Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.15587

    Continuously burning lamp

    Date
    5 August 1695
    Creator
    Unknown, Artist
    Object type
    Archive reference number
    Manuscript page number
    p3
    Material
    Dimensions
    height (page): 295mm
    width (page): 190mm
    Subject
    Description
    Diagram of a lamp that could burn continuously, in a letter from Robert St Clair (a former assistant of Robert Boyle) to Robert Hooke. The letter was read to the meeting of the Royal Society on 13 November 1695, and printed in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, vol. 20, no. 245 (October 1698), pp. 378-81.

    There are copies of this image at LBO/11ii/116 and LBC/11ii/124.
    Object history
    13 November 1695, 'There was read an account of a small spot of ground near Fierenzola in Italy emitting perpetually a flame, for a space of about 3 or 4 yards Diameter, which the writer supposes to arise from a petroleous vapour. The same paper mention'd a Lamp so contrived as to keep the Oil always at the same height' (JBO/9/201).

    Robert St Clair, ‘An account of a very odd eruption of fire out of a spot in the Earth near Fierenzola in Italy, with an easy contrivance of a lamp to be kept always full whilst it burns’, Phil. Trans. vol. 20, no. 245 (October 1698), pp. 378-81.
    Related fellows
    Robert Hooke (1635 - 1703, British) , Natural philosopher
    Associated place
    <The World>
       > Europe
          > United Kingdom
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