THE TECHNOLOGIST. 



THE MANUFACTURE OF COMPOSITE CANDLES AT CLICHY. 



BY J. TURGAN, OF THE ' MONITEUR UNIVERSAL.' 



The manufacture of stearine* is essentially French — from the first 

 works of MM. Chevreul and Gay-Lussac in 1824, and the industrial 

 realisation of MM. de Milly and Motard in 1835, down to the recent 

 idea of decorating the wax candle, and making it an ornament which 

 completes the luxury of candelabra. The numerous inconveniences of 

 the candle, its nauseous odour, its insufficient consistency, its smoky 

 wick requiring snuffers, added to the high price of wax, stimulated the 

 inventors in their researches. As in a great number of industrial ope- 

 rations, the spirit of fraud guided the wax-chandlers. They commenced 

 by making tallow candles coated with a layer of wax ; but the fraud 

 was discovered quickly enough by the foetid emanations arising there- 

 from. They mixed with the wax different kinds of flour — beans and 

 horse-chestnuts. They also tried to fabricate tallow candles which ap- 

 peared to be wax ; but this did not give very satisfactory results. 

 The wick was always smoking, the snuffers necessary, and the candle 

 disguised under divers names, continued to soil the hands, and to 

 stain the clothes and furniture. It was reserved for MM. Chevreul and 

 Gay-Lussac to discover, in 1825, the principles by tbe aid of which MM. 

 de Milly and Motard, assisted by the researches of M. Cambac6res, 

 should, in 1835, lay the foundation of an entire industry, one of the 

 most flourishing of the present day — the fabrication of the stearine wax 



* Stearine (from stear, suet) that part of oils and fats which is solid at common 

 temperatures. The nature of these substances was first made known by Chevreul, 

 in 1823, who showed that they were compounds of peculiar acids, with a base 

 termed glycerine ; of these compounds the chief are stearine, margarine, and 

 oleine (from elaion, oil). 



VOL. III. T T 



