Here is my Rockford gasoline gravity student lamp. Library Lamp #7 Fitted with a Best X-Ray burner. I have the original alcohol torch. Runs great. Main valve has original hardwood knob
Not really sure of the date of manufacture. I'd guess around 1905. I'm sure someone here knows the patent date for this burner.
Quite a lovely lamp, so original and complete Do you know anything of it's history at all? Interesting that they specify the fuel as a type of stove gas/fuel (74 degree Deodorised Gasoline) and not Benzine? I always wondered if back then the petrol was a better quality and would be ok to be used in lamps but it seems that something similar to Coleman fuel was available too?
This lamp was found in the attic of an old farmhouse in North Dakota USA. I have owned it about 15 years. The burner was coked up solid, but all it needed was reaming out.
Very nice lamp @burndout. I have a few Best lamps and a bit of paperwork too but I cant find that burner. It does look familiar though. I suspect the patent it is based on is going to be a bit before 1905 though. I will keep looking.
@podbros , in the early days internal combustion engines ran on pure (white) petrol/gasoline. They were slow revving, low compression engines. During the Interbellum period cars in Europe tended to be small capacity, high revving (compared to large capacity, low compressing, slow(er) revving American engines) and soon, dopes needed to be added to European petrol to cope with this new situation. Mind, where I say "high revving" this is like 3-4000rpm for a "fast" side valve engine, and maybe 1 or 2000rpm more for an overhead valve engine. The American adagio "you can't beat cubic inches" meant their engines were extremely flexible and very long lasting. For a long period, they could also run their stoves & lanterns on the same fuel as their cars.
A very nice lamp and it seems to be complete ! I can´t find that exact burner and lamp among my files. Not Best, Sun Vapor or Standard Gillett. Probably 1900 to 1905. I found a patent with a similar type of burner from 1901! /Conny
I don't see why not - Naptha was being distilled from coal production as well as the nascent gasoline industry C
Hard to take a decent image. Says BEST Pat Nov 29, 98 No other markings on burner, as far as I can tell.
Too late to edit my previous post. The burner is indeed marked X-RAY as the image on the paper shows. I didn't clean the soot off it sufficiently at first.
Here I find Matty's Best student lamp with this same burner: : 120 year old Best Light Co Student Lamp
@burndout I can see this lamp being advertised between March, 1900 & January, 1901. The November 29, 1898, patent is for this burner but not with the 45 Deg valve. I have over 200 of these burner type patents and if they patented the one with the 45 Deg valve, I can't find it.
@burndout @Matty @Anthony Doing some research for a Sun Vapor Street Light Co. lamp I am restoring, I found a 1889/1991 patent for an incandescent burner by Harry C. Campbell. In the 1905 Sun Vapor catalogue they claim they are licensees of the original Campbell patent. I found out that the Campbell patent was valid until 1908. So that would have been a patent most lamp manufacturing companies around last years of the 1800,s and the first years of the1900,s would have had to relate to. In 1905 there was "A preliminary injunction against infringement of the Campbell patent, No. 447, 757, for an incandescent burner and method of using the same", between Pennsylvania Globe Gaslight Co. (Campbell) v. Cleveland Vapor Light Co. (Clement V. Best and others). This proof that the Campbell patent still in 1905 was a factor to take in account! /Conny
@Anthony yes a few earlier patents but not lamp burner related. They were mostly stove and blowlamp patents and was used for the defendant to show, that a self generating gasoline burner producing a Bunsen flame which could illuminate refractory material was invented before Campbell´s patent. The new thing with the Campbell patent was to combine a gasoline burner with the Welsbach mantle, that earlier only was used for illuminating gas (town gas) appliances. The defendant agreed that that combination was from Campbell, but that the combination of a self heating/generating gasoline burner and the Welsbach mantle in itself not was an invention, and therefore the Campbell patent no longer was a valid one. The judge denied the petition for a preliminary injunction against infringement of the Campbell patent. /Conny
