A Short History Of Table Lamps Through The Millennia

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Many people looking at a typical table lamp may not realize it, but there have been versions of lamps all throughout human history going back to over 72, 000 or more years ago. It is most likely that the first lamp used by humans consisted of moss or some other flammable material that was soaked in animal fat and then was placed into a shell or some sort of hollow rock and lit.

Of course, the fat was also a good fuel source and humans could sit around this first lamp and enjoy the light that was cast from it. Over time, humans began to create lamps that mimicked certain natural shapes through their use of pottery making technologies. Once metal working came into being, metal lamps quickly followed. Once wicks had been developed, lamps really came into their own.

It was the ancient Greeks who first began to create attractive and stylish lamps, making them out of terra-cotta to replace torches that were stuck into walls or held by hand. The Greek word 'lampas' is the progenitor of the word lamp. It means 'torch' in Greek. By the 1700s, lamps have been improved greatly by the invention of a central burner. Fuels could now be safely enclosed and light intensity controlled, also.

Creative inventors who took a look at lamps back in that day soon came up with ways to enclose the flame in what were called chimneys. They were made of glass and kept the flame safe by controlling the amount of air that could flow to the flame at any one time. In 1783, a Swiss scientist working on wicks developed a hollow version that could be safely enclosed in a glass chimney.

About 10 years later there came into being a classical gas lamp. By 1792, commercial versions of gas lamps began to appear with the development of coal gas and technologies for pumping it to lamps. This occurred in England as the result of the efforts of a certain inventor. By the early 19th century, most cities featured gas lighting of streets and roads.

At the turn of the century, in the early 1900s, Thomas Edison had perfected his incandescent light bulb and it quickly began to replace gas lamps. It is largely because of the development of the incandescent bulb that table lamps began to take on the importance that they hold in most households these days. Indeed, the invention of the light bulb is one of the signal inventions of all time.

By the 1930s, table lamps had begun to appear regularly in most every household and are now as common as electricity and running water in most homes. As light bulbs themselves have become more efficient so too have table lamps. This is not to say that they are designed strictly for functionality, though. Many beautiful lamps have been in existence for hundreds of years.

Today, there are a number of very popular styles of table lamps, including the well-known Tiffany lamp as well as Victorian-style lamps and also contemporary and very modern lamps. For certain, there is a table lamp out there for just about any home environment that could be imagined. Lamps need to be considered not only for the intensity of the light they will put out but also their particular styles.



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