Carbide Lamp

A Carbide lamp or acetylene gas lamp is a simple lamp that produces and burns acetylene (C2H2), which is created by the reaction of calcium carbide (CaC2) with water (H2O).

Acetylene gas lamps were used to illuminate buildings, as lighthouse beacons, and as headlights on motor-cars and bicycles. Portable acetylene gas lamps, worn on the hat or carried by hand, were widely used in mining in the early twentieth century. They are still employed by cavers, hunters, and cataphiles.

History

A French manufactured acetylene gas lamp, of circa 1910, mounted on a bicycle
In 1892, Thomas Willson discovered an economically efficient process for creating calcium carbide in an electric arc furnace from a mixture of lime and coke. The arc furnace provides the high temperature required to drive the reaction. Manufacture of calcium carbide was an important part of the industrial revolution in chemistry, and was made possible in the United States as a result of massive amounts of inexpensive hydroelectric power produced at Niagara Falls before the turn of the twentieth century. In 1895, Willson sold his patent to Union Carbide. Domestic lighting with acetylene gas was introduced circa 1894 and bicycle lamps from 1896. In France, Gustave Trouvé, a Parisian electrical engineer, also made domestic acetylene lamps and gasometers.

The first carbide bicycle lamp developed in the United States was patented in New York on August 28, 1900, by Frederick Baldwin. Another early lamp design is shown in a patent from Duluth, Minnesota from October 21, 1902. In the early 1900s, Gustaf Dalén invented the Dalén light. This combined two of Dalén's previous inventions, namely the substrate Agamassan and the Sun valve. Inventions and improvements to carbide lamps continued for decades.

After carbide lamp open flames were implicated in an Illinois coal-seam methane gas explosion that killed 54 miners, the 1932 Moweaqua Coal Mine disaster, carbide lamp use declined in United States coal mines. They continued to be used in the coal pits of other countries, notably the Soviet Union.

In the birth of the cinema of Iquitos, a carbide lamp was used as light source to project the first film in the Casa de Fierro, in 1900.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbide...

Abandoned And lost