392 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1951 



It was both parlor and guest chamber at the same time. In one corner stood 

 a maple bedstead, with a large, plump feather bed on it, and two tiny pillows in 

 well-bleached cases at the head. The walls of the room were whitewashed, the 

 wood-work was uupainted, but so thoroughly scoured, that it had acquired a 

 sort of polish and oak color. Before the windows hung colured paper blinds. 

 Between the windows was a table, and over it hung a small looking-glass, and a 

 green and yellow drawing in water colors, the gift of a friend. On one side stood 

 a cherry bureau. . . . The mantel-piece was ornamented with peacock's 

 feathers, and brass candlesticks, bright as gold; in the fireplace were fresh 

 sprigs of asparagus. An open cupboard stood on one side, containing the cups 

 and saucers in neat array, a pretty salt cellar, with several pieces of cracked 

 and broken crockery, of a superior quality, preserved for ornament rather than 

 use. 



But if we are to see the other side of the picture and observe the 

 achievements of invention in lighting and that spirit of "leviathanism" 

 which so impressed Lady Enimeline Stuart Wortley, we must remain 

 in the cities and urbanized areas of the seaboard. Here important im- 

 provements had been introduced before the close of the eighteenth 

 century, and some had been widely adopted in America. Contributing 

 as much as any one individual to the development of lighting, a Swiss 

 chemist, Ami Argand, in 1783 had invented the first lamp to be con- 

 structed on scientific principles of combustion. This embodied a 

 hollow tube, open at both ends, which extended upward through the 

 center of the burner. A cylindrical woven wick was fitted tightly 

 around the tube, and an outer cylinder was placed around this. Oil 

 from the reservoir was fed into the side of the cylindrical chamber 

 containing the wick. The hollow tube in the center served to admit 

 air to the center of the flame, thus increasing combustion and the 

 amount of light as heat from the flame acted automatically to create 

 a draft. The draft was further increased by the addition of a glass 

 chimney. Argand is credited with the first practical use of the lamp 

 chimney. 



Well-to-do Americans, among them Washington and Jefferson, had 

 installed Argand lamps before 1800, and after that year several modi- 

 fications and adaptations of Argand's idea were adopted by city folk 

 who could afford them. Their greatly superior light, amounting to as 

 much as 9 candlepower, was considered revolutionary, as we shall see. 



More significant from a cultural and economic standpoint, if not 

 from a technological one, was the widespread adoption of an English 

 weaver's invention, John Miles's "agitable" lamp, patented in England 

 in 1787. Although apparently but little concerned with scientific 

 principle. Miles succeeded in designing an eminently simple device 

 consisting of a container with a hole at the top into which a burner 

 with one or more vertical wick tubes could be screwed or tightly 

 fitted. Sperm oil or even common whale oil could be drawn up into 

 the vertical wicks, and the stopper-type burners minimized the spilling 



