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Ad Rates / Articles / Classified Ads / Editorial / Home / Links / Showtime   Childhood funs on sleds now a collector's passion    List Ray Yurkowski end   Lighting the way through history   By Ray Yurkowski Ever since man learned to make fire, he has enjoyed the effects of artificial light.   As early as 70,000 years ago, prehistoric man used primitive lamps - hollowed-out rocks or shells filled with animal fat and moss wicks. By the 7th century BC, the Greeks were making terra cotta oil lamps. The word lamp is derived from the Greek word lampas, meaning torch.   But for long-time lighting enthusiast and Historical Lighting Society of Canada (HLSC) vice-president Tom Logan of Stirling, Ontario his interest in the world of lamps and lighting started as a practicality.   Logan recalls when it all began about 40 years ago, when he and Geri, his new Toronto-born bride, moved to the rural area.   “I grew up on a local farm,” he explained. “And I knew, when you live out here in the country, you need to have emergency lighting.”   He attended auction sales buying a half-dozen oil lamps along with one Aladdin-made model. After getting the Aladdin working, he was hooked.   “(Aladdins) are so much better,” he said. “I plagued everybody who got close to me about how wonderful it was and I began to buy more of them.”   As well as his interest in HLSC, Logan is a member of Aladdin Knights, an international group of collectors of lamps manufactured by the Mantle Lamp Company of America, later to become Aladdin Industries Inc. Last year, the brand name lamp celebrated its 100th anniversary.   The story goes when the company brought their lamp to market, they were so confident in the difference between the light of an Aladdin and any other oil or kerosene lamp, they offered a $1,000 reward to any person who could show them an oil lamp that could equal its light. The reward was never collected and by the early 1930s seven million Aladdins had been sold.   In 1999, Aladdin Industries sold the lamp division to a group of collectors who named their company Aladdin Mantle Lamp Company, located in Clarksville, Tennessee.   As testament to the popularity of the brand name to this day, the Logans recall attending their first Aladdin gathering in Kentucky in 1993. More than 400 people attended the event.   Tom says he doesn't have to search too hard to find Aladdin artifacts. A lot show up at his door thanks to his business of repairing and selling lamps and parts. The retired schoolteacher ships throughout North America, England, Japan and Iceland. “When I first became interested in Aladdin, I felt as though I had to find these things before they went to the dump," he says. "But as things become known to be valuable, they come out of the woodwork. People go to the attic to see what they have."   While Aladdin conventions and meetings for lighting enthusiasts are held at locations throughout North America, HLSC meets twice a year, attracting upwards of 100 people.   “You only do it because you like it,” says Tom. “It’s fun and you learn something about how our grandparents lived.”   “People are so keen and you have lots of information to share,” adds Geri. “But it is fun, because you meet other people who are just as crazy about this as we are.”   He recalls a presentation he made highlighting Canadian lantern makers at a recent HLSC meeting.   “I was trying to get the members interested in collecting beautiful early glass,” he said. “I wanted them to look at local tin and be proud of the Canadians who made a huge contribution to the craft. In the era when the lantern became something better than a box with a candle in it, Canadians were right at the forefront.”   Only one of the early lamp makers survived into modern times, the Deitz Company, from the U.S.   “They still exist,” says Tom. “But those Dietz lanterns you see now are made in China.” But, he adds, the number two survivor was the Embury Manufacturing Company led by William C. Embury, who was born and grew up in Napanee.   Embury made his first lamp in Belleville while employed by the W.W. Chown Hardware Manufacturing Co. He then moved to Rochester, New York in 1900 to start the Defiance Lantern & Stamping Co. In 1908, he left, because partners in Toronto tried to force the hire of unskilled relatives, and started Embury Manufacturing. Business continued until the company closed their doors on the last day of 1952.   Tom looks forward to the next HLSC meeting, where he'll be “anxious to tell several people” about a new acquisition, an Embury lamp.   “It’s one I haven't seen before,” he said. “And, I could not believe the lady sold it to me for five bucks, which is a good part of the story as well.”   Long before Thomas Alva Edison invented the incandescent light bulb in 1879, other forms of lighting had a major impact on human culture. In America and much of the Western World, whale oil was a major lighting fuel from the early 1600s through the mid-1800s. It was clean burning and could be harvested by the barrelfull as a liquid without rendering as was required in producing oil from animal fat.   In his book “A heritage of light: lamps and lighting in the early Canadian home,” author Loris S. Russell devotes a chapter - ‘When whale oil was king’ - to the subject. “The great demand for whale oil as a lamp fuel was the basis of the celebrated whaling industry of the 18th and 19th centuries,” he wrote. “New Bedford, Massachusetts became the whaling capital of the world.”   But in 1846, a Canadian geologist, Dr. Abraham Gesner, took the first step to saving the whales by devising a method to distill kerosene from petroleum. When a clean-burning kerosene lamp invented by Michael Dietz appeared on the market in 1857, the effect on the whaling industry was immediate.   Kerosene, known in those days at "coal oil," was easy to produce, cheap, smelled better than animal-based fuels when burned and did not spoil on the shelf as whale oil did. By 1860, at least 30 kerosene plants were in production in the U.S. and had taken over the whale oil market. In 1846, there were 735 ships in the New England whaling fleet. Thirty years later, in 1876, the fleet was down to 39.   When whale oil dropped to 40 cents a gallon, due to lack of demand, in 1895, refined petroleum, which was very much in demand, sold for less than seven cents a gallon.   Gas lighting, another advance to help usher out the age of whale oil, was invented by British engineer William Murdoch in 1792. During much of the 1800s, coal gas plants were common in Europe and the United States with the gas distributed through networks of pipes.   Unfortunately, the piping and open combustion of coal gas was dangerous - both from explosions and from carbon monoxide poisoning.   Tom tells the story of a friend who retired from Toronto Hydro.   “He started his career with Toronto Gas and sometimes they would get a call about a strip of lawn dying in front of the house,” he said. “A pretty telltale sign that something is wrong.”   Workmen dug up pipes that had been made out of cedar tree trunks. A hole had been drilled down the center, one end was coved and the other sharpened, with a little tar applied to the ends. They were hammered together to carry coal gas to the house.   “How come the whole town didn't burn up?” wondered Tom.   Kerosene emerged as a lighting fuel around 1860, offering a liquid fuel that was more portable and safer than coal gas. Before the Rural Electrification Program brought electricity to rural communities in the 1930s and ’40s, kerosene lighting remained the dominant light source in many parts of the country.   “Kerosene is not completely safe,” says Logan. “But it's not prone to violent disasters.”   Tom says people ask him some hair-raising questions when he makes a presentation on the topic of historical lighting. One came from an airport worker who wanted to know if jet fuel could be used in an oil-burning lamp.   His answer, no matter what people ask, is essentially a test from the ages. Put the fluid in a shallow container. Light a match and see if you can put it out by immersing the match in the fluid.   “If the surface of the fluid lights, don't even think about it,” he says.   Even medical curiosities have found their way into the history of lamps and lighting. ‘Vapo-Cresolene’ lamps were, in their day, considered medicinal magic, reputed to give off a vapour that cured everything from hay fever to scarlet fever.   Cresolene, an acid made from coal tar and petroleum, was poured into the upper dish and heated by a kerosene lamp while patients were sleeping and the solution was dispersed in fine particles into the air. The 6-inch high lamp, originally sold for $1.50 from 1879 through the 1920s .   It is extraordinary to think that anyone would risk using the fumes as a restorative when cresolene, even in Victorian times, was labelled as a poison says Tom.   The American Medical Association weighed in on the device in Nostrums and Quackery, published in 1912, concluding the product “is essentially cresol and corresponds in every respect to cresol in the U.S Pharmacopoeia (‘when breathed at very high levels, they can be very harmful’).”   There is one lamp in the Logan collection that Tom will not part with. It’s one that belonged to his mother. The artifact, while not being overly rare, was the last one that left the 100-acre Belleville farm where he grew up.   He recalls the day his mother gave him the lamp.   “I thought you would want this,” she said. “But why you would want such a dirty, smelly thing is beyond me.”   Photos: 1 - An early 1900s acetylene bicycle lamp   2 - A Canadian lantern from the E.T. Wright Co. of Hamilton   3 - The Vapo-Cresolene lamp   After more than 30 years in the world of industry, it was time to follow a dream. The path to making a living as a journalist/photographer started in Stettler, Alberta and wound its way through Hamilton, Stoney Creek, Glanbrook and Caledonia. After landing work in the Brighton area, it took his wife Cheryl exactly one day to sell their home in Hamilton and they now live very close to Presqu’ile Park. Ray has contributed to Watershed magazine as well as Community Press and the Shield newspapers. :   Return to top of page   This Is Livin' Publishing © 2010 581 8th Line West, RR1 Hastings, ON, K0L 1Y0 Phone/Fax: 705-696-1833   webmaster