74 BULLETIN 141, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



One of these lamp curiosities is of French manufucture, inscribed 

 on base, "'Lampe Silvant 15589 avec garantie/' This lamp has a 

 tubular wick raised and lowered by a ratchet device, the outer brass 

 collar choked. The lamp appears to be one of several similar inven- 

 tions in which by an arrangement of chambers the displacement of 

 brine and oil was made to force oil to the wick by hydraulic princi- 

 ples long known. They were sometimes called oleostatic lamps. 

 (PI. mb, fig. 2, Cat. No. 272261, France; Lemuel Merrill; 15.8 inches 

 (40 cm.) high.) Another lamp of this type evidently forced the oil 

 up into the wick by direct pressure on the reservoir. This appears 

 to be effected by turning the ornamental key to the left, which works 

 a rack thus lowered to give the proper pressure. The lamp is incased 

 in pressed-brass relief illustrating naval battles. (PI. 65&, fig. 1, 

 Cat. No. 130669, Baltimore, Md.; J. T. Durney; 14.9 inches (38 cm.) 

 high.) The specimen is of French manufacture. The Diacon lamp 

 (pi. 66&, fi-g. 1) is marked "A. Diacon, New York. Patent lamp." 

 There is a clockwork in the base actuating a pump forcing oil 

 through a tube from the reservoir to the wick as in the Carcel lamp. 

 Dates scratched inside the bottom cover hj repair man are 1841 

 and 1849. The lamp is incased in a shell of artistic pressed brass 

 and is of French manufacture. The chimney is tubular with a 

 shoulder at the height of the flame intended to direct the draft and 

 increase the brilliancy of the light. The chimney is 10.7 inches 

 (27 cm.) long. (Cat. No. 130668, Baltimore, Md.; James Russell & 

 Son; 13.4 inches (34 cm.) high.) The Carcel lamp was reasonably 

 efficient and had considerable use before 1850. It has the Argand 

 burner and tubular wick adjusted, however, by a spur wheel on a 

 horizontal stem as in modern lamps. The base contained a clock- 

 work pump with two valves forcing oil into the wick. Plate 656, 

 Figure 2, shows the mechanism. (Cat. No. 272259, Boston, Mass.; 

 Lemuel Merrill.) The clock bears the number 23660. Figure 3 is 

 the complete lamp, same locality and collector (15 inches (38 cm.) 

 high). The Hitchcock lamp, patented in 1868 and burning kerosene 

 with a flat wick and without chimney, was quite effective and is still 

 in current use. In this lamp a fan run by clockwork forces air into 

 the flame at the proper point and in the right amount to produce a 

 brilliant light. This lamp may be considered the last of the mechani- 

 cal lamps, and owes its success to the ideal fluid, kerosene. The 

 development of the kerosene lamp since 1870 is characterized by 

 the perfection to its limit of the flat-wick type and the ascending 

 of the tubular-wick type, which may be said to extend from the 

 Argand to the Rochester lamp. The tubular lamp of 1876 exhibited 

 at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition as the most advanced 



