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Lamp, Camphene

Lamp, Camphene


Title	Lamp, Camphene
Coverage / Year	1840 to 1865
Description	A wooden base holds a pressed glass reservoir which has a square peg at the base to hold it into the wood. The glass is square with rounded shoulders and leads to a narrow mouth which has a threaded tin wick fixture. The wicks channels are splayed as is typical of a camphene lamp and there are wick covers attached by chains.
Interpretation	Camphene, a combination mineral spirits and alcohol was used as a lamp fuel for a short time in the middle of the 19th century. Because whale oil was so expensive camphene was used as a replacement. Camphene was extremely volatile. If the flame from one wick heated the other wick the heat could travel back into the reservoir and explode. Thus, camphene lamps have either single wicks, or double wicks pointed away from one another. The form is that of an earlier whaling oil lamp and thus could have been converted with the replacement of the tin top. The wick covers prevented evaporation.
Lesson Plans / Themes	American Communities in History; Communities and Geography; How we learn about communities; Whaling Slide Show; Inventions Multimedia Time Line; School Museum; Introduction of artifacts as a primary source; What's That Relic?; Settling in the Midwest;
Learning Standards	16 History; 18 Social Systems; 13 Science, Technology and Society;
Author or Creator	Unknown
Subject / Keywords	Whale oil; Whale; Whaling; Lighting device; Light; Camphene; Lamps
Collection Publisher	Early American Museum
Further Information	For any further information related to this record, please contact the Collection Publisher. See http://images.library.uiuc.edu/projects/tdc for more information about this project.
Rights Management Statement	http://images.library.uiuc.edu/projects/tdc/conditions.htm
Resource Identifier	1968.001.1218
CONTENTdm file name	3114172422004_68.1.1218.jpg

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