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Outdoors

2003-02-01 12:11:00

The lantern, mantle & gasoline

:  In reading about several of Wichita’s industrial ‘pioneers’, I don’t find that much written about W. C. Coleman, and all of his work in the area of illumination and lanterns.  Can you provide a little history about him, his products, and his company?

ANSWER:  (fifth in series, see Oct. '02, Nov. ‘02, Dec. ‘02 and Jan. ‘03 issues) Early in 1899 Coleman was selling typewriters in Alabama in order to replenish funds with which to complete his law studies. He saw his first Irby-Gilliland lamp in a drug store window. The intensity and steadiness of its light so entranced him that he vowed to own one. When he discovered the lamp was not for sale but only for demonstration, he bypassed the territory salesman and negotiated directly with Irby-Gilliland. Later that year Coleman purchased twelve lamps and chose Kingfisher, Oklahoma Territory as the center of his sales effort. He arrived in Kingfisher on January 1, 1900, the first day of the Twentieth Century.One of the setbacks Coleman experienced was the near total sales resistance of the merchants of the small but prosperous frontier town. The reason, he learned, was that an itinerant salesman had sold gravity fed lamps to just about every store on Main Street. One by one the lamps failed and there was no one to repair them.Coleman met the challenge by offering to rent his lamps, fuel and service included, for $1 per lamp per week. No light; no pay. Within a few months Kingfisher was the best-lighted town in Oklahoma Territory and Coleman's little Hydro Carbon Light Co. was providing service to a half dozen nearby towns.In November, 1901 Coleman moved his lamp rental service to Wichita, Kansas, a young city with an electric system that did not satisfy the demands of its customers. This situation was not unusual for the times. Merchants along the main streets no longer were content with low- level lighting and were good prospects for modern gas lighting.It followed that early inventors of hydrocarbon fueled mantle lamps concentrated on high pressure lamps capable of producing light of 300 to 1,000 candlepower. By design, such lighting was geared to the needs of commercial establishments, churches, meeting halls and street lighting.   In fact, one criticism of householders was that the modern lamps that made their own gas from gasoline were too bright.The attraction of high level illumination extended to Europe. By 1901 inventors there had devised gasoline and kerosene burning pressure lamps with mantles for use in lighthouses,1 The lamps were approved by both the French and British governments.During the very early years of the new century, interest seemed centered on what came to be known as hollow wire lighting. A hollow wire system consisted of a central tank for fuel and air, a copper tube 1/8 inch in diameter, and a series of lamp fixtures leading off the supply line.  Each lamp had its own control valve, generator, burner, mantle and a shade or globe. The lamps varied in intensity depending upon the size and number of burners.The fuel tank usually held 3 to 5 gallons of liquid fuel with space remaining for compressed air added by means of a tire pump. As many as 30 lamps might be on the system although the number employed generally is believed to have been considerably less.A variation of the hollow wire system was reminiscent of the much larger and more complex gas machines. Instead of forcing liquid fuel through a hollow wire, it fed into a central generator where it was converted to a vapor. The vapor was conducted to the lamp fixtures through 1 1/2 inch galvanized iron pipe. In order to distinguish the system from hollow wire lighting manufacturers referred to it as a central generator or tube system.  An added benefit claimed for the hollow wire and tube systems was low cost of operation. According to sales literature of the period, the gasoline vapor lamps were far more economical than electric, manufactured gas, acetylene lamps and even the kerosene wick-type lamps. It was pointed out that when properly adjusted, the high intensity of hollow wire and tube lights consumed a mixture of 5 percent gasoline and 95 percent air. That same ratio still applies to the gasoline pressurized lanterns made today.During the heyday of the hollow wire and tube systems, roughly the years between 1900 and the early 1920s, outdoor street lamps fueled with gasoline attained some degree of popularity. At one time Chicago was reported to have 8,000 gasoline street lamps. Other cities used them for lighting parks and thoroughfares beyond the reach of existing electric lines. A larger number, however, were destined for use in small towns and villages which had no electric service or had a light plant with insufficient generating capacity to serve the combined needs of both the public and private sectors.The more advanced street lamps were self-contained in that the fuel reservoir was concealed in the lamp post. Gasoline and air were added at regular intervals. A clockwork device could be set to turn off the light at a specified time but lighting the lamps had to be done manually. Another version of the gasoline street lamps was to give them a carefully measured amount of fuel and when the fuel was exhausted the lamp went out.Among the companies active during this period were the American Gas Machine Co. of Albert Lea, Minn., Acorn Brass Mfg. Co., Akron Light Co., Martin and Moorhead, Superior Mfg. Co., Standard-Gillette, Gasoline Lighting Co., Yale Light Co. and the Hydro-Carbon Light Co. of W.C. Coleman.Next time we will talk about the ‘inverted mantle’ and the first Coleman Model R Reading Lamp.  1 Recent Improvements in the Lighting and Buoying of the Coasts of France" Scientific American, Supp. No. 1350, Nov. 22, 1901.