My house was built in the 1880s and still has fixtures for coal gas lamps. That's also why I have 4-meter-high ceilings, which is not an exaggeration, by the way. I have to stand on a ladder to open the top windows. I’m told this was for ventilation and to help cool the place in summer when the gas lamps were burning. I also have the original masonry heaters (cocklestove), which still work and are maintained, but are mostly just decorative these days. It must have been pretty stinky and stuffy in this building back in the day! People get nostalgic, but imagine how bad the carpets and curtains must have stunk after absorbing those odors for years on end - not to mention that everyone and their dog smoked like chimney stacks in those days!
There's a book called Electric Cooking Heating Cleaning (etc.) from around 1914 (it's on google books). In it, the writer - "housewife" - describes the advantages of electricity in the home. One thing that caught me was where she described a friend paying an exorbitant price for electricity. But her friend believed it was still cheaper than gas lamps in the long run, because of how much money they saved by not having to replace all the paintings, curtains, and wallpaper every year or so, them having been ruined by gas lamp exhaust fumes. Yeah, that really was a thing.
Hi Alex, I am from Germany, Frankfurt.We still have street gas lamps in the town.They are still very common in many streets. Most of them were installed in the late 1950/60th and still work. Berlin seems to be the capital of gas lamps , they are everywhere . They give a great warm yellow light. Thanks for your great video.
I am a Brit and 77 hrs. As a child I remember gas lighting in the streets. Yes they were bright enough to see sufficient to walk the streets. However, not so good for driving. Car lights were not too good, as a result pedestrians were encouraged to wear or carry something white, better still a flash light, (torch to us Brits) to be seen at night. I also recall the valve to the lamp was fitted with two chains that the street lighter would pull to turn the gas on or off. I also remember a mechanical device to some lamp that could switch the lamps on automatically. I aslo remember the gas lamps being replaced by electric lighting. Some town just replaced the gas piping with electric cables and a bulb and holder. We didn't have a bath room in our working class home. We used a steel galvanised bath, that we would place in the living room fill with hot water from the adjacent fire range. We attempted to practise modesty while bathing.
I bought a SW Philadelphia row home many years ago. When doing some work on the house, I noticed some areas of wall that had odd protrusions that really didn't belong. Some brief investigation revealed gas pipes in the walls. They were closed off in the basement, but the previous owner left the pipes in place and he and subsequent owners left the valve remnants protruding through the walls. I removed the segments while remodeling. I did look for the fixtures in various spots, such as the tiny crawlspace attic, to no avail. Pity, might've reconnected one for historic value. The bathroom was obviously originally just a water closet, later converted to indoor plumbing fully - complete with lead drain pipes, as I learned the hard way when one drain pipe eroded through and dropped our kitchen ceiling. That all swiftly was converted to modern pipework, but dad did teach me how to make oakum/lead joints. I also did all of the repairs on the house and car. While working initially in electronics and later, IT. 62 now, living in an apartment, so a lot less to repair, well, save what building maintenance doesn't want to repair and is cheap or just needs re-installation the correct way... BTW, I'm a decade and a half younger.
I remember a favorite book series about Freddy the pig he was in New York and had a bank a newspaper. Good series from the 30s through the 50s and one time he was walking home from the movies when a phaton almost ran him off the road he shouted “don’t you know your supposed to carry a light! You could have killed me!” Turns out it was his friend a horse named hank on some emergency town run. It had a lot of history details the writer put in that were already on the way out he didn’t have to include but it made a very cozy and rural touch.
I was born 1980 and the house I grew up in outside new orleans still had a gas lamp in the yard by the street, it never worked, but I always thought it was cool and had a bunch of questions about it
@@reapersritehand we had one example in front of a local business, "The gaslight" that still was in operation as of 20 years ago, uncertain if the lamp is still maintained though. For many years, I assumed that the glowing mantle was actually ceramic, right until I had gotten a Coleman lamp for camping.
I bet many folks recall how very bright Coleman camping lanterns could be, and yes, they had/have a mesh sleeve. We had kerosene lanterns. which came in handy when we lost power regularly in storms before the utilities started trimming branches away from the lines. Nice job researching. A younger guy at work wondered what time it was. I pointed to the clock on a turret nearby and he said he couldn't read time by the dial and hands. Dunno if he was joking or not.
@@AlextheHistorianAnother problem is some analog clocks these days are so cheap the gears are misaligned or skip causing the hour hand to pass the hour mark early making the clock look off by an hour towards the end of each hour. This is especially aggregious if the numbers or marks are huge relative to the face (or whatever it has instead). It's easy to compensate when you know it's broken or off a bit but many people I could see getting frustrated and give up on analog clocks if they keep being wrong. But that leads to a catch 22, the more people who refuse to read analog clocks, the worse clocks are made to the point they are just decoration. That and Roman numerals, people seem to hate Roman numerals these days.
The Coleman lantern I have now (takes size D batteries) is not nearly as good as the old kerosene ones we took hunting with us as a kid. Still bright enough for maybe the first night though.
Acetylene gas lighting was the brightest illumination. It came into wide use in 1892. It was said to be brighter than early electric lighting. Our cousins mansion in Scotland had acetyle gas lighting. The acetylene gas generator is still there but the house has been left an empty shell after a fire damaged it in 1941. One drawback was that the glass globes in the lights sooted up and had to be cleaned every day keeping the maids busy. I don’t think acetylene was practical for use in street lights. Nowadays it’s mostly used for welding.
Miner's carbide lamps used an acetylene flame. Portable units, mounted on a hard hat, with a 2 oz reservoir, 5'' reflector and an upper chamber that held water. Water dripped over Calcium Carbide at an adjustable rate, creating acetylene gas. The gas came out a nozzle and was ignited by a flint striker. They were pretty bright. We used them in search and rescue, especially cave rescue, as late as the 1980s.
@@HootOwl513 Early automobile headlights used to be acetylene as well; first with carbide generators, then bottled gas, until electric headlights became common. Then there was the acetylene flame, directed upon a piece of calcium (lime), which was used in theaters as 'limelight'...
My grandfather was a gas lamp lighter for Birkenhead Borough Council UK. He later “graduated” to maintaining the electric lamps until he retired in 1976.
They're a great emergency/backup light but be careful the fire risk is real. I have aunts and uncles who still use oil heaters and lamps because they live where it's rural.
@@GeorgeWashingtonLaserMusket -- Been using them for decades. I'm always careful. What I like to do is place them in a spot and then light the wick, and leave it there. In other words, I don't carry them around. If I need a light to carry around, I use one of my enclosed candle lanterns. Much safer!!
Indeed, many want my pasta sauce recipe. For one, there is no standard recipe, if I'm in the mood for a sweeter sauce, I add more onion, want my garlic, I add more garlic, want it for more delicate flavored ingredients, less garlic and onion, so there are no standardized fixed amounts. Even when literally making my usual 3 gallon batches with meat that I'll pressure can in quart jars after cooking. In particular, it drove Brits nuts, as they were seeking a fully standardized recipe that doesn't really exist, it's proportions and preferences and intent for the batch. I did wonder about the gas lamps, always suspected mantles were used though, as I could figure no other way to brighten a gas flame and I'm well familiar with liquid gas lamps from both the military and camping. Oddly, always did know how to work an oil lamp. My parents never had any, but I got some many years ago and figured them out in seconds, from filling, wick trimming to adjusting the flame. This isn't NASA, after all! After viewing this video, I wonder what people today would do if confronted with trying to dial a rotary phone!
My great-great-grandmother believed electricity was a fad and would disappear. She lived until my mother was in high school, so mom (and her cousins) had to learn to live without electricity to please her. Mom's knowledge is a big part of why my Girl Scout troops loved primitive camping - we learned the skills to easily cope without electricity before we were old enough to think it was too hard or boring. You haven't had good home made popcorn until you've popped it over an open flame.
@@mgailp I drove soldiers to distraction, as I was the prick that stood there with just a map and compass and could call out 1 meter accurate grid coordinates spot on, every time, with only a minute or so of making my sightings with the compass. I was also the last of my unit's licensed coal furnace firemen (yes, we needed a special license to operate a coal furnace, that antique barracks furnace could kill everyone in a building if one didn't know what one was doing!). I could also program our state of the art radios flawlessly. Did the highest tech and lowest tech, so I've literally operated a classified satellite linked computer by the light of a gasoline lantern, while operating a WWII vintage field telephone off of just the power of the speakers until someone found where the replacement D batteries got stowed (yes, those things had a sound powered mode). And made popcorn over an open flame, along with fresh caught fish for breakfast. Also carried a gasoline powered field stove that could convert easily to run off of kerosene. In a Gilligan's Island scenario, I'd have already ginned up the engine enough to run briefly, used its ignition to power a long Marconi antenna and sent a Morse code distress via Hertzian spark gap off for rescue. Probably get a big fine from the FCC too...
Slight correction on your wording. Natural Gas is naturally a mixture of mostly methane combined with ethanes, butanes, propanes, pentanes, and other heavier hydrocarbons. They do not add butane or propane to natural gas supplies. The reverse is actually true when the gas is refined to remove water. To remove the water they must do some factional distillation and which also separates out each of the hydrocarbons. Now because butane and propane carry more energy per volume/weight they are often harvested to be sold at a higher price point where energy density is a primary concern. Of course because perfection in refining costs a lot of money a mixture of hydrocarbons ends up in the methane. We call it natural gas because it naturally varies from about 92 to 98 percent methane, with the rest being miscellaneous hydrocarbons.
When all the homes in the subdivision where I live, were built, in 1970, they all had natural gas lights in front or the homes. By the time I bought the house, in 1979, more than two thirds of the gas lights were inoperable. By 2024, I believe that I have the only gas light operable, in the subdivision. Changing the mantles every few years, takes less than 5 minutes, and replacing the glass sides of the lamp, can be done for $10.
Another lost skill is changing out a flat tire on your own car. Another lost skill is the "Making" coal gas form lumps of coal. Quite the process. Another fine watch from Alex the Historian, thanks for your time and hard work.
@@AlextheHistorian It's our fault not the content. I look forward to your impressions of New Orleans. I haven't been since the year before Katrina. Only later did I explore Magazine street and see further than Garden district and French quarter. You gotta see (many x) 1950 Streetcar Named Desire before going.
@@AlextheHistorian What was different about this watch was the various subjects in one video. The gas lamp section covered Disneyland, Boston, New Orleans and so on. The lost skills section went from baking to being careful around horses and other lost skills. Maybe try it again. People today have short attention spans -- maybe four or five shorter story blocks may be better than one longer vid on the same subject??? Just thinking.
The horse part reminds me of what just happened to me today: I was walking and heard something from the bushes and something seemed to be darting in my direction. Without thinking I went into a boxer stance with clenched fists and my forearms protecting my neck. Out came a small cat and it saw my response and instantly froze up. We exchanged looks, which I can only interpret as _R U cool? Yes, how about you?_ and the cat ran past me. Cats, dogs, horses, and probably a few wild animals such as ravens, pigeons, and raccoons have learned to read humans and we have become familiar with them. This means that they can thrive in urban environments either with us or among us, whereas other animals cannot judge the threats of urban areas and the threat of us humans and thus rather stay away despite the opportunities it offers in terms of food and shelters... That's something to think about...
My Coleman gas lantern uses a mantle and it's amazingly bright. And yes, my grandparents had kerosene lamps put aside to use during power outages. A few years ago, in the aftermath of a hurricane, we had a power outage for several days, and you can bet we were very happy we still had those lamps and some kerosene. I trimmed the wicks a bit, and they served our needs adequately until the power was back on. Of course, a 10kW or bigger Generac standby generator would have been nicer, but we didn't have one at the time.
Having a gas lamppost in the front yard was pretty common in my old neighborhood. They weren't terribly bright but did provide nice illumination for driveways and sidewalks and added a nice touch to the area. My Dad was one of the few who rejected them for some reason. They went out of style around the Mid East Oil Embargo time frame.
Gaslighting in other words addling your victims brains comes from a late 40s movie in which someone commits a crime but tries to confuse his victim by telling her she can't trust her senses.
1944 movie. Ingrid Bergman, Charles Boyer, Joseph Cotten. Directed by George Cukor. It is a fantastic film with an incredible Oscar-winning performance from Ingrid Bergman, my favorite actress.
@@wildsmileyIt's a remake of the 1940 British movie starring Anton Walbrook, which is much closer to Patrick Hamilton's stage play. The play isn't perfect, but is still a good evening's entertainment. Anton Walbrook, in my opinion, is much better than Charles Boyer in the role, but Ingrid Bergman is sublime.
Interestingly the term "gas lighting" in regards to deception refers to a specific type of deception where the deceiver is attempting to make the victim doubt their own sanity and judgement but I've noticed as the term became more popular more people began to just use the term to describe just any kind of lying or deceit in general.
@@Strideo1 I can't stand the people online who immediately jump on you with "stop gaslighting me!" if you even happen to tell them something that they even slightly doubt. I don't know how it came to mean any kind of lying, but TikTok or other social media are probably to blame. That's what happens when people use a term for something and they have absolutely no clue what it means, and are too ignorant to check first.
This video explains so much! Having (obviously) grown up seeing gas lamps only at Disneyland I was always so confused how they managed to light a street with them in the old days. Now I know!
When I was a kid in the 60's natural gas was cheap and a few houses in town had mantle gas lights in their yards that were always on. They lit up a fair portion of the yard. But they were nowhere near as bright as the street lights of course. There was one house that still had the lantern in the yard until fairly recently. It hadn't been used in years. Also when I was a young'un there was one neighboring farm that still used horses for some chores around the farmyard. So I do have a little experience working with horses, learned from people that worked with horses every day for decades. And I had a teacher that I became good friends with, but I never felt comfortable calling him by his first name. He always said to call him Earl, but to me he was always Mr. [last name]. It just seemed right.
Never seen your channel before and this video was awesome. I always wonder about things like this through history that most people would find boring or uninteresting. Keep it up! living in New England, I always see tons of old lamps scattered about. If anyone wants to listen to a really nice and old song about lamplighters, search "The Old Lamplighter by Sammy Kaye". One of my favorites. Edit: I wanted to add that I am 33 and was also raised calling people Mr., Mrs., and Miss. I'd even call my friends parent's up the road Mr. and Mrs Jacobs and never by their first name. I honestly still do this when I meet someone new, unless they tell me not to. Also, Sir and Ma'am were common growing up. I don't understand how just since the 90's, society has de-evolved so much so quickly. I blame internet and social media. Got rid of my cell phone 4 years ago!!
Well it also proliferated with the common addage "Mr/Mrs (Smith), was my Father/Mother, my name is (first name)". I never saw anything wrong with people calling me by my last name, I didn't feel old or anything, but for some reason, people just don't like to be called by their last names anymore.
I make a living as a contractor specializing in historic building renovation. Maintaining and repairing gas lights is reasonably common call. Great grandma born 1898 taught me to cook when I was a kid. A jigger is 1.5 oz or 3 Tbs. A measure is one and a half jiggers. A measure is a device still used when making cocktails.
The original gas lit Moon Towers in Austin Texas originally came from Detroit. The design of them comes from Paris. Luckily Austin has been able to keep a few of them alive. Alright alright alright
Interestingly during that time period when they had those Moon Towers running in 1884-1885 there was a serial killer on the loose in Austin called the Servant Girl Annihilator who did just that; murdered mostly servant girls. This was before Jack the Ripper's killing spree in London and like Jack the Ripper the killer was never caught. Funny enough some people theorize that the Servant Girl Annihilator and Jack the Ripper could be the same killer but that seems far fetched to me.
One small correction, the Detroit moon towers were actually carbon arc. Imagine being the lucky ducky who had to shinny up that thing to change lamp carbons every 100 hours or so. Cheers from Detroit!
This is a HOT topic --- * I had to * Wonderful video! I think some of the info is not precise but I commend you on your effort and professionalism. I know researching the past can be painstaking and even then you never really know if you get it right. Neverthless, you did such an excellent job presenting the research and you certainly set us on a path to a greater understanding of this era. --- liked & subbed Happy Holidays!! 🎄
People that lived out in the country didn't have access to gas lines. My great grandfathers house had a carbide generator in the yard that made acetylene gas for lighting and cooking
A few points: There are very good electric fake gas lamps that look like the open flame gas ones. It turns out that LEDs can easily be make the right color to make it work. The only thing you might notice if you get very close is that the "flame" can't really be seen though clearly. These are a good option for those who want the look. There were two main types of oil lamps. The open flame ones are not rocket science. The oil lamp with a mantle was a super clever bit of engineering. It has to get the fuel air mix just right by getting the draft right. Once they were going, the heat mostly boiled the oil off the wick and it mixes with air before it burns. A few rules on horses. 1) Talk to the horse. It gives them a way to keep track of where you are and they like this. 2) If you are near the butt end of a horse stay to one side and if you have to be close to the horse, reach out and put your hand on them. If you feel it shift its weight back away quickly. 3) Horses are about as smart as a dog but they tend to forget things over night. If you met a horse yesterday it may still think you are a stranger
That's a relief to hear because my channel has been in need of something that holds people's attention, so many people who click on my videos end up leaving in the first minute!
What a great video sir! It hits home for me, as I am a country kid, and much of what you said is on subjects I learned as time went by growing up! From gas lamps to horse sense and even oil lamp usage! But even the bathing and other subjects were interesting. Although corset usage never caught on with the girls and women in our neck of the woods, and they were prone to go as the boys and men with what we wore, comfortable and lose fitting. But one thing I disagree on, is the bathing three or more times a day, and having to slather on lotion afterwards. A person who had to have lotion after a bath, had to have very poor soap that stripped the natural oils from their skin. In those cases where I will have to get a third shower, I will forgo any shampoo or soap, as the water alone is able to get the dirt and dust off without any help from soap. But if I do use soap and shampoo, it is a gentle product that doesn't damage the skin or hair. Otherwise, the video seems spot on! And although you didn't get super technical about the gas used in the early days for illuminating, the fact you had a chart showing the danger of burning the gas having a poisonous effect shows you did your homework, as the gas in the early days of illumination needed high levels of carbon in order to get a bright flame, and that carbon turned into carbon monoxide which builds up in the body and can slowly poison someone. Fortunately, with today's oil and gas lamps, we use much safer products and fuels. Keep up the great work! It is very entertaining, and I hope you enjoy Nawlans, as the locals call it!
When you mentioned the more formal manner of address back in the day In it brought back memories of my.childhood in '60s. It was so much more formal ie: when we visited.downtown Boston we were expected to wear our "Sunday best". That was true in all cities. It changed when the hippies hit the scene, practically overnight in 1967.
To build on your point about horses (since the automobile replaced the horse for many), another skill that is fading is the ability to repair your own car, and how an automobile works. There are a couple of different factor that go into this, the most impactful being that starting around 2000, cars became increasingly difficult for the driveway mechanic to work on, and by 2010, they were designed for certified technicians to repair with lots of proprietary tools. It used to be that anyone willing to learn a little about cars and with a basic set of tools could replace spark plugs, sand the points on the distributer, change a serpentine belt, flush the coolant system. Now, they make cars where you have to remove the whole front bumper to change a headlight bulb, and go to a certified technician to change the oil.
You are totally right. My first car was an '87 Ford 1-ton van and it didn't run when I bought it, I changed out a lot of the parts myself. Years later a friend was having trouble with their car, I don't remember what kind of car, but they asked me to look under the hood. I didn't recognize anything or even how to disassemble it. I told them they had to get a professional lol!
One can still change the oil and filter, the air and cabin filters, the brake pads and rotors, and wiper blades. Luckily, there are no more points, and plugs and coolant last 100K miles. Also, LEDs don't fail often, and plastic timing belts are gone. The only oil hangup is that you need to remove a bottom cover. That cover helps milage and keeps things cleaner. Thankfully, I don't have all that stuff to do that I used to do on my 1979 Ford.
@@ByWire-yk8eh While some may see those as advancements, others see it as forced obsolescence. All of those things are much more difficult to get to, require specialty tools, and specialty knowledge. Computer controlled ignition is much more difficult and expensive to repair, and computer controlled fuel injection makes problems difficult to chase. Distributers and carburetors will always be easier to repair, tune, and upgrade. I agree that timing belts are ludicrous; chains or gears & pushrods will always outlast a timing belt. LEDs may last longer than halogens and sealed beams, but they do still fail eventually. Plugs may last 100k miles, but they will still need to be replaced eventually, too. The removal of the bottom cover to change the oil is one more part requiring specialty tools, and one more step for a job that shouldn't take longer than a haircut to complete. Despite the "advancements" in the technology, parts _will_ eventually fail, and they _will_ need to be replaced. Drivers are being separated from the complete experience of car ownership itself, including the operation and repair.
@@sptownsend999 I'm in my 70s. I used to do ALL the work needed on my vehicles, since the first one I owned. I've 'ground up' restored several vehicles. In the 1990s I had a 1986 Subaru that needed an engine rebuild. FORGET IT!!! I'm now reluctant to do more than open the bonnet on any post-1980 vehicle. My heart breaks every time I have to hand over the keys to my current Subaru to a 'mechanic'. Fortunately I've found a 'good' one - but I still check his work. Any machinery operator will be more effective - and safer - if they know how their machinery works - in detail. The likelihood of today's drivers having ANY idea - or interest in - how their vehicle actually works is negligible.
This was interesting my company actually services and installs gaslights and I knew you were going to discuss the mantles. I would say 20% of the lights we put in still have one. There’s two different types, soft and hard, the hard mantle are much brighter, but more fragile. This is my first time hearing that Gas has changed over time. I was unaware of that. I also want to get one of those lighting stick so I’m gonna be heading to eBay.
Actually, natural gas wasn’t a thing in Europe until after WW2. In the first post-war years most gasworks first replaced coal as feedstock by oil or nafta. When natural gas became more widely available most utilities started a transition that included replacing or adjusting all appliances. At this time a lot of gas streetlights were replaced by electric ones, as the cost of adjusting them to natural gas was deemed to be prohibitive. One of the few areas where a changeover to natural gas did occur quite lately was Northern Ireland, where the Tory government simply had the gas industry shut down for good in the 1980s. Piped gas became available again in the 1990s when a gas pipeline between Scotland and NI was opened. Another interesting case is Copenhagen, Denmark. They kept using manufactured gas until the early 2000s and then switched over to a blend of natural gas and atmospheric air, called Bygas2 (“town gas second generation”). Apparently, this limited the cost of the changeover as newer appliances could use the new gas without any adjustments
@@babicka1 that’s pretty fascinating. I had no idea and I’ve been working with natural gas and propane for the last 25 years only really in the United States. I do appreciate history and these are a lot of questions I’ve always had. I will say that mantle gaslight were far more common until about the year 2000 when open flames started becoming trendy after a time it just became the standard. I still import mantles from India, but I don’t sell nearly the volume. I once did.
Now gas companies adjust gas mixture by BTU value. In the old days gas had to maintain a candlepower standard. The gas had to contain more carbon to give a brighter flame. In addition to open flame gas lights and mantles there was a third type of gas lamp burning acetylene from acetylene tanks or carbide generators. Such as miners lamps and early cars, trucks and motorcycle headlights. Acetylene burns very hot, and also burns with excess carbon which gives a very bright light without use of mantles. It’s the incandescent carbon in a flame that produces the light.
The first time I visited my dad's village I was awestruck. It was my first time seeing a longhouse and I immediately called it a train house. I became more amazed by nightfall. There was no electricity so each family would leave an oil lamp outside their room so the communal space that runs along the length of the longhouse would be lit. Most of the oil lamps were made from powdered milk or Milo(powdered chocolate) tins while the fancier lamps were kept indoors. And as an active city kid I started blowing out the lamps one by one...until I reached the last lamp and swallowed up by the darkest darkness I've ever experienced up to that point. As South East Asians we're rather sensitive with our parents' names getting sullied so we don't address others with their second/parents' name. My students kept misusing that etiquette to tease or goad each other. When I started working a senior colleague told me that the Americans are a dirty bunch for wearing shoes in the house(another big no no here) and calling others with their parent's names. I just nodded at his trivia but held my tongue because he only sees the West, the US especially, as the big bad evil of the world.
before mantles were used on gaslights, they used to use batwing burners, wch gave a long flame. original gas mantles were made using Thorium salts ( which were radioactive)
I grew up in a time and place when/where oil lamps and horses were still in use. The little village still had a working blacksmith. He made his living shoeing horses, repairing tools and making the wheel rims for the cart wheels that his father made at the other end of the forge. The cart wheels had a diameter of four to five feet. The red hot steel was hammered onto the wooden wheel made of several rim sections. The wheel made loud creaking sounds as the steel rim shrank pulling the wooden joints together. When moving behind a horse you'd first place yourself beside it, run a hand over the flank and then move behind - but only if you had to. Mostly we avoided being within range of a kick! I imagine that these days most people need to look up the meaning of the expression “Look out, he has the bit between his teeth”. The bit was meant to be behind the teeth and the house was in part controlled by applying light pressure in the corner of the mouth - something of an irritant for the horse. If the horse got the bit forward between his teeth the bit was much, much less effective. Oil lamps were a huge improvement over candles. We had the table-top type (which you show in a picture of an oil lamp close to a window) and the hanging type. The latter used a mantle. That light was very white probably 6000k or more. Unpleasant except in a room with high ceiling. The wick of the tabletop lamp had to be trimmed several times in an evening otherwise it produced a lot of smoke which contained particles of soot interfering with what was otherwise a warm glow. One little piece of trivia. The decorated medallion of plaster seen in old houses had a practical use. Chandeliers were hung beneath them. Whether the chandelier was lit with oil or with candles it still gave off some smoke. The medallion was to help trap the smoke to that one area of the ceiling. Many medallions had a concave shape in section. It was easier to paint the medallion than to paint the entire ceiling!
Fun fact: Big Ben was originally lit by gas lamps. If you see videos of inside the clock face, you'll see a couple of metal ladders embedded in the wall. Gas probably was cheaper at the time and more reliable than electricity. My cousin owned a building downtown and the second and third floor had apartments. Most of these were one room apt, had a window and transom. From the ceiling was a pendent lamp hanging down that was probably combo gas/electric fixture. I looked under the staircase and there was a bank of gas pipes that originally went to gas meters for each little apt. BTW, there were maybe six apt on that floor, one sink in the common area and one bathroom for everyone.
These are the little tidbits that go a long way in the overall spectrum of life. Those things way in the back of your mind that you yearn to know but don’t readily pursue. To know these facts is to know how to navigate life and address issues when they arise - like knowing what our gas stoves contain. I’ve been obsessed with the corset debacle for a while now. And to think, the concept of tight corsets appear to be propagated by misogynistic men and I believe for new commercial purposes. In Gone With the Wind, the novel, it’s explained that Scarlett wanted her corset to be pulled tight this time! And Mammy even insists that it’s not a good idea! And goes on about it the tighter Scarlet demands it to be on her.
@@AlextheHistorian London did have sewer gas destructor lamps to burn off gases vented from the sewer. There's still one running today in Carting Lane. An online search will bring up the details if you're interested. London still has some working conventional gas lamps as well, including most notably outside the gates of Buckingham Palace. So pretty much every tourist to London takes a photo of some gas lamps without realising it. There's still a few hundred in surrounding streets as well, many of them now heritage listed as historical artefacts. Another example of real working gas lamps with mantles still in use is in the grounds of Government House in the Australian city of Adelaide. Those all use mantles, they're bright lighting for practical use not simply a flame for decoration.
i love how you dove straight into the meat. first video of yours i've watched (i'm halfway through) and i'm watching until the end because you don't mess about! i already know why gas lamps are fake, and it's been really interestesting so far so now i want to know what else you have to say! love it!
From some etiquette I know, this is how you would address people outside your family; Mr. Bennet (Father & Husband) Mrs. Bennet (Wife & Mother) Miss Bennet (Oldest Daughter, first name excluded) Miss Elizabeth Bennet (2nd oldest daughter, first name begins to be added) Miss Mary Bennet (3rd oldest daughter) Miss Lydia Bennet (Youngest daughter) Young Mister Bennet (If oldest son had same first name as father) Mr. George Bennet (First names added for all sons) *You would only be first name basis with someone if your are immediate family related by blood or marriage. People were very conscious of one's class ranking, sex, and age. This makes our pronouns simple compared to years past.
For young males the term "master" was used. Titles were also important. A doctor was Dr. Smith. A surgeon would be Mr. Smith. A higher education teacher would be Professor Smith. Sometimes Professor would also get used for the elderly as a title even if they were not a teacher but they were known for knowing a great deal.
When camping as a child in the 70's we had a gas Coleman lantern that used a delicate mantle to produce a bright light. It burned with a distinctive sound. It attracted a lot of moths that would hit the lantern glass with a 'plink'. The lantern used the same fuel as the portable stove. These items and some replacement parts are still available to buy now. It would be useful to know how to use these liquid fuel items, incuding portable heaters and barbeques, to help people stay safe. I bet if i was to ask my younger work colleagues they probably would know what sterno was or how to heat with it in an emergency.
As a kid in the 70s, we had a gas lamp post at the end of the driveway. It was always on, day or night. I think it lasted until the early 80s. I can't remember if it was hit by a car or the post rotted, but I do remember the eternal flame we had for a little while.
You are right about so much of this. I am an old man that were round much of what you discussed in my your video. In my early years (my informative years) I grew up with the etiquette that you touched upon. Over the years (with not a small amount of sadness) I have had to train myself not to practice some of the etiquette I once used in the past - even to this day I feel that I am being rude and disrespectful if I don't use the etiquette of the past - not that the other person mower days would know the difference.
One thing most people don't understand are the role of bathhouses. It's funny how oblivious people are to the fact that three or four generations ago running water and electricity were only a thing in major cities! A village may have a single well for everyone to use and it wouldn't be the bucket well, as that one takes too long... Towns had often springs with running water (since the Middle Ages, as they knew that running water is safer to drink) which were decorative, but meant for you to fill up buckets which you would use at home to wash yourself, do your kitchen work, etc... Cities had a bathhouse for pretty much every few blocks and people may go there after work every day before going home! This was both for washing yourself with some comfort, but also for socializing!
I remember the "mantle" (I think there was another name for it) on Coleman lanterns that could be run on either propane or Coleman fuel (kerosene, more or less); they were quite bright. I used to live in a condominium that was originally built as veteran's housing in 1945 and had been called "Gaslight Village" at that time. It had gas lights all along the grounds, as well as gas stoves, heat and refrigerators. Although I don't know if it applied to this complex, I've read that in the 1930s and 1940s, gas companies were giving away all manner of appliances in order to promote their service, so many developers were able to equip their properties with said appliances for free, making the even the gas lights seem like a better deal than they would otherwise have been. Needless to say, the when the underground pipes started leaking, the lights were replaced with electric ones, as were the gas refrigerators.
I am nearly 60 and I think that I was brought up at the end up the time where experience with horses was more common among older people, but not necessarily with my parents generation. But I consciously made an effort to get to know horses because I happened to live near where horses were kept, and I am comfortable with them. And it was kind of instilled into me as I learned to drive a car, as a carryover from the horse days by the older people who I knew who taught me. You see, a horse is aware of its surroundings and wouldn’t just crash into a wall. It would see it not sense it was getting close to something and the person driving the horse kind of got a connection going with the horse, and there was a kind of trusting communication going on. It was a sense, and not a real communication if you know what I mean. You kind of had to be aware that another horse was coming up alongside you, or coming from a side road and you had to be aware that the horse you were on might not see it or the other person might not see you or they might not have full control of their horse and you needed to be aware of that and be able to anticipate it and prepare for it in case it happened. And today, with cars, and with younger people learning to drive and were taught by people younger than me, they seem to not have that “horse sense” carryover that I have. And you combine that with the distractions of today and the modern sensors in cars that alert you to lane changes or if you are drifting etc and the young people are just not as skilled at driving as older generations were. It’s not a knock on young people, mind you. It’s dealing with the cards you were dealt. I could go on about it but I don’t want people to get upset about it. But be aware that there are older people out there who drive cars without any sensors in them and they are totally aware of where their cars are in space and they see most young people doing things and they are shaking their heads. And they would never let a young person drive their older cars because they know the young people would assume the car would alert them that they are about to crash into a wall. And it just won’t and the car would be ruined and the person hurt or worse.
My truck has an anti theft device. It's called a clutch. It also has manual locking doors, and roll down windows. It's not a convenient vehicle for those people addicted to convenience. Several convenience items don't work. It's too old and doesn't have much value to anyone but me. Maybe that's anti theft it's self. Fortunately I can work on it myself. I have paper manuals that will still work when the internet goes down.
Coleman and Petromax gas lanterns are very famous for their very bright gas mantle lanterns. It makes perfect sense that this technology would be used for Street lamps and actually be pretty bright.
Baltimore is an interesting city when it comes to history, there is SO much history there hidden underneath the graffiti and drug dens lol. One of my favorite things is Edgar Allen Poe's house is still there! If I ever go to Baltimore, I plan to see that.
On a side note. My mom collected kerosene lamps from antique sales and such and we always got smokeless odorless kerosene from cracker barrel which is damn hard to find these days. Even harder to find are the circle shaped wicks for some of the silver lamps.
The house my sister lives in, when upgraded, they ran a lot of the wires through the gas lines. When I was younger, I would never thought about calling an adult by their first name.
natural gas is almost entirely methane around here they do not add anything extra to it except and odorant for safety. Call gas is also mostly methane but it had a lot of impurities which caused uneven burning and a more yellow bright flame just like kerosene does. Deodorized kerosene that has removed a lot of the sulfur which produces much of the odor does not burn as bright in your lanterns and hurricane lamps. household and street gas lights often had multiple burners in them each producing about 6 W of light like a night light. And you could turn the gas up to get a little more light but it cost you a lot more and they produce heat which is great in the winter or in a cold climate but not so good here in Texas. My old hometown of Galveston Texas had an article in the newspaper in 1930 talking about switching over to natural gas from the cold gas generation plant. You took Cole and heated it and sprayed it with steam and hot oil and stuff to force the natural gas or methane out of the blocks of coal and this created a certain amount of pressure and it was stored in gigantic tanks that were heavy which pushed down on the store gas providing pressure to push it out across the city. All cities had these gigantic tanks suspended in big steel frameworks which allowed the open bottom steel tank to rise and fall with a water seal around the bottom held in a concrete foundation which prevented leakage very ingenious. There's a big article about it on Wikipedia. So remember your gas lights had multiple burners in them so you would have 3 to 5 or six flames turned up pretty high
Fire, in general, is another lost skill. Today is my mom's 90th birthday. In my parents early life, there was a fire in the house every day, even in the summer, because they cooked on a wood stove. Today if we have to make a fire it's a novel adventure because we don't do it. I even feel funny having a candle burning because fire is just something we're not used to.
I have some alladin kerosene lamps and they not only do a fantastic job of lighting the house, it's also a great alternative heat source during a power outage which happens in my area of Minnesota quite often.
I grew up in the Dorchester section of Boston, MA and we had gas lamps on our street. There was a worker who regularly serviced the lamps, wound the clock, etc. Those were replaced by sodium vapor street lamps in 1957 or 1958 which were bright but had a nasty light. The street behind ours, Wellesley Park, and Beacon Hill kept their gas street lights and I believe that they still function today.
I just posted about the gas lamps in West Roxbury in the 1940s and 50s. There was a fellow with a ladder who (perhaps weekly) trudged up the street and wound the timer on each fixture
Wellsboro, PA still uses the original gas streetlights and they do have mantles. They are bright enough to see by. Although I can't swear to the gas mix my understanding is they never converted to electric because the gas is supplied by local natural gas wells. We have many in the area.
I'm sure they run off of normal natural gas. When your gas lamp has a mantle it's useless to use a more expensive gas, you'll get the same brightness of the mantle
The only gas lamps I am familiar with are those fired with acetylene gas. Used in remote farm homes utilizing gas generators that ran on calcium carbide. Homes built in the early 1900’s utilized natural gas for lighting in various parts of the home. I had the misfortune of trying to replace a hanger for an electric light to instal a newer fixture. Much to my dismay this hanger piece was also a cap for the gas line that fed an early gas lamp and it was still pressurized with natural gas! Had to turn off the main feed to the home in order to remove the handler adapter and reseal the joint with gas pipe dope. When gas was restored to the home we had to do a test for gas leaks on that fitting. Someone had never taken the time to isolate the gas feed to these lights. Funny thing is that every room was equipped with gas heaters but they had been blocked off and were left in place as a cosmetic piece.
Couple of corrections: Natural gas IS a mixture of mostly methane (95%) with the remainder being ethane and propane. No other alkanes are added to natural gas. Gas mantles glow by converting the heat flames’ heat into light using candoluminescence. The hotter the flame, the brighter the light output. The only reason modern “decorative” gas lamps are dim is the lack of a mantle. It has nothing to do with the type of gas being burned. In fact, if a mantle were installed, burning natural gas would produce a brighter light because it burns hotter.
The science behind what is in natural gas and the gas the flows into households, and the science behind what makes a mantle glow...I'll take your word for it, I'm not much of a chemist or science guy, I like history and I'm here to discuss the history behind the gas lamps. But what I will say is that, Gas Lamps existed as open-flame lamps BEFORE the use of mantles. So while yes, mantles would make modern open-flame lamps brighter, the use of coal gas and (as some people pointed out) acetylene, was used to make the flames BRIGHTER before the wide use of mantles. So some gas lamps today are remnants of open-flame lamps that existed before mantles.
@@crunchdata you’re probably right. Today people probably like the flickering flame effect for ambiance because regular lights are so good at providing stable light output. The flickering of a flame is rare and thus better to the modern human 😁
@@AlextheHistorian Guilty as charged, I am a chemist and I should have said “minor” corrections. Sometimes I make comments quickly and then upon reflection realize that they sound kinda dickish. That wasn’t my intention.
Gas lamps still exist in the form of camping lanterns. They use white gas fuel, but the still uses a mantle. It's still the densest fuel source for portable lighting.
Well...gas lamps still exist in general. There are plenty of places, especially across the US where gas lamps, both open-flame and mantle variety exist and are kept operable.
These camping lanterns are the closest thing to classic gas street lights we have today, they are really bright. Careful with the mantles though, they're slightly radioactive, so don't keep them where you spend a lot of time. Still have an oil lantern in my garden shack, nice even light for when the bbq stretches till after dusk and into the night, never runs out of battery.
CHEERS ALEX,, GREAT INTERESTING VIDEO ,, THANK YOU FOR WORKING SO HARD TO BRING THIS OLD HISTORY TO MY FAMILY TO LEARN ABOUT THE OLD DAYS.. MY SON MAX 9 YR.S OLD SAYS HE LIKES THE LIGHTING BUGS FLYING AROUND WITH THERE LITTLE LIGHT SHUTING OFF THEN ON ,,, THERE SO FUN TO SEE IN NATURE .. THANK YOU...
The elementary school building I attended was built in 1928 and still had gas lamp fixtures in the hallways in the 1960s, but the gas supply was turned off in the basement. I also remember that the summer house we had at the Jersey shore in the 1960s had a gaslit pole lamp in the front yard with a shingle hanging with the street number. Forgot about that until viewing this.
Thanks Alex! Early Disneyland publicity often stated that there would be actual lamp lighters on Main Street. Not sure if that ever happened. Also, there was a time when mantles were used on Main Street. Imagineer Eddie Sotto told me they stopped using them because they liked the flame effect better (although I think it was probably more a cost issue!)
Yeah I'm in agreement that it was probably a cost issue. Although I will say, that despite all the talk I gave about gas lamps using modern gas and it not being bright enough, open flame gas lamps still look more interesting than a gas mantle!
Interestingly I have a vague notion that there are other kitschy "old timey" reproductions of things that don't work as well as the real things because they're more about nostalgia and fascination with the feeling of the past than actual functionality but I just can't think of any good examples off the top of my head right now.
Gas cylinders used indoors are usually butane. It is cleaner burning, but does not work at low temperatures. Propane gas cylinders are usually used outside, because it is not as clean burning but works at much low temperatures. Camping gas cylinders are usually a mix of butane and propane, so they will light at freezing temperatures
Nice job Alex. I have a ton of oil lamps in the basement for power outages and a couple Aladdin mantle lamps that are so bright it looks like a 60 watt bulb. It’s funny how you mention oil lamp etiquette. I’ve noticed in so many period movies that the actors turn the oil lamps up too high too quickly that it throws black soot on the glass chimney so thick that their light is barely visible. 😂
I grew up in Springfield Virginia. Our neighborhood was build in the early 1960s. Every house had a gas lamp (natural gas with a mantle) at the end of the driveway by the sidewalk. They burned all day and all night. That's what we had for street lights. Many have been converted to electric lamps since then, but back in the 1980s they were all gas. What's odd is that the adjacent subdivision, which was about 10 years older, had mercury vapor street lights.
Fantastic stuff, an interesting change of style of video, and I like it! I particularly love the gaslight stuff. Always found them interesting. As an astronomy fan, gaslights would be welcome when stargazing because they probably wouldn't emit as much light pollution as modern streetlights today, especially the awful ones that just point the light upwards for no reason. I would love to travel back to rural Victorian England with a modern telescope and enjoy being able to see much more in the night sky.
Grew up in Medicine Hat, Alberta. The Gas City. They used to have mantled gas lamps all over downtown. Now I think they but LED cause it didn’t look the same when I passed through.
I remember how surprised I was to learn that lantern mantles could be used on kerosene lamps. I was familiar with Coleman lanterns but didn't realize that mantles pre-dated petrol lamps.
I just converted a beautiful old kerosene lamp I have into electric. i made it to where I can convert it back to kerosene if need be. I do keep a few kerosene lamps around incase of power outages. Always good to have back up 😊
A couple years ago I was in downtown Mobile, Alabama, and noticed that there were several gas lamps in the area. Most were bare flame but a few had mantels.
In 1968, my family and I traveled on a Cunard ship from New York to Bermuda. We lived close to NASA in Maryland. For 4 months, we swapped homes w a Bermuda family so the man could train for running the Apollo tracking station in Bermuda. The movie playing on the ship was Rosemary's Baby, my little sister and I scooted out of the theater when the nude scene appeared. Up on the deck, they had "horse racing" gambling based on dart boards, dice, etc.. Because we were in international waters, at 11yo, I able to place a bet. I watched Horse #9 win all the races so far, the last race was to be a backwards race, the last horse to cross the line was the winner. I paid $1 to bet on the #9, I had a feeling. I won $7, my sister and I enjoyed cake and ice cream after that.
Electric lighting is great for outdoor lighting but how many individuals were killed by an outdoor gas lamp compared to those killed by electrical faults in common street lighting. I continue to use my Aladdin Mantle lamp during power outages, very bright and I am thinking of adding one of their harps and glass diffuser around the main chimney. Also I use my Coleman lamps (with Benzine in Europe since Coleman fuel is not available in the country I live in now) and Petromax kerosene mantle lamps. Even have a Greek Fisherman’s lamp which was quite common in Greece used on fishing boats in the past. These run on butane, a low pressure gas compared to propane which has a higher pressure level. Tried propane with it but I could never get the lamp to function properly even with a regulator in line. These types of lamps use a copper capillary tube to feed the lamp from a large gas tank full of butane.
Those little carbide lamps (calcium carbide and water) like the miners wore on their hardhat make acetylene gas and produce a surprisingly bright light. Extremely simple tech yet it produces a very effective light -- as long as you're not in a methane or other volatile gas atmosphere, where having a glowing bright open flame is not a good idea.
People do bathe 3 times a day or twice in the tropics where they sweat “like pigs”. They need more salt due to the sweating. Historically rivers were used for bathing in.
14:58 It should also be noted that, just like today, photographs were often touched up to remove blemishes and change contours. It is almost certain that this picture was hand painted to slim the already tightly synched waist.
True many photographs where touched up, however that woman was one of the very few women who sought attention by ACTUALLY tight-lacing. So it's an untouched photo.
Another interesting thing I've noticed about Victorian fashion is that men always wear hats outside. I don't think I've ever seen picture of men from the early 20th century without hats. Even people who do hard labor wear hats.
I would account many customs to practical walking conditions. My guess is cars were not popular as today, mass transport not enough, so when walking was practical to have cover for hair and round part to shade eyes from sun or even to prevent rain drops. Umbrella wasn't always at hand. Also popular was using rain coat cloak for heavy rainy weather. Now people have much less chances to walk far or use often opened type carriage in bad weather.
YES! I agree! People didn't have cars or sunblock back then. Also it kept hair cleaner longer from dirt ask and smoke. You would be considered naked without a hat back then.
Its not usually used. Years ago i was down at shepards beach resort on Clearwater beach and they have these super cool spiraling flame gas lights outside of the resort and i just had to get some. They were very expensive and now i have two on brick columns at the end of my driveway. As well as either side of my garage and at my main entrance and around my back porch. They are pretty low maintenance. They don't get blocked in the winter up at my place in indiana either. However they did cause my gas bill to increase by at 28 bucks on average monthly.
Set looks nice, you're looking sharp, and the video was well done. I do, however, kind of disagree with you on the; (...the gas in your house will not burn bright like what was used with mantles back then...)*not exact words* The gas that comes to fill the big tanks for people in the country, when put into a "Coleman (mantle) Lamp" it burns bright. As well as when getting it off the line in a house using city piped in gas, it burns bright. (Granddad had an adapter to fill a can from the connection in the house. Not sure if built in house or what...haha!) Just saying all that to say it could be that the stove burner outlet may be the cause rather than the gas type. The kind of double mantle camp lamp bright enough to light up a full camp site has never looked dimmer when using house gas. Keep making videos brother! They are well done! 👍🏼👍🏼
Thank you. But like you said, those weren't my exact words. I was actually talking about how the gas in your house does not burn as bright as the coal gas did when used in an open flame lamp. Mantle lamps, as you pointed out, will burn bright with most types of gas due to a chemical reaction. Thanks for watching!
My house was built in the 1880s and still has fixtures for coal gas lamps. That's also why I have 4-meter-high ceilings, which is not an exaggeration, by the way. I have to stand on a ladder to open the top windows. I’m told this was for ventilation and to help cool the place in summer when the gas lamps were burning. I also have the original masonry heaters (cocklestove), which still work and are maintained, but are mostly just decorative these days. It must have been pretty stinky and stuffy in this building back in the day! People get nostalgic, but imagine how bad the carpets and curtains must have stunk after absorbing those odors for years on end - not to mention that everyone and their dog smoked like chimney stacks in those days!
There's a book called Electric Cooking Heating Cleaning (etc.) from around 1914 (it's on google books). In it, the writer - "housewife" - describes the advantages of electricity in the home. One thing that caught me was where she described a friend paying an exorbitant price for electricity. But her friend believed it was still cheaper than gas lamps in the long run, because of how much money they saved by not having to replace all the paintings, curtains, and wallpaper every year or so, them having been ruined by gas lamp exhaust fumes. Yeah, that really was a thing.
@madmanmapper yeah , but who can afford all that ?
@@engineerinhickorystripehat The same people who could afford electricity.
My house was built in 1870... pretty sure the people who built mine were just poor. I have no signs of any gas lamps 😢
Hi Alex,
I am from Germany, Frankfurt.We still have street gas lamps in the town.They are still very common in many streets.
Most of them were installed in the late 1950/60th and still work.
Berlin seems to be the capital of gas lamps , they are everywhere .
They give a great warm yellow light.
Thanks for your great video.
Danke! -I have a friend who teaches me words in German 😁
There are even more gas lamps in Dusseldorf
I am a Brit and 77 hrs. As a child I remember gas lighting in the streets. Yes they were bright enough to see sufficient to walk the streets. However, not so good for driving. Car lights were not too good, as a result pedestrians were encouraged to wear or carry something white, better still a flash light, (torch to us Brits) to be seen at night. I also recall the valve to the lamp was fitted with two chains that the street lighter would pull to turn the gas on or off. I also remember a mechanical device to some lamp that could switch the lamps on automatically. I aslo remember the gas lamps being replaced by electric lighting. Some town just replaced the gas piping with electric cables and a bulb and holder.
We didn't have a bath room in our working class home. We used a steel galvanised bath, that we would place in the living room fill with hot water from the adjacent fire range. We attempted to practise modesty while bathing.
I bought a SW Philadelphia row home many years ago. When doing some work on the house, I noticed some areas of wall that had odd protrusions that really didn't belong. Some brief investigation revealed gas pipes in the walls. They were closed off in the basement, but the previous owner left the pipes in place and he and subsequent owners left the valve remnants protruding through the walls. I removed the segments while remodeling. I did look for the fixtures in various spots, such as the tiny crawlspace attic, to no avail. Pity, might've reconnected one for historic value.
The bathroom was obviously originally just a water closet, later converted to indoor plumbing fully - complete with lead drain pipes, as I learned the hard way when one drain pipe eroded through and dropped our kitchen ceiling. That all swiftly was converted to modern pipework, but dad did teach me how to make oakum/lead joints.
I also did all of the repairs on the house and car. While working initially in electronics and later, IT.
62 now, living in an apartment, so a lot less to repair, well, save what building maintenance doesn't want to repair and is cheap or just needs re-installation the correct way...
BTW, I'm a decade and a half younger.
I remember a favorite book series about Freddy the pig he was in New York and had a bank a newspaper. Good series from the 30s through the 50s and one time he was walking home from the movies when a phaton almost ran him off the road he shouted “don’t you know your supposed to carry a light! You could have killed me!” Turns out it was his friend a horse named hank on some emergency town run. It had a lot of history details the writer put in that were already on the way out he didn’t have to include but it made a very cozy and rural touch.
I was born 1980 and the house I grew up in outside new orleans still had a gas lamp in the yard by the street, it never worked, but I always thought it was cool and had a bunch of questions about it
@@reapersritehand we had one example in front of a local business, "The gaslight" that still was in operation as of 20 years ago, uncertain if the lamp is still maintained though. For many years, I assumed that the glowing mantle was actually ceramic, right until I had gotten a Coleman lamp for camping.
@ cool if it works on Halloween
I bet many folks recall how very bright Coleman camping lanterns could be, and yes, they had/have a mesh sleeve. We had kerosene lanterns. which came in handy when we lost power regularly in storms before the utilities started trimming branches away from the lines. Nice job researching. A younger guy at work wondered what time it was. I pointed to the clock on a turret nearby and he said he couldn't read time by the dial and hands. Dunno if he was joking or not.
Unfortunately, I don't think he was joking. Many people who are Millennials or younger, cannot read traditional dial-face clocks.
I have had a Coleman gas lantern that takes those green propane camp cylinders for the past 20 years and it works great. it also has the mesh sleeve.
@@AlextheHistorianAnother problem is some analog clocks these days are so cheap the gears are misaligned or skip causing the hour hand to pass the hour mark early making the clock look off by an hour towards the end of each hour. This is especially aggregious if the numbers or marks are huge relative to the face (or whatever it has instead). It's easy to compensate when you know it's broken or off a bit but many people I could see getting frustrated and give up on analog clocks if they keep being wrong. But that leads to a catch 22, the more people who refuse to read analog clocks, the worse clocks are made to the point they are just decoration.
That and Roman numerals, people seem to hate Roman numerals these days.
The Coleman lantern I have now (takes size D batteries) is not nearly as good as the old kerosene ones we took hunting with us as a kid. Still bright enough for maybe the first night though.
If he asks again, maybe offer to teach him how to read it. It's so simple, I don't understand why schools don't cover it in first grade.
Acetylene gas lighting was the brightest illumination. It came into wide use in 1892. It was said to be brighter than early electric lighting. Our cousins mansion in Scotland had acetyle gas lighting. The acetylene gas generator is still there but the house has been left an empty shell after a fire damaged it in 1941. One drawback was that the glass globes in the lights sooted up and had to be cleaned every day keeping the maids busy. I don’t think acetylene was practical for use in street lights. Nowadays it’s mostly used for welding.
Miner's carbide lamps used an acetylene flame. Portable units, mounted on a hard hat, with a 2 oz reservoir, 5'' reflector and an upper chamber that held water. Water dripped over Calcium Carbide at an adjustable rate, creating acetylene gas. The gas came out a nozzle and was ignited by a flint striker. They were pretty bright. We used them in search and rescue, especially cave rescue, as late as the 1980s.
@@HootOwl513 Early automobile headlights used to be acetylene as well; first with carbide generators, then bottled gas, until electric headlights became common.
Then there was the acetylene flame, directed upon a piece of calcium (lime), which was used in theaters as 'limelight'...
acetylene was also used for lighting for cars ( made by dropping water onto Calcium Carbide in a closed vessel
Nice photo of the late queen
It's also got a really wide explosive concentration range, which doesn't help.
My grandfather was a gas lamp lighter for Birkenhead Borough Council UK. He later “graduated” to maintaining the electric lamps until he retired in 1976.
Boy, would I have liked to pick his brain for stories of the past and the lighting of the lamps!
Just used my oil lamps a couple weeks ago during a power outage. Every household should have oil lamps.
They're a great emergency/backup light but be careful the fire risk is real. I have aunts and uncles who still use oil heaters and lamps because they live where it's rural.
@@GeorgeWashingtonLaserMusket -- Been using them for decades. I'm always careful. What I like to do is place them in a spot and then light the wick, and leave it there. In other words, I don't carry them around. If I need a light to carry around, I use one of my enclosed candle lanterns. Much safer!!
We have frequent power outages and I use kerosene lamps then. The Alladin brand mantle lamps give a light bright enough to read comfortably by.
I find it hilarious that i have most of these "lost skills", or practiced them in my youth.
Indeed, many want my pasta sauce recipe. For one, there is no standard recipe, if I'm in the mood for a sweeter sauce, I add more onion, want my garlic, I add more garlic, want it for more delicate flavored ingredients, less garlic and onion, so there are no standardized fixed amounts. Even when literally making my usual 3 gallon batches with meat that I'll pressure can in quart jars after cooking.
In particular, it drove Brits nuts, as they were seeking a fully standardized recipe that doesn't really exist, it's proportions and preferences and intent for the batch.
I did wonder about the gas lamps, always suspected mantles were used though, as I could figure no other way to brighten a gas flame and I'm well familiar with liquid gas lamps from both the military and camping.
Oddly, always did know how to work an oil lamp. My parents never had any, but I got some many years ago and figured them out in seconds, from filling, wick trimming to adjusting the flame. This isn't NASA, after all!
After viewing this video, I wonder what people today would do if confronted with trying to dial a rotary phone!
My great-great-grandmother believed electricity was a fad and would disappear. She lived until my mother was in high school, so mom (and her cousins) had to learn to live without electricity to please her. Mom's knowledge is a big part of why my Girl Scout troops loved primitive camping - we learned the skills to easily cope without electricity before we were old enough to think it was too hard or boring. You haven't had good home made popcorn until you've popped it over an open flame.
@@mgailp I drove soldiers to distraction, as I was the prick that stood there with just a map and compass and could call out 1 meter accurate grid coordinates spot on, every time, with only a minute or so of making my sightings with the compass. I was also the last of my unit's licensed coal furnace firemen (yes, we needed a special license to operate a coal furnace, that antique barracks furnace could kill everyone in a building if one didn't know what one was doing!). I could also program our state of the art radios flawlessly. Did the highest tech and lowest tech, so I've literally operated a classified satellite linked computer by the light of a gasoline lantern, while operating a WWII vintage field telephone off of just the power of the speakers until someone found where the replacement D batteries got stowed (yes, those things had a sound powered mode).
And made popcorn over an open flame, along with fresh caught fish for breakfast. Also carried a gasoline powered field stove that could convert easily to run off of kerosene.
In a Gilligan's Island scenario, I'd have already ginned up the engine enough to run briefly, used its ignition to power a long Marconi antenna and sent a Morse code distress via Hertzian spark gap off for rescue. Probably get a big fine from the FCC too...
Slight correction on your wording. Natural Gas is naturally a mixture of mostly methane combined with ethanes, butanes, propanes, pentanes, and other heavier hydrocarbons. They do not add butane or propane to natural gas supplies. The reverse is actually true when the gas is refined to remove water. To remove the water they must do some factional distillation and which also separates out each of the hydrocarbons. Now because butane and propane carry more energy per volume/weight they are often harvested to be sold at a higher price point where energy density is a primary concern. Of course because perfection in refining costs a lot of money a mixture of hydrocarbons ends up in the methane. We call it natural gas because it naturally varies from about 92 to 98 percent methane, with the rest being miscellaneous hydrocarbons.
When all the homes in the subdivision where I live, were built, in 1970, they all had natural gas lights in front or the homes. By the time I bought the house, in 1979, more than two thirds of the gas lights were inoperable. By 2024, I believe that I have the only gas light operable, in the subdivision. Changing the mantles every few years, takes less than 5 minutes, and replacing the glass sides of the lamp, can be done for $10.
I applaud you for maintaining your gas lamp. That's a feature of a home I would appreciate.
We had one in our yard, it hardly required any maintenance. Can you tell us the operating cost?
Another lost skill is changing out a flat tire on your own car.
Another lost skill is the "Making" coal gas form lumps of coal. Quite the process.
Another fine watch from Alex the Historian, thanks for your time and hard work.
Thanks!
@@AlextheHistorian Alex, this watch was a bit different but very enjoyable from start to finish...........
I'm glad to hear it. My content lately has been suffering from not being able to attract viewers and keep them engaged.
@@AlextheHistorian It's our fault not the content. I look forward to your impressions of New Orleans. I haven't been since the year before Katrina. Only later did I explore Magazine street and see further than Garden district and French quarter. You gotta see (many x) 1950 Streetcar Named Desire before going.
@@AlextheHistorian What was different about this watch was the various subjects in one video. The gas lamp section covered Disneyland, Boston, New Orleans and so on. The lost skills section went from baking to being careful around horses and other lost skills. Maybe try it again. People today have short attention spans -- maybe four or five shorter story blocks may be better than one longer vid on the same subject??? Just thinking.
The horse part reminds me of what just happened to me today:
I was walking and heard something from the bushes and something seemed to be darting in my direction. Without thinking I went into a boxer stance with clenched fists and my forearms protecting my neck.
Out came a small cat and it saw my response and instantly froze up. We exchanged looks, which I can only interpret as _R U cool? Yes, how about you?_ and the cat ran past me.
Cats, dogs, horses, and probably a few wild animals such as ravens, pigeons, and raccoons have learned to read humans and we have become familiar with them. This means that they can thrive in urban environments either with us or among us, whereas other animals cannot judge the threats of urban areas and the threat of us humans and thus rather stay away despite the opportunities it offers in terms of food and shelters... That's something to think about...
My Coleman gas lantern uses a mantle and it's amazingly bright. And yes, my grandparents had kerosene lamps put aside to use during power outages. A few years ago, in the aftermath of a hurricane, we had a power outage for several days, and you can bet we were very happy we still had those lamps and some kerosene. I trimmed the wicks a bit, and they served our needs adequately until the power was back on. Of course, a 10kW or bigger Generac standby generator would have been nicer, but we didn't have one at the time.
Having a gas lamppost in the front yard was pretty common in my old neighborhood. They weren't terribly bright but did provide nice illumination for driveways and sidewalks and added a nice touch to the area. My Dad was one of the few who rejected them for some reason. They went out of style around the Mid East Oil Embargo time frame.
Gaslighting in other words addling your victims brains comes from a late 40s movie in which someone commits a crime but tries to confuse his victim by telling her she can't trust her senses.
1944 movie. Ingrid Bergman, Charles Boyer, Joseph Cotten. Directed by George Cukor. It is a fantastic film with an incredible Oscar-winning performance from Ingrid Bergman, my favorite actress.
@@wildsmileyIt's a remake of the 1940 British movie starring Anton Walbrook, which is much closer to Patrick Hamilton's stage play. The play isn't perfect, but is still a good evening's entertainment.
Anton Walbrook, in my opinion, is much better than Charles Boyer in the role, but Ingrid Bergman is sublime.
@@zacmumblethunder7466 That's right. Never saw that one. Gimme Ingrid.
Interestingly the term "gas lighting" in regards to deception refers to a specific type of deception where the deceiver is attempting to make the victim doubt their own sanity and judgement but I've noticed as the term became more popular more people began to just use the term to describe just any kind of lying or deceit in general.
@@Strideo1 I can't stand the people online who immediately jump on you with "stop gaslighting me!" if you even happen to tell them something that they even slightly doubt. I don't know how it came to mean any kind of lying, but TikTok or other social media are probably to blame.
That's what happens when people use a term for something and they have absolutely no clue what it means, and are too ignorant to check first.
This video explains so much! Having (obviously) grown up seeing gas lamps only at Disneyland I was always so confused how they managed to light a street with them in the old days. Now I know!
Glad I could help, Mateo!
Excellent and informative Alex!
Thanks! It's good to see people are enjoying it!
When I was a kid in the 60's natural gas was cheap and a few houses in town had mantle gas lights in their yards that were always on. They lit up a fair portion of the yard. But they were nowhere near as bright as the street lights of course. There was one house that still had the lantern in the yard until fairly recently. It hadn't been used in years.
Also when I was a young'un there was one neighboring farm that still used horses for some chores around the farmyard. So I do have a little experience working with horses, learned from people that worked with horses every day for decades.
And I had a teacher that I became good friends with, but I never felt comfortable calling him by his first name. He always said to call him Earl, but to me he was always Mr. [last name]. It just seemed right.
Never seen your channel before and this video was awesome. I always wonder about things like this through history that most people would find boring or uninteresting. Keep it up! living in New England, I always see tons of old lamps scattered about.
If anyone wants to listen to a really nice and old song about lamplighters, search "The Old Lamplighter by Sammy Kaye". One of my favorites.
Edit: I wanted to add that I am 33 and was also raised calling people Mr., Mrs., and Miss. I'd even call my friends parent's up the road Mr. and Mrs Jacobs and never by their first name. I honestly still do this when I meet someone new, unless they tell me not to. Also, Sir and Ma'am were common growing up. I don't understand how just since the 90's, society has de-evolved so much so quickly. I blame internet and social media. Got rid of my cell phone 4 years ago!!
Well it also proliferated with the common addage "Mr/Mrs (Smith), was my Father/Mother, my name is (first name)". I never saw anything wrong with people calling me by my last name, I didn't feel old or anything, but for some reason, people just don't like to be called by their last names anymore.
Very nice. I never heard of "Coal Gas" until today. Nice video format as well. Thanks for your efforts.
Glad you enjoyed it!
In the USA, it was sometimes called "City Gas".
It was produced at locations that were often called Illuminating gas plants.
I make a living as a contractor specializing in historic building renovation. Maintaining and repairing gas lights is reasonably common call. Great grandma born 1898 taught me to cook when I was a kid. A jigger is 1.5 oz or 3 Tbs. A measure is one and a half jiggers. A measure is a device still used when making cocktails.
The original gas lit Moon Towers in Austin Texas originally came from Detroit. The design of them comes from Paris. Luckily Austin has been able to keep a few of them alive.
Alright alright alright
Interestingly during that time period when they had those Moon Towers running in 1884-1885 there was a serial killer on the loose in Austin called the Servant Girl Annihilator who did just that; murdered mostly servant girls.
This was before Jack the Ripper's killing spree in London and like Jack the Ripper the killer was never caught.
Funny enough some people theorize that the Servant Girl Annihilator and Jack the Ripper could be the same killer but that seems far fetched to me.
One small correction, the Detroit moon towers were actually carbon arc. Imagine being the lucky ducky who had to shinny up that thing to change lamp carbons every 100 hours or so. Cheers from Detroit!
The Thorium Dioxide or Lyme coated mantles make a HUGE difference.
i’m guessing the thorium is the reason I’ve heard that modern mantles are radioactive
This is a HOT topic --- * I had to *
Wonderful video! I think some of the info is not precise but I commend you on your effort and professionalism. I know researching the past can be painstaking and even then you never really know if you get it right.
Neverthless, you did such an excellent job presenting the research and you certainly set us on a path to a greater understanding of this era. --- liked & subbed
Happy Holidays!!
🎄
Thanks for watching and subscribing! Happy Holidays!
People that lived out in the country didn't have access to gas lines. My great grandfathers house had a carbide generator in the yard that made acetylene gas for lighting and cooking
I enjoyed your content. I can tell you put a lot of thought into it and presented that information in a clear and enlightened way.. good job…
Thank you!
A few points:
There are very good electric fake gas lamps that look like the open flame gas ones. It turns out that LEDs can easily be make the right color to make it work. The only thing you might notice if you get very close is that the "flame" can't really be seen though clearly. These are a good option for those who want the look.
There were two main types of oil lamps. The open flame ones are not rocket science. The oil lamp with a mantle was a super clever bit of engineering. It has to get the fuel air mix just right by getting the draft right. Once they were going, the heat mostly boiled the oil off the wick and it mixes with air before it burns.
A few rules on horses.
1) Talk to the horse. It gives them a way to keep track of where you are and they like this.
2) If you are near the butt end of a horse stay to one side and if you have to be close to the horse, reach out and put your hand on them. If you feel it shift its weight back away quickly.
3) Horses are about as smart as a dog but they tend to forget things over night. If you met a horse yesterday it may still think you are a stranger
TH-cam just recommended this video. Subscribed. Great content.
Oh thanks!
I really like this video format, it immediately grabs your attention
That's a relief to hear because my channel has been in need of something that holds people's attention, so many people who click on my videos end up leaving in the first minute!
The lamp lighter is almost identical to the Altar Candle lighters Altar Servers use in the Catholic Church.
What a great video sir!
It hits home for me, as I am a country kid, and much of what you said is on subjects I learned as time went by growing up!
From gas lamps to horse sense and even oil lamp usage! But even the bathing and other subjects were interesting. Although corset usage never caught on with the girls and women in our neck of the woods, and they were prone to go as the boys and men with what we wore, comfortable and lose fitting.
But one thing I disagree on, is the bathing three or more times a day, and having to slather on lotion afterwards. A person who had to have lotion after a bath, had to have very poor soap that stripped the natural oils from their skin. In those cases where I will have to get a third shower, I will forgo any shampoo or soap, as the water alone is able to get the dirt and dust off without any help from soap. But if I do use soap and shampoo, it is a gentle product that doesn't damage the skin or hair.
Otherwise, the video seems spot on! And although you didn't get super technical about the gas used in the early days for illuminating, the fact you had a chart showing the danger of burning the gas having a poisonous effect shows you did your homework, as the gas in the early days of illumination needed high levels of carbon in order to get a bright flame, and that carbon turned into carbon monoxide which builds up in the body and can slowly poison someone. Fortunately, with today's oil and gas lamps, we use much safer products and fuels.
Keep up the great work! It is very entertaining, and I hope you enjoy Nawlans, as the locals call it!
Thank you very much Jeffrey!
You're gaslighting us.
Lol! First comment I read when I opened TH-cam today, and it made me laugh out loud 😂
You mean gaslamped!
We WERE being gaslighted, he has shown us the light
You beat me to it 😂
When you mentioned the more formal manner of address back in the day In it brought back memories of my.childhood in '60s. It was so much more formal ie: when we visited.downtown Boston we were expected to wear our "Sunday best". That was true in all cities. It changed when the hippies hit the scene, practically overnight in 1967.
To build on your point about horses (since the automobile replaced the horse for many), another skill that is fading is the ability to repair your own car, and how an automobile works. There are a couple of different factor that go into this, the most impactful being that starting around 2000, cars became increasingly difficult for the driveway mechanic to work on, and by 2010, they were designed for certified technicians to repair with lots of proprietary tools. It used to be that anyone willing to learn a little about cars and with a basic set of tools could replace spark plugs, sand the points on the distributer, change a serpentine belt, flush the coolant system. Now, they make cars where you have to remove the whole front bumper to change a headlight bulb, and go to a certified technician to change the oil.
You are totally right. My first car was an '87 Ford 1-ton van and it didn't run when I bought it, I changed out a lot of the parts myself. Years later a friend was having trouble with their car, I don't remember what kind of car, but they asked me to look under the hood. I didn't recognize anything or even how to disassemble it. I told them they had to get a professional lol!
One can still change the oil and filter, the air and cabin filters, the brake pads and rotors, and wiper blades. Luckily, there are no more points, and plugs and coolant last 100K miles. Also, LEDs don't fail often, and plastic timing belts are gone. The only oil hangup is that you need to remove a bottom cover. That cover helps milage and keeps things cleaner. Thankfully, I don't have all that stuff to do that I used to do on my 1979 Ford.
@@ByWire-yk8eh While some may see those as advancements, others see it as forced obsolescence. All of those things are much more difficult to get to, require specialty tools, and specialty knowledge. Computer controlled ignition is much more difficult and expensive to repair, and computer controlled fuel injection makes problems difficult to chase. Distributers and carburetors will always be easier to repair, tune, and upgrade. I agree that timing belts are ludicrous; chains or gears & pushrods will always outlast a timing belt. LEDs may last longer than halogens and sealed beams, but they do still fail eventually. Plugs may last 100k miles, but they will still need to be replaced eventually, too. The removal of the bottom cover to change the oil is one more part requiring specialty tools, and one more step for a job that shouldn't take longer than a haircut to complete. Despite the "advancements" in the technology, parts _will_ eventually fail, and they _will_ need to be replaced. Drivers are being separated from the complete experience of car ownership itself, including the operation and repair.
@@sptownsend999
I'm in my 70s.
I used to do ALL the work needed on my vehicles, since the first one I owned.
I've 'ground up' restored several vehicles.
In the 1990s I had a 1986 Subaru that needed an engine rebuild.
FORGET IT!!!
I'm now reluctant to do more than open the bonnet on any post-1980 vehicle.
My heart breaks every time I have to hand over the keys to my current Subaru to a 'mechanic'.
Fortunately I've found a 'good' one - but I still check his work.
Any machinery operator will be more effective - and safer - if they know how their machinery works - in detail.
The likelihood of today's drivers having ANY idea - or interest in - how their vehicle actually works is negligible.
This was interesting my company actually services and installs gaslights and I knew you were going to discuss the mantles. I would say 20% of the lights we put in still have one. There’s two different types, soft and hard, the hard mantle are much brighter, but more fragile. This is my first time hearing that Gas has changed over time. I was unaware of that. I also want to get one of those lighting stick so I’m gonna be heading to eBay.
Actually, natural gas wasn’t a thing in Europe until after WW2. In the first post-war years most gasworks first replaced coal as feedstock by oil or nafta. When natural gas became more widely available most utilities started a transition that included replacing or adjusting all appliances. At this time a lot of gas streetlights were replaced by electric ones, as the cost of adjusting them to natural gas was deemed to be prohibitive. One of the few areas where a changeover to natural gas did occur quite lately was Northern Ireland, where the Tory government simply had the gas industry shut down for good in the 1980s. Piped gas became available again in the 1990s when a gas pipeline between Scotland and NI was opened. Another interesting case is Copenhagen, Denmark. They kept using manufactured gas until the early 2000s and then switched over to a blend of natural gas and atmospheric air, called Bygas2 (“town gas second generation”). Apparently, this limited the cost of the changeover as newer appliances could use the new gas without any adjustments
@@babicka1 that’s pretty fascinating. I had no idea and I’ve been working with natural gas and propane for the last 25 years only really in the United States. I do appreciate history and these are a lot of questions I’ve always had. I will say that mantle gaslight were far more common until about the year 2000 when open flames started becoming trendy after a time it just became the standard. I still import mantles from India, but I don’t sell nearly the volume. I once did.
Now gas companies adjust gas mixture by BTU value. In the old days gas had to maintain a candlepower standard. The gas had to contain more carbon to give a brighter flame. In addition to open flame gas lights and mantles there was a third type of gas lamp burning acetylene from acetylene tanks or carbide generators. Such as miners lamps and early cars, trucks and motorcycle headlights. Acetylene burns very hot, and also burns with excess carbon which gives a very bright light without use of mantles. It’s the incandescent carbon in a flame that produces the light.
The first time I visited my dad's village I was awestruck. It was my first time seeing a longhouse and I immediately called it a train house. I became more amazed by nightfall. There was no electricity so each family would leave an oil lamp outside their room so the communal space that runs along the length of the longhouse would be lit. Most of the oil lamps were made from powdered milk or Milo(powdered chocolate) tins while the fancier lamps were kept indoors. And as an active city kid I started blowing out the lamps one by one...until I reached the last lamp and swallowed up by the darkest darkness I've ever experienced up to that point.
As South East Asians we're rather sensitive with our parents' names getting sullied so we don't address others with their second/parents' name. My students kept misusing that etiquette to tease or goad each other. When I started working a senior colleague told me that the Americans are a dirty bunch for wearing shoes in the house(another big no no here) and calling others with their parent's names. I just nodded at his trivia but held my tongue because he only sees the West, the US especially, as the big bad evil of the world.
I caught your channel for the first time just now. Thank you for a very interesting and informative video. I’m looking forward to future episodes.
Thank you! Glad you enjoyed it!
before mantles were used on gaslights, they used to use batwing burners, wch gave a long flame. original gas mantles were made using Thorium salts ( which were radioactive)
I grew up in a time and place when/where oil lamps and horses were still in use. The little village still had a working blacksmith. He made his living shoeing horses, repairing tools and making the wheel rims for the cart wheels that his father made at the other end of the forge. The cart wheels had a diameter of four to five feet. The red hot steel was hammered onto the wooden wheel made of several rim sections. The wheel made loud creaking sounds as the steel rim shrank pulling the wooden joints together. When moving behind a horse you'd first place yourself beside it, run a hand over the flank and then move behind - but only if you had to. Mostly we avoided being within range of a kick! I imagine that these days most people need to look up the meaning of the expression “Look out, he has the bit between his teeth”. The bit was meant to be behind the teeth and the house was in part controlled by applying light pressure in the corner of the mouth - something of an irritant for the horse. If the horse got the bit forward between his teeth the bit was much, much less effective.
Oil lamps were a huge improvement over candles. We had the table-top type (which you show in a picture of an oil lamp close to a window) and the hanging type. The latter used a mantle. That light was very white probably 6000k or more. Unpleasant except in a room with high ceiling. The wick of the tabletop lamp had to be trimmed several times in an evening otherwise it produced a lot of smoke which contained particles of soot interfering with what was otherwise a warm glow.
One little piece of trivia. The decorated medallion of plaster seen in old houses had a practical use. Chandeliers were hung beneath them. Whether the chandelier was lit with oil or with candles it still gave off some smoke. The medallion was to help trap the smoke to that one area of the ceiling. Many medallions had a concave shape in section. It was easier to paint the medallion than to paint the entire ceiling!
Fun fact: Big Ben was originally lit by gas lamps. If you see videos of inside the clock face, you'll see a couple of metal ladders embedded in the wall.
Gas probably was cheaper at the time and more reliable than electricity. My cousin owned a building downtown and the second and third floor had apartments. Most of these were one room apt, had a window and transom. From the ceiling was a pendent lamp hanging down that was probably combo gas/electric fixture. I looked under the staircase and there was a bank of gas pipes that originally went to gas meters for each little apt. BTW, there were maybe six apt on that floor, one sink in the common area and one bathroom for everyone.
Great history indeed! I like your video format!
Thank you so much!
These are the little tidbits that go a long way in the overall spectrum of life. Those things way in the back of your mind that you yearn to know but don’t readily pursue. To know these facts is to know how to navigate life and address issues when they arise - like knowing what our gas stoves contain.
I’ve been obsessed with the corset debacle for a while now. And to think, the concept of tight corsets appear to be propagated by misogynistic men and I believe for new commercial purposes. In Gone With the Wind, the novel, it’s explained that Scarlett wanted her corset to be pulled tight this time! And Mammy even insists that it’s not a good idea! And goes on about it the tighter Scarlet demands it to be on her.
Amusingly, the initial London gas lighting used sewer gas to flare it off and get rid of the smell.
Is that really true or are you making a joke about the sanitary conditions of the city? Lol
@@AlextheHistorian London did have sewer gas destructor lamps to burn off gases vented from the sewer. There's still one running today in Carting Lane. An online search will bring up the details if you're interested.
London still has some working conventional gas lamps as well, including most notably outside the gates of Buckingham Palace. So pretty much every tourist to London takes a photo of some gas lamps without realising it. There's still a few hundred in surrounding streets as well, many of them now heritage listed as historical artefacts.
Another example of real working gas lamps with mantles still in use is in the grounds of Government House in the Australian city of Adelaide.
Those all use mantles, they're bright lighting for practical use not simply a flame for decoration.
i love how you dove straight into the meat. first video of yours i've watched (i'm halfway through) and i'm watching until the end because you don't mess about! i already know why gas lamps are fake, and it's been really interestesting so far so now i want to know what else you have to say! love it!
Thank you! Welcome to the channel!
From some etiquette I know, this is how you would address people outside your family;
Mr. Bennet (Father & Husband)
Mrs. Bennet (Wife & Mother)
Miss Bennet (Oldest Daughter, first name excluded)
Miss Elizabeth Bennet (2nd oldest daughter, first name begins to be added)
Miss Mary Bennet (3rd oldest daughter)
Miss Lydia Bennet (Youngest daughter)
Young Mister Bennet (If oldest son had same first name as father)
Mr. George Bennet (First names added for all sons)
*You would only be first name basis with someone if your are immediate family related by blood or marriage. People were very conscious of one's class ranking, sex, and age. This makes our pronouns simple compared to years past.
For young males the term "master" was used.
Titles were also important. A doctor was Dr. Smith. A surgeon would be Mr. Smith. A higher education teacher would be Professor Smith. Sometimes Professor would also get used for the elderly as a title even if they were not a teacher but they were known for knowing a great deal.
Awesome video alex well done❤
Thanks Ozzie!
I also have 2 oil lamps and lamp oil for emergencies. One winter the power was out for a whole weekend, I was happy to have these old lamps!
When camping as a child in the 70's we had a gas Coleman lantern that used a delicate mantle to produce a bright light. It burned with a distinctive sound. It attracted a lot of moths that would hit the lantern glass with a 'plink'. The lantern used the same fuel as the portable stove. These items and some replacement parts are still available to buy now. It would be useful to know how to use these liquid fuel items, incuding portable heaters and barbeques, to help people stay safe. I bet if i was to ask my younger work colleagues they probably would know what sterno was or how to heat with it in an emergency.
There's 1300 original gas lamps still in use in the UK
As a kid in the 70s, we had a gas lamp post at the end of the driveway. It was always on, day or night. I think it lasted until the early 80s. I can't remember if it was hit by a car or the post rotted, but I do remember the eternal flame we had for a little while.
You are right about so much of this. I am an old man that were round much of what you discussed in my your video. In my early years (my informative years) I grew up with the etiquette that you touched upon. Over the years (with not a small amount of sadness) I have had to train myself not to practice some of the etiquette I once used in the past - even to this day I feel that I am being rude and disrespectful if I don't use the etiquette of the past - not that the other person mower days would know the difference.
One thing most people don't understand are the role of bathhouses. It's funny how oblivious people are to the fact that three or four generations ago running water and electricity were only a thing in major cities!
A village may have a single well for everyone to use and it wouldn't be the bucket well, as that one takes too long... Towns had often springs with running water (since the Middle Ages, as they knew that running water is safer to drink) which were decorative, but meant for you to fill up buckets which you would use at home to wash yourself, do your kitchen work, etc... Cities had a bathhouse for pretty much every few blocks and people may go there after work every day before going home! This was both for washing yourself with some comfort, but also for socializing!
@@edi9892 Most people these days would have a hard time navigating an outhouse late at night.
I remember the "mantle" (I think there was another name for it) on Coleman lanterns that could be run on either propane or Coleman fuel (kerosene, more or less); they were quite bright. I used to live in a condominium that was originally built as veteran's housing in 1945 and had been called "Gaslight Village" at that time. It had gas lights all along the grounds, as well as gas stoves, heat and refrigerators. Although I don't know if it applied to this complex, I've read that in the 1930s and 1940s, gas companies were giving away all manner of appliances in order to promote their service, so many developers were able to equip their properties with said appliances for free, making the even the gas lights seem like a better deal than they would otherwise have been. Needless to say, the when the underground pipes started leaking, the lights were replaced with electric ones, as were the gas refrigerators.
I am nearly 60 and I think that I was brought up at the end up the time where experience with horses was more common among older people, but not necessarily with my parents generation. But I consciously made an effort to get to know horses because I happened to live near where horses were kept, and I am comfortable with them. And it was kind of instilled into me as I learned to drive a car, as a carryover from the horse days by the older people who I knew who taught me. You see, a horse is aware of its surroundings and wouldn’t just crash into a wall. It would see it not sense it was getting close to something and the person driving the horse kind of got a connection going with the horse, and there was a kind of trusting communication going on. It was a sense, and not a real communication if you know what I mean. You kind of had to be aware that another horse was coming up alongside you, or coming from a side road and you had to be aware that the horse you were on might not see it or the other person might not see you or they might not have full control of their horse and you needed to be aware of that and be able to anticipate it and prepare for it in case it happened. And today, with cars, and with younger people learning to drive and were taught by people younger than me, they seem to not have that “horse sense” carryover that I have. And you combine that with the distractions of today and the modern sensors in cars that alert you to lane changes or if you are drifting etc and the young people are just not as skilled at driving as older generations were. It’s not a knock on young people, mind you. It’s dealing with the cards you were dealt. I could go on about it but I don’t want people to get upset about it. But be aware that there are older people out there who drive cars without any sensors in them and they are totally aware of where their cars are in space and they see most young people doing things and they are shaking their heads. And they would never let a young person drive their older cars because they know the young people would assume the car would alert them that they are about to crash into a wall. And it just won’t and the car would be ruined and the person hurt or worse.
My truck has an anti theft device. It's called a clutch. It also has manual locking doors, and roll down windows. It's not a convenient vehicle for those people addicted to convenience. Several convenience items don't work.
It's too old and doesn't have much value to anyone but me. Maybe that's anti theft it's self. Fortunately I can work on it myself. I have paper manuals that will still work when the internet goes down.
My noms house was built in 1917 and still had the old gas lines in the basement non functioning but they never took them out.
First time finding your channel. Nice job.
Thank you!
Coleman and Petromax gas lanterns are very famous for their very bright gas mantle lanterns. It makes perfect sense that this technology would be used for Street lamps and actually be pretty bright.
This has to be one of the few huge things Baltimore was first at doing
Baltimore is an interesting city when it comes to history, there is SO much history there hidden underneath the graffiti and drug dens lol. One of my favorite things is Edgar Allen Poe's house is still there! If I ever go to Baltimore, I plan to see that.
@@AlextheHistorianabsolutely, i was kidding earlier. Id like to go as well to see the architecture and Poes place
Really enjoying this, maybe you could do videos about other things of Victorian/past homes, like coal fires etc.
That's a good idea! I could use any suggestions people have, I think the next video might talk about hazardous home decor.
On a side note. My mom collected kerosene lamps from antique sales and such and we always got smokeless odorless kerosene from cracker barrel which is damn hard to find these days. Even harder to find are the circle shaped wicks for some of the silver lamps.
The house my sister lives in, when upgraded, they ran a lot of the wires through the gas lines.
When I was younger, I would never thought about calling an adult by their first name.
In the 70s I worked for the gas company in Hollywood and used to carry mantles for exterior gas lamps and replaced them for free.
natural gas is almost entirely methane around here they do not add anything extra to it except and odorant for safety. Call gas is also mostly methane but it had a lot of impurities which caused uneven burning and a more yellow bright flame just like kerosene does. Deodorized kerosene that has removed a lot of the sulfur which produces much of the odor does not burn as bright in your lanterns and hurricane lamps. household and street gas lights often had multiple burners in them each producing about 6 W of light like a night light. And you could turn the gas up to get a little more light but it cost you a lot more and they produce heat which is great in the winter or in a cold climate but not so good here in Texas. My old hometown of Galveston Texas had an article in the newspaper in 1930 talking about switching over to natural gas from the cold gas generation plant. You took Cole and heated it and sprayed it with steam and hot oil and stuff to force the natural gas or methane out of the blocks of coal and this created a certain amount of pressure and it was stored in gigantic tanks that were heavy which pushed down on the store gas providing pressure to push it out across the city. All cities had these gigantic tanks suspended in big steel frameworks which allowed the open bottom steel tank to rise and fall with a water seal around the bottom held in a concrete foundation which prevented leakage very ingenious. There's a big article about it on Wikipedia. So remember your gas lights had multiple burners in them so you would have 3 to 5 or six flames turned up pretty high
Fire, in general, is another lost skill. Today is my mom's 90th birthday. In my parents early life, there was a fire in the house every day, even in the summer, because they cooked on a wood stove. Today if we have to make a fire it's a novel adventure because we don't do it. I even feel funny having a candle burning because fire is just something we're not used to.
I have some alladin kerosene lamps and they not only do a fantastic job of lighting the house, it's also a great alternative heat source during a power outage which happens in my area of Minnesota quite often.
I grew up in the Dorchester section of Boston, MA and we had gas lamps on our street. There was a worker who regularly serviced the lamps, wound the clock, etc. Those were replaced by sodium vapor street lamps in 1957 or 1958 which were bright but had a nasty light. The street behind ours, Wellesley Park, and Beacon Hill kept their gas street lights and I believe that they still function today.
I just posted about the gas lamps in West Roxbury in the 1940s and 50s. There was a fellow with a ladder who (perhaps weekly) trudged up the street and wound the timer on each fixture
My 1920 home originally had no electricity and gas lighting. In the basement and in the walls the plumbing was still there.
Alex, very enjoyable watching you very informative. Thank you so much.
Thanks Kevin, that's nice of you to say!
Wellsboro, PA still uses the original gas streetlights and they do have mantles. They are bright enough to see by. Although I can't swear to the gas mix my understanding is they never converted to electric because the gas is supplied by local natural gas wells. We have many in the area.
I'm sure they run off of normal natural gas. When your gas lamp has a mantle it's useless to use a more expensive gas, you'll get the same brightness of the mantle
The only gas lamps I am familiar with are those fired with acetylene gas. Used in remote farm homes utilizing gas generators that ran on calcium carbide. Homes built in the early 1900’s utilized natural gas for lighting in various parts of the home. I had the misfortune of trying to replace a hanger for an electric light to instal a newer fixture. Much to my dismay this hanger piece was also a cap for the gas line that fed an early gas lamp and it was still pressurized with natural gas! Had to turn off the main feed to the home in order to remove the handler adapter and reseal the joint with gas pipe dope. When gas was restored to the home we had to do a test for gas leaks on that fitting. Someone had never taken the time to isolate the gas feed to these lights. Funny thing is that every room was equipped with gas heaters but they had been blocked off and were left in place as a cosmetic piece.
Couple of corrections:
Natural gas IS a mixture of mostly methane (95%) with the remainder being ethane and propane. No other alkanes are added to natural gas.
Gas mantles glow by converting the heat flames’ heat into light using candoluminescence. The hotter the flame, the brighter the light output.
The only reason modern “decorative” gas lamps are dim is the lack of a mantle. It has nothing to do with the type of gas being burned. In fact, if a mantle were installed, burning natural gas would produce a brighter light because it burns hotter.
The science behind what is in natural gas and the gas the flows into households, and the science behind what makes a mantle glow...I'll take your word for it, I'm not much of a chemist or science guy, I like history and I'm here to discuss the history behind the gas lamps. But what I will say is that, Gas Lamps existed as open-flame lamps BEFORE the use of mantles. So while yes, mantles would make modern open-flame lamps brighter, the use of coal gas and (as some people pointed out) acetylene, was used to make the flames BRIGHTER before the wide use of mantles. So some gas lamps today are remnants of open-flame lamps that existed before mantles.
I wonder why it is that mantles are not used on modern primarily decorative gas lights. My guess is that the flame looks nicer to the eye.
@@crunchdata you’re probably right. Today people probably like the flickering flame effect for ambiance because regular lights are so good at providing stable light output. The flickering of a flame is rare and thus better to the modern human 😁
@@AlextheHistorian Guilty as charged, I am a chemist and I should have said “minor” corrections. Sometimes I make comments quickly and then upon reflection realize that they sound kinda dickish. That wasn’t my intention.
@crunchdata that's exactly it, the flame looks nicer.
Alex...its your favorite psychologist friend here. I Loved the tongue and cheek joke here. Also this video is fantastic!!!
Glad you enjoyed it! Although I don't know what joke you're referring
Very cool topic, and well presented!
Gas lamps still exist in the form of camping lanterns. They use white gas fuel, but the still uses a mantle. It's still the densest fuel source for portable lighting.
Well...gas lamps still exist in general. There are plenty of places, especially across the US where gas lamps, both open-flame and mantle variety exist and are kept operable.
These camping lanterns are the closest thing to classic gas street lights we have today, they are really bright.
Careful with the mantles though, they're slightly radioactive, so don't keep them where you spend a lot of time.
Still have an oil lantern in my garden shack, nice even light for when the bbq stretches till after dusk and into the night, never runs out of battery.
CHEERS ALEX,, GREAT INTERESTING VIDEO ,, THANK YOU FOR WORKING SO HARD TO BRING THIS OLD HISTORY TO MY FAMILY TO LEARN ABOUT THE OLD DAYS.. MY SON MAX 9 YR.S OLD SAYS HE LIKES THE LIGHTING BUGS FLYING AROUND WITH THERE LITTLE LIGHT SHUTING OFF THEN ON ,,, THERE SO FUN TO SEE IN NATURE .. THANK YOU...
Thanks Ronald. Tell Max I like lightning bugs too!
The elementary school building I attended was built in 1928 and still had gas lamp fixtures in the hallways in the 1960s, but the gas supply was turned off in the basement.
I also remember that the summer house we had at the Jersey shore in the 1960s had a gaslit pole lamp in the front yard with a shingle hanging with the street number. Forgot about that until viewing this.
Thanks Alex! Early Disneyland publicity often stated that there would be actual lamp lighters on Main Street. Not sure if that ever happened. Also, there was a time when mantles were used on Main Street. Imagineer Eddie Sotto told me they stopped using them because they liked the flame effect better (although I think it was probably more a cost issue!)
Yeah I'm in agreement that it was probably a cost issue. Although I will say, that despite all the talk I gave about gas lamps using modern gas and it not being bright enough, open flame gas lamps still look more interesting than a gas mantle!
Interestingly I have a vague notion that there are other kitschy "old timey" reproductions of things that don't work as well as the real things because they're more about nostalgia and fascination with the feeling of the past than actual functionality but I just can't think of any good examples off the top of my head right now.
Gas cylinders used indoors are usually butane. It is cleaner burning, but does not work at low temperatures. Propane gas cylinders are usually used outside, because it is not as clean burning but works at much low temperatures. Camping gas cylinders are usually a mix of butane and propane, so they will light at freezing temperatures
Very interesting video, I really enjoyed it!
A video on Victorian Spiritualism would be cool to learn about
Nice job Alex. I have a ton of oil lamps in the basement for power outages and a couple Aladdin mantle lamps that are so bright it looks like a 60 watt bulb. It’s funny how you mention oil lamp etiquette. I’ve noticed in so many period movies that the actors turn the oil lamps up too high too quickly that it throws black soot on the glass chimney so thick that their light is barely visible. 😂
I grew up in Springfield Virginia. Our neighborhood was build in the early 1960s. Every house had a gas lamp (natural gas with a mantle) at the end of the driveway by the sidewalk. They burned all day and all night. That's what we had for street lights.
Many have been converted to electric lamps since then, but back in the 1980s they were all gas.
What's odd is that the adjacent subdivision, which was about 10 years older, had mercury vapor street lights.
Fantastic stuff, an interesting change of style of video, and I like it! I particularly love the gaslight stuff. Always found them interesting. As an astronomy fan, gaslights would be welcome when stargazing because they probably wouldn't emit as much light pollution as modern streetlights today, especially the awful ones that just point the light upwards for no reason. I would love to travel back to rural Victorian England with a modern telescope and enjoy being able to see much more in the night sky.
Glad you liked the video!
Grew up in Medicine Hat, Alberta. The Gas City. They used to have mantled gas lamps all over downtown. Now I think they but LED cause it didn’t look the same when I passed through.
I remember how surprised I was to learn that lantern mantles could be used on kerosene lamps. I was familiar with Coleman lanterns but didn't realize that mantles pre-dated petrol lamps.
I just converted a beautiful old kerosene lamp I have into electric. i made it to where I can convert it back to kerosene if need be. I do keep a few kerosene lamps around incase of power outages. Always good to have back up 😊
A couple years ago I was in downtown Mobile, Alabama, and noticed that there were several gas lamps in the area. Most were bare flame but a few had mantels.
In 1968, my family and I traveled on a Cunard ship from New York to Bermuda. We lived close to NASA in Maryland. For 4 months, we swapped homes w a Bermuda family so the man could train for running the Apollo tracking station in Bermuda. The movie playing on the ship was Rosemary's Baby, my little sister and I scooted out of the theater when the nude scene appeared. Up on the deck, they had "horse racing" gambling based on dart boards, dice, etc.. Because we were in international waters, at 11yo, I able to place a bet. I watched Horse #9 win all the races so far, the last race was to be a backwards race, the last horse to cross the line was the winner. I paid $1 to bet on the #9, I had a feeling. I won $7, my sister and I enjoyed cake and ice cream after that.
Electric lighting is great for outdoor lighting but how many individuals were killed by an outdoor gas lamp compared to those killed by electrical faults in common street lighting.
I continue to use my Aladdin Mantle lamp during power outages, very bright and I am thinking of adding one of their harps and glass diffuser around the main chimney. Also I use my Coleman lamps (with Benzine in Europe since Coleman fuel is not available in the country I live in now) and Petromax kerosene mantle lamps. Even have a Greek Fisherman’s lamp which was quite common in Greece used on fishing boats in the past. These run on butane, a low pressure gas compared to propane which has a higher pressure level. Tried propane with it but I could never get the lamp to function properly even with a regulator in line. These types of lamps use a copper capillary tube to feed the lamp from a large gas tank full of butane.
Those little carbide lamps (calcium carbide and water) like the miners wore on their hardhat make acetylene gas and produce a surprisingly bright light. Extremely simple tech yet it produces a very effective light -- as long as you're not in a methane or other volatile gas atmosphere, where having a glowing bright open flame is not a good idea.
The historic district where I grew up uses triple mantle gas lamps on posts to provide real street lighting. Very cool vibe.
People do bathe 3 times a day or twice in the tropics where they sweat “like pigs”. They need more salt due to the sweating. Historically rivers were used for bathing in.
14:58 It should also be noted that, just like today, photographs were often touched up to remove blemishes and change contours. It is almost certain that this picture was hand painted to slim the already tightly synched waist.
True many photographs where touched up, however that woman was one of the very few women who sought attention by ACTUALLY tight-lacing. So it's an untouched photo.
Another interesting thing I've noticed about Victorian fashion is that men always wear hats outside. I don't think I've ever seen picture of men from the early 20th century without hats. Even people who do hard labor wear hats.
That's true, that should be a topic on my next video.
@@AlextheHistorian Most men in the US, still wore hats until 1960.
I would account many customs to practical walking conditions. My guess is cars were not popular as today, mass transport not enough, so when walking was practical to have cover for hair and round part to shade eyes from sun or even to prevent rain drops. Umbrella wasn't always at hand. Also popular was using rain coat cloak for heavy rainy weather. Now people have much less chances to walk far or use often opened type carriage in bad weather.
YES! I agree! People didn't have cars or sunblock back then. Also it kept hair cleaner longer from dirt ask and smoke. You would be considered naked without a hat back then.
So did ladies.
Its not usually used. Years ago i was down at shepards beach resort on Clearwater beach and they have these super cool spiraling flame gas lights outside of the resort and i just had to get some. They were very expensive and now i have two on brick columns at the end of my driveway. As well as either side of my garage and at my main entrance and around my back porch. They are pretty low maintenance. They don't get blocked in the winter up at my place in indiana either. However they did cause my gas bill to increase by at 28 bucks on average monthly.
Nice commentary. Good observation.
Thanks!
Will paste put together video very informational and entertaining at the same time subscription added
Thank you so much!
Set looks nice, you're looking sharp, and the video was well done.
I do, however, kind of disagree with you on the;
(...the gas in your house will not burn bright like what was used with mantles back then...)*not exact words*
The gas that comes to fill the big tanks for people in the country, when put into a "Coleman (mantle) Lamp" it burns bright. As well as when getting it off the line in a house using city piped in gas, it burns bright.
(Granddad had an adapter to fill a can from the connection in the house. Not sure if built in house or what...haha!)
Just saying all that to say it could be that the stove burner outlet may be the cause rather than the gas type.
The kind of double mantle camp lamp bright enough to light up a full camp site has never looked dimmer when using house gas.
Keep making videos brother! They are well done! 👍🏼👍🏼
Thank you. But like you said, those weren't my exact words. I was actually talking about how the gas in your house does not burn as bright as the coal gas did when used in an open flame lamp. Mantle lamps, as you pointed out, will burn bright with most types of gas due to a chemical reaction. Thanks for watching!
Good content.
Thanks!
We had a gas light - just one - in the house I grew up in. It came in handy if there was a power cut. It also gave off a surprising amount of heat.
have fun and be safe in new orleans! lots of nice gas lamps in the marigny triangle. look over your shoulder!
Thanks for the tip!