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By Root 950 0

table lamps, night lamps, student lamps, and chandeliers were crafted of pressed glass, pewter, silver, iron, brass, nickel plate, and japanned tin. The more complex models attempted to improve on the delivery of thick whale or colza (rapeseed) oil to the wick so as to eliminate the obscuring reservoir of the Argand lamp. The Carcel lamp used a clockwork pump to feed fuel; the moderator lamp had a strong spring that pressed down a piston, which squirted oil up a narrow tube; and the astral lamp featured a ring-shaped oil font. The complexity of such lamps, and their prodigious fuel requirements, meant they were out of economic reach for people of limited means, but eventually even manufacturers of the most simple single-burner lamps adopted hollow wicks and glass chimneys, which increased oxygen flow and stabilized flames. The new lamps often had double or even triple wicks, which meant that one lamp could burn with different intensities, a preliminary version of the contemporary three-way bulb.

But the most significant improvement to the lamp since Argand's invention came in the second half of the nineteenth century, with the advent of kerosene. "We dreamed of the lamp which gives luminous life to dark matter," wrote Gaston Bachelard of the kerosene lamp. "How could a dreamer of words not be moved when etymology teaches him that petroleum is petrified oil? The lamp makes light ascend from the depths of the earth." "Rock oil" had been gathered from seeps for thousands of years and was used in its crude form, mostly as a lubricant or medicine, all over the world. North American Indians collected surface oil by soaking it up with blankets. They then applied the oil as a salve or used it to waterproof their canoes.

In 1849 Canadian geologist Abraham Gesner developed a way to extract what he called "kerosene" from asphaltum—a type of mineral pitch—and subsequently oil refiners discovered that they could use Gesner's process to produce kerosene from petroleum. Its production wouldn't become commercially viable until 1859, when Edwin Drake drove the first successful oil well in Titusville, Pennsylvania, which yielded a reliable supply of petroleum for refining.

Housewives adopted kerosene for myriad uses: they wiped it over bedding and on kitchen walls and screen doors to keep bugs away; poured it on anthills and cleaned flyspecked brass with it; used it to clean their porcelain sinks, marble washbowls, windows, and cookstoves; removed rust, fresh paint, and grease from their graniteware with it; and added it to hot starch to keep the starch from sticking to clothes. But they valued kerosene most highly for light. Although the quality of a kerosene lamp's flame varied with the quality of the fuel and the size and cleanliness of the lamp and the wick, at its best it burned clear, hardly smoked, and was relatively odorless. One kerosene lamp burned as brightly as five to fourteen candles.

Unlike animal fuels, kerosene would not spoil on the shelf over time, and quality kerosene was considered safe and stable because it had a high flash point. It also was light—much lighter than whale oil and colza—so it required no clockwork or pistons to travel up a wick. Since there was not yet competition from the internal combustion engine for petroleum supplies, it was economical—cheaper than either whale oil or gas. By 1885 it was claimed that this new fuel "could supply a family's needs for about ten dollars a year 'while it was not uncommon for the gas bill of the more well-to-do householders to run that much per month.'" Kerosene was, as William O'Dea notes, "the kind of oil people had dreamed about for centuries."

The immediate demand for kerosene ushered in the age of oil. In the months following Drake's first well, land prices around Titusville shot up, and the population multiplied many times. Within a year, numerous refineries in the oil regions of Pennsylvania and in Pittsburgh began operation. Early shipments went to New England and the Mid-Atlantic States. After the Civil War, kerosene spread into the Midwest and more slowly