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Nonelectric incandescent lamps include the gas-mantle lamp. The mantle is a mesh bag of fabric impregnated with a solution of nitrates of cerium and one or more of the following metals: thorium, beryllium, aluminum, or magnesium. The mantle is fixed over an orifice carrying a flammable gas such as natural gas, coal gas, propane, or vaporized benzene or other fuel. When the gas is ignited, the...
...Lighting was normally provided by a fishtail jet of burning gas, but under the stimulus of competition from electric lighting the quality of gas lighting was greatly enhanced by the invention of the gas mantle. Thus improved, gas lighting remained popular for some forms of street lighting until the middle of the 20th century.
...it could be readily controlled; thus, for the first time automatic unattended lights were possible. Dalén devised many ingenious mechanisms and burners, operating from the pressure of the gas itself, to exploit the use of acetylene. Most of the equipment he designed is still in general use today. One device is an automatic mantle exchanger that brings a fresh mantle into use when the...
(baron of) Austrian chemist and engineer who invented the gas mantle, thus allowing the greatly increased output of light by gas lamps.
Shortly after Auer von Welsbach isolated praseodymia and neodymia in 1885 he invented an illuminating device that bears his name (Welsbach gas mantle), and a little later he produced a practical lighter flint. Both devices depended upon rare-earth elements. Although minerals rich in rare earths had up to that time been thought to be very rare, the demand for rare earths that developed as a...
...thorium nitrate, Th(NO3)4, are produced when thorium ores are processed (see above Extraction and refining). The nitrate is extensively used in the commercial production of gas mantles. Such mantles are made by impregnating cotton or synthetic fibres with a 25 to 50 percent solution of Th(NO3)4 containing 0.5 to 1 percent each of thorium sulfate...
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