THE CONQUEST OF NATURE 



PRIMITIVE TORCH AND OPEN LAMP 



To moderns, in an age when even the time-honored 

 gas jets and kerosene lamps are regarded as obsolescent, 

 that ancient form of illuminant, the candle, seems about 

 the most primitive form of light-producing apparatus. 

 In point of fact, however, the candle holds no such 

 place in the chronological order of lighting-device dis- 

 covery, being a relatively late innovation. Indeed, lamps 

 of various kinds, even those burning petroleum, were 

 used thousands of years before the relatively clean and 

 effective candle was invented. 



The camp fires of primitive man must have suggested 

 the use of a fire-brand for lighting purposes almost as 

 soon as the discovery of fire itself; but the development 

 of any means of lighting his caves or rude huts, even in 

 the form of torches, was probably a slow process. For 

 our earliest ancestors were not the nocturnal creatures 

 their descendants became early in the history of civiliza- 

 tion. To them the period of darkness was the time for 

 sleeping, and their waking hours were those between 

 dawn and dusk. It was only when man had reached a 

 relatively high plane above the other members of the 

 animal kingdom, therefore, that he would wish to pro- 

 long the daylight, and then the use of the torch made of 

 some resinous wood would naturally suggest itself. 



Just when the ancient lamp was invented in the form 

 of a vessel filled with oil into which some kind of wick 

 was dipped, cannot be ascertained, but its invention 

 certainly antedated the Christian Era by several cen- 

 turies. And it is equally certain that once this smoky, 



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