Desaga1812–1879👤 Robert Bunsen1811–1899
- Field
- Matter & energy
What it is
A gas burner that premixed air and fuel to give a hot, clean, non-luminous flame, ideal for the laboratory. It equipped the new chemistry institute at Heidelberg and every laboratory since.
Desaga, the university's instrument maker, built Bunsen's design; neither man patented it.
What it led to
- The modern chemistry laboratory and experimental teaching
- Spectroscopy (a colourless background flame)
- Gas cooker burners and water heaters
Built on
- Argand lamp1780-1784
- Gas lighting and public gas street lighting1792-1807
- Gas lighting
- Faraday's burner
Made possible
- Gas cooker1826
- Spectral analysis (Bunsen-Kirchhoff)1859-1860
- Spectral analysis and Kirchhoff's law of radiation1859
- Spectroscope and spectral analysis1859-1860
- Caesium1860
- Bunsen-Kirchhoff spectroscope
- Routine chemical analysis