The Carcel lamp was an efficient lighting device used in the 19th Century for domestic purposes and in France as the standard measure for illumination.

The lamp was invented by the French watchmaker, Bertrand Guillaume Carcel (1750–1818), to overcome the disadvantages of the Argand-type lamps then in use. The vegetable oils then available - mostly colza derived from rapeseed - then available were thick and would not travel far up a wick. The Argand lamps used a gravity feed which meant that the oil reservoir was located above the burner, casting a shadow and making the lamp top heavy. Carcel designed a lamp with the oil reservoir under the burner, in the body of the lamp. To keep the oil moving up to the burner, Carcel housed a clockwork mechanism in the lamp base that drove a small pump submerged in the oil tank. The innovation of the suction-displacement pump driven by a clockwork ensured a constant supply of oil to the wick.The winding key was located at the bottom of the lamp base.

Another innovative feature was that fuel was pumped into the wick tubes at a greater volume than was necessary for burning so that it overflowed the top of the wicks, thus cooling the burner.

The advantages Carcel claimed for his lamp in his 1800 patent registered in Paris were that the movement operated unattended, the oil could be used to the last drop, the lamp would stay lit for sixteen hours continuously without refilling, and its’ single burner provided illumination for several people at the same time However, the drawback was that the Carcel lamp was considered both expensive and fragile, and was therefore reserved principally for a wealthy clientele. (i)

References

(i) Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcel_lamp 30th May 2019

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