Kerosene lamp
Lámpara de queroseno
- Date
- 1853 · confidence high
- Place
- Lviv, Austrian Galicia (present-day Ukraine)
- Credited to
- Ignacy Łukasiewicz and Jan Zeh (lamp, 1853); Abraham Gesner (kerosene, Halifax, 1846)
- People
- 👤 Abraham Gesner1797–1864👤 Ignacy Łukasiewicz1822–1882👤 Jan Zeh1817–1897
- Field
- Tools
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
A wick lamp with a reservoir of kerosene distilled from petroleum, brighter and cheaper than whale oil. Its first use was for a night-time operation at the Lviv hospital in 1853.
Gesner obtained kerosene from coal and bitumen in Nova Scotia (1846); Łukasiewicz distilled it from crude petroleum and designed the lamp in Lviv; Benjamin Silliman Jr. reported on distillation in New Haven in 1855.
What it led to
- Massive demand for petroleum and the first wells (Bóbrka 1854, Titusville 1859)
- The end of whaling for lighting oil
- Night-time reading in rural homes worldwide
- Standard Oil and the oil industry before the automobile
Built on
- Kerosene by distillation of petroleum (white naft)c. 900
- Argand lamp1780-1784
- Friction match1826-1827
- First industrial oil mine (Bóbrka)1854
- Gesner's kerosene (1846-1854)
- Łukasiewicz's petroleum distillation (1852)
Made possible
- Fractional distillation of petroleum1852-1855
- Ulaszowice industrial oil refinery1856
- Street lighting with refined petroleum (Bucharest)1857
- Drilled oil well (Drake well)1859
- Drake's oil well
- Industrial distillation of petroleum
- Kerosene stove