Carbide lamps gave off a similar odor, but after breathing it all day, every day, you got used to it. Early automobiles like the Ford Model T used carbide lamps for headlights. Adding a glass screen ...

Carbide lamps have an upper chamber full of water and a lower chamber full of rocklike calcium carbide (CaC2). A valve lets the water drip onto the CaC2 at a steady rate.

Carbide lamps became widely used by the 1920s. They were used for automobiles, lighthouses and even bicycles, but were most popular among miners because of the quality of light they provided and ...

Carbide lamps were fairly safe to use, but there were accidents. In 1925, Joe Gregorich working at the Smuggler Mine opened a can of carbide and it exploded, badly burning his face. He had his light ...

The carbide lamp was much safer and more reliable than candles or oil lamps. Some of the brand names for the lamps were Autolite, Justrite, Premier and Minex.

However, carbide lamps saw increased usage among cavers who preferred their light weight in contrast to the 3.6 to 5.3 pounds imposed by the electric mine lamp, which included a storage battery.

Mineral Monday is a weekly video series exploring the many amazing minerals, fossils, and historic objects on display at the W.M. Keck Earth Science and Mineral Engineering Museum as told by museum ...

Although cycling in the blackout wasn’t much fun and the bikes didn’t have dynamos, only carbide lamps. These were a type of canister with carbide at the bottom and water on top.

Carbide lamps often came with a reflector, allowing this brighter flame to be directed and giving the miner a wider range of light. The drawback of the carbide lamp was that its open flame was still ...

Therefore, a lamp should be lit under the ground that does not destroy the air. The solution for this was carbide stone, which was called Karpeit stone in the speech of the local people. The stone was ...

Historian, miner, and geologist Ronald H. Mishkin demonstrates how to fill a calcium carbide light, while wearing an Edison’s "cap lamp." Short-wave ultraviolet light shows fluorescing Franklin ...

Weldin has many types of those lamps and lanterns in his collection, as well as the carbide cans that held the fuel for them. “When I went to work in 1960, they issued me a carbide lamp to put ...