Stearin candle
Vela de esteárina
- Date
- 1825 · confidence high
- Place
- Paris, France
- Credited to
- Michel-Eugène Chevreul and Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac
- Field
- Tools
What it is
A candle made with stearic acid extracted from fats, hard, white, odourless and smokeless and non-dripping, with a plaited wick that burns itself away. It replaced the tallow candle in homes.
Chevreul described the composition of fats in 1823 and the patent with Gay-Lussac dates to 1825; the plaited wick is Cambacérès's (1824).
What it led to
- cleaner, cheaper domestic lighting for the middle classes
- the chemistry of fats and fatty acids
- paraffin candles and candle factories