Auer-gas mantle

Even today this method of light production remains superior to electric lighting systems in remote areas or in signal devices for railroads. For example, in front of ity house in Essen, Germany, there are open street lanterns with gas-heated Auer-incandescent mantles which provide a pleasant light on our quiet street. 

Origins. Since the 1890 S, monazite, the first commercial rare earth ore, was mined from black beach sands in Brazil and shipped to Austria for its 5 to 10% thorium oxide content. Carl Freiherr Auer von Welsbach spent 20 years of research work developing a bright incandescent gas mantle he discovered in 1866 with... 

Baron Auer is best remembered for his invention of the incandescent gas mantle, a truly great advance in the history of illumination (55). Instead of attempting to produce a gas which would bum with a luminous flame, he decided to use a non-luminous flame to heat a refractory mantle to incandescence. The problem, as he said, "was not to find a process by which an infusible compound could be given a definite shape. This invention is founded, above all, on the fact, proved by numerous experi-... 

Baron Auer von Welsbach, 1858-1929. Austrian chemist and chemical technologist. Discoverer of praseodymium and neodymium. Inventor of the Welsbach gas mantle, the osmium filament electric lamp, and the automatic gas lighter. 

During the same period Paul Harteck in Hamburg was building a Clusius separation tube in December he tested it by successfully separating isotopes of the heavy gas xenon. He traveled to Munich at Christmastime to discuss design improvements with Clusius, who was professor of physical chemistry at the university there. Auer, the thorium specialists, purveyors of gas mantles and radioactive toothpaste, delivered the first ton of pure uranium oxide processed from Joachimsthal ores to the War Office in January 1940. German uranium research was thriving. 

Incandescent gas mantle (Carl Auer von Welsbach) The Austrian scientist invents the incandescent gas mantle. 

It is obvious that the narrow band thermoluminescence 8, 9) influenced Carl Auer von Welsbach in developing his mantle between 1884 and 1892, but as discussed in the next chapter, the optimized conditions for white gas-light rather involve another t cpe of excited states of cerium(IV). On the other hand, the cathodo-luminescence in narrow bands discovered by William Crookes and carefully studied by Urbain [12) corresponds to internal transitions in the partly filled shell. Thus, the excited state of 4/ europium(III) produces the red emission (important for colour television) in the orthovanadate [13) Yi Eux VO 4 and in the oxysulphide (74) by transitions to " Fz, and Fq. Certain... 

Auer lamps defied the competition of electric lighting for a long time, to the last in trains. The writer still remembers how in his childhood the conductor came into the compartments of the trains pulled by steam engines and lit the gas lamps the white mantle surrounding the flame began to glow and the compartment was flooded with... 

That the rare earth metals are of little practical value was the general view during the whole of the 19 century. The turn of the century, however, saw the first major application, Auer von Welsbach s incandescent mantle for gas lightning (section 17.4.10.2). Gradually the list of RE applications was increased. At first the RE metals were used mixed, just as they were prepared from monazite sand. One example is mischmetall, consisting of about 50% cerium, 25% lanthanum and 25% other rare... 

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