Invention of the Lamp (Part 1)

A primitive lamp had been in use ever since man had discovered that the melted fat¹ of animals burned readily. The cavity of a shell², or/of a stone, or of the skull of an animal³ was filled with melted fat, or oil, and a wick was laid on the edge of the vessel⁴. When the end of the wick was lighted, it burned as long as there was fat or oil. (The oil passed up the wick by capillary action⁵.)

Such lamps, used in ancient Greece and Rome, and later in the Middle Ages, can still be found. They were sometimes very beautiful and expensive, but they never gave a good light. They produced much smoke and covered everything with soot. The candle was much better than these lamps, and when wax candles were invented in the thirteenth century, the primitive lamp disappeared. Later, in the middle of the nineteenth century, stearin came to be used for making candles, and they became a source of still brighter light.

Russian inventors made tremendous contributions to the development of electric illumination.

In 1779 the Russian inventor Ivan Kulibin made a lantern that produced a very bright light, although it consisted merely of a candle and an ingeniously arranged mirror⁶. The lantern, which was a great sensa­tion in St. Petersburg, was, in fact, the first searchlight.

The first ever man-made electric light illuminated the laboratory of the St. Petersburg physicist Vasily Petrov. The physicist was studying some of the proper­ties of an electric current with the aid of a huge battery of galvanic cells⁷. In one of his experiments he connect­ed two pieces of charcoal to the battery and brought them into contact. This produced a spark. Petrov then separated the two pieces of charcoal so that there was a slight gap between them⁸. The spark did not go out but turned into a bright flame bridging the gap.

In this way, on November 23, 1802, Petrov had dis­covered the electric arc, a form of the gas discharge⁹. Petrov wrote of his discovery. But since none of the West-European physicists knew any Russian at that time, his discovery remained unknown in the West. As a result, in 1811 Humphry Davy, the British scien­tist, discovered the arc again and called it the voltaic arc.

In 1874 Pavel Yablochkov, the head of the telegraph of the Moscow-Kursk Railway, had to make the journey from Moscow to the Crimea in a steam locomotive. Throughout this trip he had to operate the arc lantern that had been developed for locomotives by that time. This required the continual adjustment by hand of the electrodes¹⁰.

Weary of this¹¹ by the end of the trip, Yablochkov set to work to invent an arc that would burn like a candle, without any adjustment. His work was successful, and in 1876 the 'Yablochkov candle' was the subject of a report to the Paris Academy. 'Yablochkov candle' was remark­ably simple. In it the two carbon rods are held together side by side, with an insulating layer¹² between them. For the insulating substance the inventor chose kaolin. The kaolin vapour increased the electric conductivity of the air, so that the formation of an arc required less current. Moreover, Yablochkov used an alternating current for his 'candle'. Thanks to this, the carbons were consumed evenly, whereas in the case of a direct current the pos­itive electrode would be burned out more quickly. The 'Yablochkov candle' was the first electric lamp to use an alternating current, now used almost universally in industry and the home. The source of light invented by this Russian genius won world-wide recognition. In the eighties of the nineteenth century it was used to illu­minate the streets and theatres of Paris and London, the ruins of the Colosseum¹³ in Rome.

Pavel Yablochkov was thus one of the pioneers of electric lighting.

Примечания

1. the melted fat – растопленный жир;

2. the cavity of a shell – отверстие в ракушке;

3. the skull of an animal – череп животного;

4. a wick was laid on the edge of the vessel – фитиль клали на край сосуда;

5. by capillary action – благодаря капиллярному эффекту;

6. an ingeniously arranged mirror – хитроумно установленное зер­кало;

7. a huge battery of galvanic cells – огромная батарея гальванических элементов;

8. a slight gap between them – небольшое пространство между ними;

9. gas discharge – газовый разряд;

10. the continual adjustment by hand of the electrodes – постоянная регулировка элек­тродов вручную;

11. weary of this – устав от этого;

12. an insulating layer – изоляционный слой;

13. the ruins of the Colosseum – руины Колизея.