All About Inventions and Discoveries
The Romance of modern scientific and mechanical Achievements

66 All About Inventions While this attempt to give the world what is known to-day as incandescent gas-lighting failed, it prompted further investigation of the subject. The first de- cisive step towards the accomplishment of the appar- ently impossible came when practical joking in a laboratory culminated in the production of the Bunsen burner. In this burner air becomes mingled with the gas before it reaches the burner, the result being a very hot, blue, and almost non-luminous flame. Upon the appearance of this invention a French chemist, Clammond, attacked the problem and finally succeeded in employing calcined magnesia as the re- fractory substance. He devised a mantle of netting, similar to that used to-day, which he called a “ basket.” This was placed over the Bunsen burner, and the gas was then lit. The intensely hot flame of the Bunsen burner raised the calcined magnesia to a high state of incandescence, causing it to emit a bright white flame. While the first mantles of this description were of the upright type, this ingenious Frenchman also succeeded in adapting his idea to the inverted system of lighting. His discovery was even carried to the initial stages of commercial application, and a great sensation was caused both in London and Paris by the inventor’s exhibition of this system of lighting. But Clammond failed to reap a reward from his endeavours, and incandescent gas-lighting suffered another relapse into obscurity. But in 1885 appeared a patent specification which caused another sensation in the gas world. An Austrian chemist, Carl Auer von Welsbach, was engaged upon some experiments with the rare earths