IMPROVEMENTS IN LAMPS
Year: 1866

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by John Henry Johnson at the Office
of the Commissioners of Patents, with his Petition, on the 1st November
1866. A communication' from abroad by Aaron Calhoun Vaughan
and. Robert Wallace Park, both of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United
States of America.
I, JOHN HENRY JOHNSON, of 47, Lincoln's Inn Fields, in the County of
Middlesex, Gentleman, do hereby declare the nature of the said Invention for
"IMPROVEMENTS IN LAMPS," a communication to me from abroad by Aaron
Calhoun Vaughan and Robert Wallace Park, both of Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, United States of America, to be as follows:-
This Invention relates to lamps intended for burning ordinary coal oil and
similar bydrocarbons, and consists according to one arrangement in the
employment of a tubular wick through the centre of which air can pass
freely from a perforated air chamber below the oil reservoir. The burning
portion of this wick with the upper ends of the wick tubes are enclosed or
surrounded by a perforated casing or air chamber provided with a horizontal
internal circular flange which by preference projects slightly over the top of
the wick, and which flange is capable of being raised or lowered either in
conjunction with the perforated casing itself or separately so as to admit more
or less air to the flame or to extinguish it entirely by bringing it down upon

page_text: the wick. The upper part of the outer wick tube is made detachable in
order to admit of the ready adjustment of the wick, and an inner wick tube
is also employed which fits on to the central tube through which air passes
to the interior of the wick. The glass or chimney of the lamp may be held
in its place by clips secured to the flange or top of the perforated casing
above referred to, and the oil may be supplied to the wick from a metal
reservoir which encloses the lower portion of the wick and wick tubes, and
has an air thoroughfare through it communicating with the perforated air
chamber below it. In lamps provided with glass or earthenware reservoirs
or fountains a tubular casing surrounds the wick tubes (which in this
modification are situate above the reservoir) an annular chamber or space
being left between the interior of this tubular casing and the exterior of the
outer wick tube, which chamber or space is filled or partially filled with a
coiled wick or other fibrous or spongy material communicating with the oil
reservoir through tubes for that purpose, the object being to convey the oil to
and around the tubular or burning wick. The tubular wick is fitted round
an inner central tube which forms a passage for air to the centre of the
wick, such air entering through perforations made in the lower part of the
tubular casing above referred to, which thus constitutes at its lower end
an air reservoir or chamber, such air chamber being separated from the
upper or close chamber containing the coiled wick by a metal diaphragm.
The exterior of the tubular wick is surrounded by a perforated wick tube
which allows the oil carried up by the coiled wick to have free access to the
tubular wick-on all sides. To the top of the tubular casing there is fitted a
moveable cap and tubular projection, which latter surrounds the upper part
of the tubular wick, and thus forms the external wick tube at that part, and
admits of the ready adjustment of the said wick. The upper part of the
tubular wick and its wick tubes are enclosed in an adjustable perforated
casing provided with an internal flange similar to that described in reference
to the first modification, and operating in a similar manner.