History Encyclopedias and Dictionaries Welsbach gas lamp catalog 2025-03-07

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I am more interested in a carbide lamp after my dad talked about my Grampas car having them many years back.

 

Carbide miners lamps were still in use up until the 1960's. Carbide auto lamps had mostly switched to electric by the early 1920's. Bigger trucks continued to use them until the late 1920's.

A properly functioning carbide lamp is very effective. Pretty cool making acetylene from rocks and water.

 

Grand dad had one on a cap that he used until he was up in his eighties. Bright light and no batteries. The pressure of the gas was regulated by the water dripping on the carbide. As soon as the pressure built up, it stopped the dripping. That and cupping your hand over the light and pulling it off and striking the flint to start it and the pop when it started really impressed a six year old. It used much smaller pieces of carbide than his torch setup did. He had about a 5 lb can and used that can alone as long as I could remember. The lamp ran for many hours on about 1/4 cup of carbide. Kind a good reason for it not being as common today, the welding shop in town had a carbide generator malfunction about 1950 and lost the back wall of the building. As luck would have it, it went off in the middle of the night. From what I heard, the fireman were very upset when he ran out of his house screaming at them to not put any water on the fire.